A Study Gender Role Congruence’s Effect On Anti-gender Consumption

Looking around the market nowadays, you will find skin-care, perfume, make-up, and jewelry-these traditionally considered as female products-are heading to the males market aggressively. This Anti-gender Consuming Movement, started from European and America, rolling over Japan and Korea, is making its move to the Chinese market. This paper aims to study Anti-gender Consumption from a marketing perspective, to analyze male consumers’ behavior in terms of purchasing Anti-gender products, and to uncover the psychological mechanism underneath. Based on theoretical discoveries from related subjects, such as Psychology and Sociology, the author chose a construct-Gender Role Congruence-to study Chinese male consumers’purchase intention of skin care products which is product category traditionally considered as female product in China. Gender Role Congruence refers to the level of consistency between consumer’s gender identity and their evaluation of product gender. The higher the congruence, the more product gender matched customer’s gender identity. In addition, another two factors, Self-construal and Spokespeople, are also studied in the following paper. The result of experiments indicate that, male consumers’Gender Role Congruence has a positive influence on their purchase intention of skin care products. When the Gender Role Congruence is in a high level, customers of Independent Self-construal has a significantly higher purchase intention than customers of Inter-dependent Self-construal. The study about spokespeople’s influence shows that spokespeople with manly appearance will significantly reduce consumers’perception of a brand’s female trait. Together, the findings of this paper will help us to have a better idea of Anti-gender Consumption, and individual customers’behavior. Thus to some extent, we will be able predict the future of Anti-gender Consumption in China.