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Issues of Product Gender and
Recognition
Dr.
Rebecca Walker Naylor, (pictured at far right) assistant professor of marketing at the Moore
School of Business, has been studying the role of the Russian language gender system on brand names
with the support of a SC CIBER grant. Naylor and doctoral student
Yuliya Komarova are replicating, in the Russian language, a
study published in the September 2005 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research that concludes that
when Spanish-language gender markers match, there is increased recall and product appeal.
Komarova, a native Russian speaker from Siberia, surveyed undergraduates at three universities in Novosibirsk, the third-largest city in Russia. Naylor’s and Komarova’s Russian language data revealed the same positive effects of gender matching as found in the Spanish-language study.
To expand the study, Naylor and Komarova went further to ask: What happens when there is a mismatch? “Our theory was that a mismatch between genders would actually lead to better recognition,” said Naylor. “We found that recognition is driven in Russian by a mismatch between the formal brand name gender and the semantic product gender (the gender of the typical user). Often what drives recognition is inconsistency or uniqueness in the product name so that consumers will notice it and be more likely to recognize it later,” said Naylor.
Unlike unaided recall in which consumers retrieve information from memory without cues, recognition occurs when consumers are presented with a wide array of products, just as they are while at a store, and realize they have seen a brand or product before. “These results are significant to the marketing of low-involvement products, like packaged goods,” explained Naylor, “ because most of these purchase decisions are low-effort and consumers make them in-store, making recognition very important.”
Dr.
Rebecca Walker Naylor, (pictured at far right) assistant professor of marketing at the Moore
School of Business, has been studying the role of the Russian language gender system on brand names
with the support of a SC CIBER grant. Naylor and doctoral student
Yuliya Komarova are replicating, in the Russian language, a
study published in the September 2005 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research that concludes that
when Spanish-language gender markers match, there is increased recall and product appeal.
Komarova, a native Russian speaker from Siberia, surveyed undergraduates at three universities in Novosibirsk, the third-largest city in Russia. Naylor’s and Komarova’s Russian language data revealed the same positive effects of gender matching as found in the Spanish-language study.
To expand the study, Naylor and Komarova went further to ask: What happens when there is a mismatch? “Our theory was that a mismatch between genders would actually lead to better recognition,” said Naylor. “We found that recognition is driven in Russian by a mismatch between the formal brand name gender and the semantic product gender (the gender of the typical user). Often what drives recognition is inconsistency or uniqueness in the product name so that consumers will notice it and be more likely to recognize it later,” said Naylor.
Unlike unaided recall in which consumers retrieve information from memory without cues, recognition occurs when consumers are presented with a wide array of products, just as they are while at a store, and realize they have seen a brand or product before. “These results are significant to the marketing of low-involvement products, like packaged goods,” explained Naylor, “ because most of these purchase decisions are low-effort and consumers make them in-store, making recognition very important.”
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The Russian word for "iron" is masculine, but women are
considered the typical users. Here are masucline and feminine versions of a bogus brand name for an
Iron. Naylor found that a mismatch between the brand name's gender and the user's gender increased
product recognition.
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