Research from India on the Effects of Female Portrayals in Advertisements on Communication in Marketing

: Researchers from all across the world are very concerned about gender stereotypes in advertising. Yet, very few studies—more so in the case of India—have examined how such a communication strategy affects consumers. According to census data, women's employment rates, educational attainment levels, and literacy rates have all increased in India. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate customer reactions to the suitability of such a communication strategy. 450 respondents—men and women in the Delhi region between the ages of 20 and 50—were given an organized survey. Responses from customers were examined to determine the impact of female representation in marketing on the factors that include a preference for advertisements, perception of advertisements (in terms of liking and believability of the ads), attitude towards brands (in terms of liking, recall, recognition, and image of the brands), and intention. In order to determine the effect of female depictions on consumer ratings, demographic parameters were also examined. In this study, a number of hypotheses were developed and examined. To evaluate the theories, analysis of variation, the T-test, correlation, and modeling were used. The results of the research show that the representation of women in advertising is connected with advertisement like, credibility of the advertisement, company interest, acknowledgment, memory, and perception of the company, and has less of an impact on purchase intention. Fresh data on the impact of female depiction and interaction is also presented in the study. In the article, the effects on those working in marketing have also been covered(Avinash, 2016).


Research Article
socioeconomic standing in India as compared to that in 2001. This is especially true of their jobs and literacy rates (Bhumeeka et al., 2013).
According to the Census 2001 report, the overall literacy rate among females in India increased steadily over time, rising from 8.9 percent in 1951 to 63.7% in 2011, while the WPR for women was a quarter in 2011. Additionally, according to the the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-3 study, in India, around 52.5% of females took part in family decision-making in the years 2005-2006. Due to this, it is crucial to comprehend how consumers choose their products in order to increase the efficacy of marketing and communications efforts as well as the return on the substantial investment made in marketing.
Additionally, this research is significant in light of the information that follows: first, there are hardly any published empirical investigations on the impact of female representation and interaction in the Indian context; as well as secondly, the most recent shifts in females' economic standing, which is a crucial element in the creation of marketing strategies. The current study also takes into account a number of additional variables to analyse the influence of communication.

II. Literature Review
There hasn't been many research in the last forty years that have focused on the effect of gender portrayal on the success of such advertising methods, where the main emphasis has been on brand image and buy intention. In addition, relatively few studies have been done to determine the effects of gender-role representation on marketing or dissemination of the firm's products.
Measurement of the impact of advertising on those who are being targeted is the primary goal of communication effectiveness study, and it is also one of the most challenging challenges for advertising researchers. Romaniuk and Sharp (2004) asserted that a consumer's ability to remember and retain advertising cues-i.e., connections associated with a brand name-determines whether they would make a purchase. These branded cognitions influence action through influencing choice, liking, and appraisal.
Cognitive reactions were used as criteria in certain research studies to assess the effectiveness of communication. Kanungo and Pang (1973) assessed how women communicated and were portrayed.

Research Article
Like/dislike for ads was a criterion employed by Ducker and Tucker (1977) to evaluate the effect of women representation on communiqué. Kelly et al. (1977) evaluated advertisements, products, and companies in order to determine the influence of female representation and communication. Leigh et al. (1987) investigated traditional and contemporary women's reactions to such commercials in order to investigate the effects of women's role depictions on the efficacy of advertising. The study used an experiment in the lab that followed a cognitive response approach. Women's responses to advertisements and products were observed as they pertain to their attitudes towards their source (or role model), the brand, and the act of purchasing the brand (Lee, 2007).
In a 1991 study, Ford, Latour, and Lundstrom looked at how affluent women perceived how they were portrayed in advertisements. The research project assessed female responses about perceptions of sex-role representations in advertising, opinions of businesses utilizing conventional advertising techniques, and intentions to purchase such goods. According to study participants, companies that represent women in derogatory ways are more likely to engage in bias against females in society and have lower intention to buy scores.
The impact of gender-role depictions in advertising in terms of product appraisal and purchase intention was examined by Morrison and Shaffer (2003) using the gender-role congruence and Research Article then divided into the age groups of 20-30 years, 30-40 years, and 40-50 years utilizing cluster sampling. The study size of 450 people was divided into the three clusters according to the gender distribution of Delhi's population, which is 54% men and 46% women. An autonomous research tool was created to record the consumer replies.
In addition to the demographic data of those surveyed, the questionnaire asked categorical inquiries (yes, no, and can't say) and featured a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree. The measures were developed while taking the needs of the research goals and other prior studies on gender depictions into consideration. Therefore, the investigator created 28 claims to understand the effect of female depictions in advertising on advertising messaging, as well as four categorical statements connected to the preferences of advertising with regard to type of portrayal.

Testing for reliability
The internal coherence of generated scales is examined using the Cronbach alpha dependability study. The Cronbach alpha coefficient for the scale should ideally be about 0.60. Table 1 contains the reliability test results, which show that all the variables that were tested are consistent. Scales created for the purpose of research are thus valid and reliable (Suguna, 2011).

Results of the H1 test
It was crucial to determine whether respondents' role preference affected brand liking, recognition, memory, image, and purchase intention before investigating the impact of female portrayal on respondents' views of the advertisement, towards the brand, and their intent to buy.
On the answers they gave for how women are portrayed in commercials, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed. (see Table 2). The findings showed that respondents'

Research Article
preferences for stereotypical representations of women in advertisements had an impact on their brand choice, brand identification, remembering reputation, and purchase intention. Despite their preference for young female models in advertisements having an impact on their brand liking, brand identification, remembering of the brand, and purchase intention, it has no impact on the brand image.

H3 evaluation
According to this hypothesis, the respondents' opinion of the commercial and the brand in regard to the stereotypical portrayal of women in advertisements would have an impact on their intention to purchase. The findings demonstrate a favorable relationship between the intent to purchase and attitudes towards advertisements (r = 0.193, P 0.01) and brands (r = 0.196, P 0.01).

V. Final Thoughts and Implications
Examining the effect of women representation in Indian advertising on the company's marketing strategies was the primary goal of the present investigation. In general, the findings show that Indian consumers embrace stereotyped portrayals of women and believe that these representations increase customer likeliness regarding ads and brands, brand recall, acknowledgment, and believability, without having a negative impact on brand image. However, when it comes to what customers want to purchase, our sample of participants indicated that they did not find stereotypical representations of females in advertisements to be particularly offensive.
Ipsos' research shown that the function and representation of females in commercials might affect attitudes towards ad evaluation. Ads that favorably portray women are more likely to make a difference to the over time brand relationship as well as short-term behavior modification. It is essential to notice that the research disclosed no link amongst the presence of a female personality in a commercial and brand acknowledgment. The advantage was shown on the Research Article behavioral pattern of preference intention and connection of brand, which will increase a brand's likelihood of being selected more habitually while strengthening brand observation (Shetty & Hans, 2015) .

VI. Conclusion
Whereas it is obvious that individuals reviewed in this research may have replied favorably with regards to the stereotypical portrayal of women, there is also a chance that methods that labored in the past may not work in the future given that increasing worries over female prejudice have been noted and discussed in various forums recently (Shetty & Hans, 2015). Additionally, as previously said, it is advised for advertising and marketing practitioners to reconsider their communication techniques in light of the growing engagement of women in all areas of life.
Additionally, businesses can take advantage of their rivalry and whittle out a place in the minds of customers by shattering gender stereotypes and giving more weight to actual and relatable scenarios (Mishra, 2014).
Additional studies should look at how these depictions affect various product types or categories.
Since they display a different purchasing behavioral structure, this research can also be applied to other rural consumers as well(Panda, 2017).
Advertising is a form of capitalism. Instead than emphasizing structural injustices, these advertisements focus on personal psychological development. They don't want to support activism or institutional change; they just want to sell stuff. This pernicious popular "feminism" sometimes seems as messages that are intended to be uplifting for women and girls, but upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that these messages merely serve to "empower" girls into becoming neoliberalism consumerist citizens (Bansal & Bansal, 2012). In other examples, portrays of women in advertisements perpetuate unenthusiastic preconception by depicting them as usual or even attractive to female customers. It is obviously post feminist to squeeze the stereotypically "feminine." Last but not least, advertisers prey on women's anxieties about the gendered body by utilizing a market-inspired vocabulary of "esteem for oneself and "real beauty" as their main means of advertising, which is typical of a postfeminist ethos (Mandal, 2013).