Advertising plays an important role in society, since it reflect the norms and also helps create and educate social roles and values. However, advertising might not always be a true reflection of the reality, and instead might create and uphold negative cultural stereotypes. Sex-role portrayals refers to the study of how genders are portrayed within advertising and how these are characterized in relation to other characters and knowledge of how to portray the male gender is paramount for marketing practitioners. The decisions on how to do so must be based on the targeted segments and a consumer segmentation that in such a context must be given attention are married and unmarried women. In a two-step study, the purpose is to "explain the brand attitudes of married and unmarried women in advertisement with a traditional and non-traditional male portrayal" The initial first step utilized a qualitative approach consisting of a focus group with the aim to confirm or challenge previous theories of what is considered to be a traditional and non-traditional way of portraying the male gender within advertising. Emerging from this are two written advertisements, one with a traditional male and one with a non-traditional male, that are included in the subsequent step. Taking on a quantitative approach, the second step took on measures of brand attitude among married and unmarried women in a total of 205 self-completion questionnaires. The results indicated a more favorable evaluation elicited from the non-traditional male portrayal, with limited variance between the segments.

This thesis aims to increase understanding of New Zealand consumer reactions to messages promoting genetically modified food products (GMFs) and to determine how the manipulation of three persuasion variables, message sidedness, source credibility and inward vs. outward focus impact upon consumer attitudes. To achieve this aim, the study integrated two frameworks, Bredahl's, (2001) determinants of attitudes towards GMFs and Wansink and Kim's, (2001) strategies for educating consumers about GMFs, into a new model. To empirically examine the model, a web-based experiment using a 2x2x2 between-subjects factorial design was conducted. The experiment exposed participants to one of eight treatment groups containing a promotional message for Genetically Modified foods. The participants then completed an on-line questionnaire detailing their responses to the messages. A total of 380 useable questionnaires were collected from a national sample of consumers and analysed using ANCOVA. The results of the study suggest that the outwardly focused, two-sided message was more powerful at lowering perceptions of risks, raising perceptions of benefits and positively influencing attitudes toward the ad than either the one-sided, outwardly focused message, or the inwardly focused messages of either sidedness condition. For purchase intentions individual differences appeared to be of greater influence than message factors.