How Does the Gender of Spokesperson Affect the Audience’s Perception

Abstract

Spokesperson has become an important communication strategy of modern marketing. How does the gender of spokesperson affect the audience’s perception? To address this problem, a mixed experiment was designed: 2 (gender of audience) ×2 (gender of spokesperson) ×3 (Product type). The results show that female have homosexual bias on spokesperson, and product types have a moderating effect on this deviation; male have no homosexual bias on spokesperson, and they tend to recognize heterosexual spokesperson firstly. This study supports the conclusion that women tend to relational processing, while men tend to item-specific processing.