The article in the url makes the case that gender association with firms affects consumer perceptions of those organizations:
"The study, recently published in the Journal of Marketing, finds feminine-sounding brands may be more appealing, because they are often perceived as warmer and thereby associated with traits like trustworthiness, sincerity, friendliness, tolerance and good nature."
The researchers were able to isolate specific variables that predict whether a consumer perceives a brand to be either more masculine or more feminine:
"Women's names, for instance, are longer, and are more likely to end in a vowel sound. In one part of the paper researchers studied how participants reacted to two fictitious brand names—one with feminine linguistic characters and the other with male linguistic characteristics—and found participants often preferred feminine brand names."
The benefit for firms is that the researchers found consumers are more likely to select products associated with feminine brands:
"Participants were 34% more likely to choose a female-named Nimilia YouTube channel than a masculine-named Nimeld YouTube channel. Participants were also three times as likely to choose a Nimilia hand sanitizer than a Nimeld hand sanitizer."
In addition to those made-up names, the researchers applied the same approach to ask consumer perceptions about existing brands:
"The researchers … looked at an index created by the marketing and consulting firm Interbrand, and found 55% of its top brands, including Coca-Cola, Honda and IKEA, had feminine names, 36% of the brands had masculine-sounding names, and 9% of the brands had gender-neutral names."
Take care
David
David Chandler
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When a Brand Sounds Feminine, Consumers Get a Warm Feeling
By Lisa Ward
May 24, 2021
The Wall Street Journal
Late Edition – Final
R9
