9
ad-self-congruency with regard to masculinity and femininity affects their ad
attitudes;
(b) for subjects who score high on masculinity and low on femininity,
ad-self-congruency with regard to masculinity affects their ad attitudes;
(c) for subjects who score low on masculinity and high on femininity,
ad-self-congruency with regard to femininity affects their ad attitudes;
for subjects who score low on masculinity and low on femininity, neither
ad-self-congruency with regard to masculinity, nor ad-self-congruency with
regard to femininity, will affect their ad attitudes.
Individual Differences with Regard to Masculinity and Femininity
on Preference for Communication Modes
Other than ad-self-congruency effects and gender schematic processing, both of which
suggest that individuals are more responsive to self-congruent messages, there has been a notable
lack of attention paid to how individual differences with regard to masculinity and femininity
may affect people’s consumer behaviors or their preferences for communication strategies. It is
important to note that masculinity and femininity
1
has also been treated as a culture-level
dimension and has recently been applied to explain cross-cultural differences in cognition and
consumer behaviors. For example, individuals from masculine societies have been shown to
have higher needs for cognition and to reveal more mastery values, such as being ambitious,
capable, daring, independent, successful and being able to choose one’s goals (Hofstede, 1998).
It has also been proposed that, in masculine societies, consumption is meant to distinguish the
self from others and the purchase decision is made individually. In contrast, in feminine
cultures, consumption is not in service of fulfilling personal goals for consumers. As a result,
consumers in feminine societies pay more attention to their appearance and have a higher need
Convention