Femvertise for Brand Empowerment

Femvertising is advertising perceived as promoting gender equality and as challenging stereotypical portrayals of women as primarily caregivers, decorative objects, or passive observers. According to researchers at Macquarie University and The University of Newcastle, femvertising helps a brand build stronger loyalty and advocacy among female consumers. When reinforcing the power a woman has or wants to have, femvertising messages evoke positive responses.
     Examples of femvertising include the Dove “Real Beauty”, Under Armour “I Will What I Want”, Pantene “Not Sorry”, and Nike “Inner Thoughts” campaigns.
     The researchers developed and statistically validated a scale which they propose marketers use to assess the quality of a brand’s femvertising. Items on the brief version of the scale, along with the themes being measured, are: 

• [Brand name]’s ads present women as empowered in their choices (Empowerment: Portrays women as confident, ambitious, and self-reliant) 
• [Brand name]’s ads feature diverse women from different backgrounds (Representation: Portrays women of diverse identities, backgrounds, and appearances in meaningful roles) 
• [Brand name]’s ads challenge traditional views on women’s roles (Transformation: Challenges outdated gender norms and promotes long-term social change) 
• [Brand name]’s ads highlight real actions for women’s rights (Commitment: Actively engages in advocacy and activism to promote women’s rights, roles, progress, and inclusion) 
• [Brand name]’s ads portray women in an honest way (Authenticity: Portrays women and girls as authentic, believable, and credible) 
• I feel [Brand name]’s ads reflect fair gender standards in advertising (Compliance: Complies with advertising rules, industry guidelines, policies, and ethical standards to promote gender equity)

     The degree to which a brand’s advertising exhibits these characteristics is the degree to which ad audiences will conclude, “This is a brand that supports women.” Using an online survey of women who had recently purchased a sportswear brand, the researchers demonstrated how such a conclusion enhances brand loyalty and brand advocacy.
     Attending to women’s empowerment also assists in public health and in the workplace. Campaigns to increase breast cancer screening rates work best when accompanying messages point out competencies of women. When job supervisors water down negative feedback to female employees, assuming women aren’t powerful enough to handle the truth, the employees are cheated of the constructive criticism they need to most quickly become superb performers.
     Do stay aware that strategies to empower women can face headwinds. For example, the Donald Trump presidential administration’s battle against DEI resulted in organizations hiding their woman-empowerment programs.
     Skilled femvertising holds strong against headwinds.

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Cancel Out Implications of Female Inferiority 

Criticize Women Strongly

Image at top of post based on photo by Donald Giannatti from Unsplash

Engineer Employee & Customer Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction (ES) and customer satisfaction (CS) levels have long been considered valuable indicators of—as well as analogous to a two-cylinder engine powering—the future financial health of a business. ES and CS measures are therefore of interest to prospective investors in the business.
     Now researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University, Singapore Management University, and University of Pittsburgh say that increases in social media usage and in ease of both publicly-held company stock purchasing and private-market investing by individual consumers are changing how businesses should optimally conduct their ES and CS initiatives and announce the results of those initiatives. The objective should be to demonstrate results which stimulate promise of greater shareholder wealth. Among the researchers’ observations is that firms with low CS ratings could accomplish this objective by increasing ES alongside broad social media visibility.
     The researchers propose, based on their inquiries, that individual investors are attracted to firms showing imbalance between ES and CS. The explanation is that the investors are particularly attracted by business prospects for explosive growth. Although high levels in ES and CS indicate healthy business operations, an imbalance signals prospects for improvement under skilled management. “Buy low, sell high” is the smart investor’s mantra.
     The researchers’ attention to social media visibility derives from how individual investors would assess a firm’s CS and ES levels. For CS, the individual could analyze product or service reviews. Those are abundantly available on social media sites. ES levels are more difficult to find in abundance, so it benefits the firm to post them prominently on their own.
     A team of researchers at Aston University, Technical University Munich, and University of Paderborn view the two cylinders—ES and CS—as firing off interdependently. The team’s model, resulting from a large-scale longitudinal study set in a multi-outlet retail chain, incorporates operational investments and operating profits as components.
     The model shows a lagged effect between operational investments and ES: It takes some time for the additional resources to produce an outcome. The researchers advise managers to exercise patience. There is also a lagged effect between CS and operating profits. A third lagged effect is in a reinforcing loop. That is, as operating profits change, operational investments are likely to change in the same direction in the future.
     Business firms can attract investors by properly managing the interdependencies, the prompt and lagged effects of the components, and the postings about CS and especially ES on social media.

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Serve People Just What They Expect 

Build Profits by Training to Serve 

Manage Employee & Customer Turnover

Cook Up Recipes for Reducing Food Waste

A recipe for meal preparation can reduce food waste.
     Reasons include what you might suspect, such as the cook being able to determine from the recipe the sufficient amount of each ingredient to purchase and prepare without excess. However, the waste reduction is also for a reason you might not suspect—cutting time and bother.
     My evidence comes from a series of University of Groningen studies primarily designed to explore the effects not of recipes, but rather of minimally processed ingredients such as washed and chopped vegetables versus vegetables requiring purchasers to wash and chop them. Note that in the studies, the researchers used semi-prepared ingredients, not fully prepared meals. If too much convenience is provided, the consumer might devalue the meal and show less hesitation in wasting some of the food.
     In one of the studies, consumers were asked to imagine they had in their refrigerator a set of items—pasta, parmesan cheese, olive oil, a leek, and so on. One group of participants were shown photos of the ingredients in a semi-prepared form. The rest were shown the ingredients in an unprepared form. Half the number of participants in each group were also given a recipe which listed steps for incorporating all the ingredients into a pasta entrée. Each participant was asked to indicate “How likely are you to not prepare the meal and therefore throw all products away?”
     For the participants who had not been provided a recipe, those considering the semi-prepared ingredients were less likely to say they’d waste the foods. But for those who had been provided the recipe, there was little difference between the two groups. Analyses of other data collected in this study and from other studies in the series indicated the explanation was degree of convenience.
     Either semi-preparation of the ingredients or availability of a recipe increased consumer convenience in a way which reduced the probability of food waste. Parallel findings came from another study of the set in which households collected their actual waste of edible food from packages the researchers had provided.
     Two implications for grocers are to post recipes for use of foods you’re selling and to offer semi-prepared ingredients. Along with reducing waste, these tactics might improve profitability: In one of their studies, the researchers concluded shoppers would be willing to pay a 13% price premium for semi-prepared foods when the waste reduction benefits are featured.

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Limit Healthy Food Purchases 

Hand Off Intended Hands-Off Items 

Cook Up Recipes for Patrons

Ascertain Certainty to Assess Offer Variety

The ways in which you best present purchase alternatives to a shopper are determined in part by the degree of confidence the shopper has in choosing among those alternatives. This conclusion from a team of Northeastern University, University of Pennsylvania, and Arizona State University researchers follows their study of item reviews from almost 100,000 consumers spanning nearly 30 years. Product categories used in the studies included wines, beers, and cosmetics.
     Based on their findings, the researchers suggest that for shoppers who express notable uncertainty, frame your subsequent purchase suggestions as quite different from what they just tried, such as by highlighting distinguishing item characteristics. Correspondingly, if you’ve evidence that the shopper has high confidence, frame your next best offer as similar to what the shopper just selected.
     A challenge with taking this advice is correctly detecting the shopper’s degree of confidence. If you’ve access to a history of item reviews from the shopper, use the same method the researchers did: Analyze recent reviews with attention to tones of certainty and doubt. You could also do the same sort of thing by conversing with the shopper. For the researchers, phrasing such as “Beyond any doubt” indicated high confidence and “I really don’t know” indicated low confidence.
     The researchers’ findings highlight the value of an additional tool: Consider the degree of experience of the particular shopper with the particular item category. This can work because, in general, as a consumer gains more experience, their confidence regarding decisions for that item category will initially decrease as the consumer becomes acutely aware there’s much more to learn than they initially assumed. But as the consumer masters this learning and accumulates their own direct experience, confidence rebounds and grows.
     I’ll add my thought that if you can observe the shopper, maybe you should also notice how tightly they’re crossing their fingers while making the choice, signaling degree of hope good luck shines down to supplement low confidence.
     Research at University of Cincinnati, University of Florida, and University of Mississippi provides another perspective on the interplay of expertise with novelty. When the researchers offered choices of music samples to study participants, those who considered themselves music novices accepted a few new songs in a multitude of genres. The experts accepted a greater number of songs solely from one or a limited number of genres in which they considered themselves to have expertise. Certainty builds selectivity.

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Make Your Next Best Offer 

Present High-Level Benefits to the Confident 

Scope New Horizons as Expanding Expertise

Make It Right Without Government Orders

Political conservatives are irritated when told by the government they should be tested for sexually transmitted infections. The guidance is better received if coming from a nongovernment source.
     Liberals also could take umbrage at being told out of the blue they might have an STI. But this stigma is the reason conservatives tend to be more irritated than liberals at any recommendations, regardless of the source, about sexual and reproductive health practices. A politically conservative ideology is associated with stronger aversion to stigma. In a set of studies, researchers at University of Bologna and University of Leeds found evidence of this with recommendations to self-test for sexually transmitted infections, be vaccinated to protect from the Human Papillomavirus Virus, and use condoms, contraceptive pills, and menstrual cups.
     An additional study considered whether the source of the health recommendation might make a difference. Along with completing an inventory to assess political orientation, a group of U.S. participants was offered a choice between a box of toothpaste and a box of condoms. The offer was identified as being sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control; by Durex condoms and Oral-B toothbrushes; or by a collaboration between the government agency and private companies.
     For liberals, the group told the sponsor was the CDC was most likely to choose the condoms over the toothpaste. For conservatives, the nature of the sponsor had no discernable effect on the choice. This suggests that government agencies should clearly identify themselves as the sponsors of health recommendations. It will help persuade liberals and have negligible effect on conservatives.
     However, results from a study at University of Miami, Utah Valley University, and University of Notre Dame indicates that a government warning makes adherence by conservatives less likely. After consumers were told there were laws that restrict mobile phone use, purchase of junk foods, and smoking e-cigarettes, the political conservatives, compared to the liberals, indicated greater intentions to use their mobile phones, purchase unhealthy foods, and smoke e-cigarettes. This rebellion reflects the many research findings that conservatives tend to view governmental directives as inspired by liberal propaganda.
     The implication of this is that public health campaigns will be more effective if the source of recommendations or mandates includes non-governmental entities. Other research advises to soften mandates by adding appreciation and apologies using messages like, “Thank you for your cooperation. We appreciate it,” and, “Sorry for any inconvenience. Our apologies.”

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Discuss Disgust Conservatively & Liberally 

Embody Right-Left in Body Selling 

Mandate Masks with Appreciation

Limit Layering in Makeup Marketing

The financial success of e.l.f. Beauty and The Body Shop—vendors that offer only vegan cosmetics and skincare products—is evidence of consumer interest in makeup free of animal products, byproducts, and derivatives. Other companies such as Ulta Beauty offer a selection of vegan items along with conventionally formulated items.
     Researchers at Sungkyunkwan University and COSMAX BTI Inc. employed the full portfolio of Ulta to explore what product attributes are associated with the most positive user reactions and how this differs between vegan and conventional products. The dataset comprised 255,023 user reviews collected from the Ulta Beauty website.
     The researchers’ inquiry was guided by past studies showing how consumers are attracted to vegan beauty products via perceptions of them containing fewer harmful chemicals, being manufactured with less environmental harm, and being unlikely to have been tested on animals.
     One finding from the current study relates to sustainability labels. While conventional products can benefit from highlighting sustainability claims such as safety or environmental friendliness, doing so provides little additional benefit for vegan products. Sustainability cues are already common in vegan marketing, so repeating them does little to further differentiate the product. Such repetition carries the sort of risk associated with a consumer putting on too many makeup layers. Instead, brands may benefit from emphasizing other product features and benefits.
     The study also found that vegan skincare products tend to receive slightly higher ratings than conventional ones. An explanation is expectations—many consumers believe vegan products are healthier, safer, or more ethical, and these beliefs can influence how satisfied they feel after using them.
     This pattern was especially clear for moisturizers and creams. These products mainly provide hydration, and consumers can usually feel the results quickly. As a result, positive expectations about vegan products often translate into higher ratings.
     Serums, however, showed the opposite pattern. Conventional serums received higher ratings than vegan ones. Because serums promise long-term benefits such as anti-aging or wrinkle reduction, their effectiveness is harder to judge immediately. When expectations are very high but visible results take time to appear, consumers may feel disappointed.
     For mists and oils, there were no meaningful rating differences, likely because these products are judged mainly by immediate sensory experiences such as texture and absorption.
     Overall, the findings suggest that evaluating consumer satisfaction across a product line can be complex because evidence of effectiveness emerges at different speeds and with different levels of certainty.

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Visualize Beyond Three Claims 

Post Dramatic Tales for Post-Experience Goods 

Beware Open Sell 

Earn Trust by Supporting Sustainability