1. The results of the survey found that there was a reasonably strong
correlation between respondents liking an advertisement and being
able to relate to it as seen in
the graphs. The focus group
results were not as easy to
represent but some notable
results were that younger
men were more concerned
with the man in the adver-
tisement being
“unattainable” than older men. Older male respondents comment-
ed that they were more concerned with looking smart than having
a perfect body, showing a clear generation gap in what men value
in their appearance. Interestingly it was the older women who com-
mented more on how they would like to see more realistic repre-
sentations, although many in the female group acknowledged that
advertisers will use the best person to sell a product. Female re-
spondents also reacted positively to gender stereotypes that came
across as humorous and ones which were considered true. Howev-
er there was some difference between ages in what stereotypes
were considered true. The main conclusion I drew was that both
men and women preferred em-
pathetic depictions of
themselves and favoured
humour and realistic
images, However the
reasoning for this differed
between demographics.
My research focuses on how men and women respond to
different depictions of their gender in both print and televi-
sion advertisements. I believe that the majority of these adver-
tisements can be categorised as either aspirational or empa-
thetic My research goals were to find out how men and women
responded to different depictions and which they respond
better to. Following on from this I aimed to find out why they
felt this way and whether there were any trends in my findings
based on the age of respondents. I also wanted to find out from
respondents whether certain depictions would encourage or
discourage them from purchasing products.
My method for this
research consisted
of both qualitative
and quantitative
data. The quantita-
tive data took the form of an online survey due to the ease of distribution
as I needed as much data as possible. This was used to find out how re-
spondents felt about different advertisements in a way that could then
be graphically represented. The qualitative data consisted of three focus
groups of varying ages and genders which allowed me to add context to
my data by offering possible explanations for the results of the survey
and the overall preferences of each gender. The focus groups proved very
helpful in recognising trends relating to age as my survey did not have
enough older respondents to draw reasonable conclusions.
From the research project experience I have first and foremost
learnt the importance of careful time management! There were oc-
casions when I had to rearrange focus groups or collect more data at
short notice and, had I not planned out my time using a Gantt chart
in my research proposal, I would have seriously struggled to com-
plete the assignment on time. Had I had more time and more words
I would like to look more into the different ages of respondents as,
particularly in the survey, most of my respondents were younger so
it was hard to draw any conclusions on the thoughts of older people
from such a small sample, so I think my findings would be useful as a
starting point for much larger scale research. Following on from that
point, I have also learnt a lot more about being critical of my own
data, there will always be limitations and previously my instinct
would be to overlook these for fear of losing marks! I do now realise
that for any research to be reliable then limitations must be
acknowledged. I was not surprised by the fact that men and women
both preferred empathetic depictions as there is already a lot of lit-
erature to support this. I was however surprised by how accepting of
the ‘perfect women’ the female respondents were– especially given
that the media is full of arti-
cles about how women
don’t like it at all, similarly I
did not expect the younger
men to be quite as against
the use of men with six
packs as they were.