How and Why Does the Tradition of Sex Sells Still Work?

How and Why Does the Tradition of

Sex Sells Still Work?

Joshua Prynn-Petit Bucks New University Advertising: Creative January 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION        1

Background of the Research        1

Problem Statement        1

Rationale        2

Aims and Objectives        3

Purpose of the Study        3

Research Questions        3

Theoretical Framework        4

Ethical Concern        5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW        7

What is Sex in Advertising?        7

Does Sex Sell?        7

Sexual Appeal and Advertising        8

Type of appeal        12

Level of explicitness        13

Step 3: Comprehension        14

Amount of information        14

Selling Product        15

Step 4: Yielding        16

Age        16

Young generation attitude towards Advertisements        17

Level of acceptance        17

Step 5: Retention        18

Repetition        19

Clutter        19

Time        20

Step 6: Action        20

Psychoanalysis and Selling Dreams        21

Research Design and Methodology        23

Qualitative and Quantitative Research Method        24

Selection of Participants        25

Data preparation and statistical procedures        25

Literature Search        26

Steps in mixed methodology        26

Analysis of Survey Questionnaire        28

Results Interpretation        35

APPENDIX        41

Questionnaire        41

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Background of the Research

Sexual appeals in persuasive messages are becoming more prevalent and more explicit. Advertisers commonly use sex as a tool to attract attention to and interest in their products. Although many advertisers and researchers have attempted to answer this question, the overall answer seems to be "it depends"1.

Researchers still do not understand when and why sexual appeals are effective. This paper reports why the tradition of sex sells stills work and how the concept of sex in advertising is expanding globally. Moderators of this relationship were also examined to determine how different types of sexual information, experimental and consumer characteristics, and measures of effectiveness affect consumer processing and evaluations of products, brands, and advertisements2. It was hoped that a better understanding of the circumstances in which sexual appeals do work would be reached in this study by quantitatively examining the extensive body of research on the effectiveness of sexual appeals in advertising3.

Problem Statement

Basically, increasing the likelihood of being exposed to a message should

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1 Lang, A., & Dhillon, K., & Dong, Q. The effects of emotional arousal and valence on television viewers' cognitive capacity and memory. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, (1995), p.313-327.

2 Lang, A., Borse, 1., Wise, K., & David, P.. Captured by the World Wide Web: Orienting to structural and content features of computer-presented information. Communication Research, 29(3), (2002), p. 215-245.

3 Greenwald, A. G., & Leavitt, C. Audience involvement in advertising: Four levels. Journal of Consumer Research, 11, (1984) , p.581-592.

increase the likelihood of being persuaded by that message. Because the current study was a meta-analysis of experiments in which 100 percent presented a portion of participants with a sexual message, participants had no control over message presentation.

In real life, however, although message recipients have little control over whether or not sexual messages actually exist, they have more control over their own exposure to such messages. The main influence on whether or not people will be exposed to sexual appeals, and thus able to possibly act upon those messages, may be the sex of both the message viewer and any model portrayed in the message. The overall influence of sex will be discussed separately at the end of this section4.

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