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Gender Identity in Consumer Behavior Research: A Literature Review and Research Agenda
The process of consumption has long been associated with sex and gender, thus, it comes as no surprise that consumer researchers often examine the effects of these variables on consumer behaviors. It also comes as no surprise that much is known about sex and gender and how they impact buying and consuming activities. Yet there is one gender-related variable, gender identity, that has both intrigued and perplexed consumer behavior researchers for over four decades.
Gender identity, sometimes referred to as an individual's psychological sex, has been defined as the "fundamental, existential sense of one's maleness or femaleness" (Spence 1984, p. 83). Since gender is culturally derived, gender identity is similarly rooted in cultural understandings of what it means to be masculine or feminine (Firat 1991; Lerner 1986). For many years, sex and gender were thought to be inseparable--that is, men were masculine and women were feminine. But what consumer behavior researchers, among others, recognized long ago was that some men were more feminine than masculine while some women were more masculine than feminine. In the postmodern culture in which we now live, this separation of gender from sex is even more apparent.
Untangling the intricate threads of masculinity and femininity began in the 1930s when the first assessment of gender identity was attempted (Terman and Miles 1936). It was not until the 1960s, however, that gender identity made its first appearance in consumer-related studies (Aiken 1963; Vitz and Johnston 1965), and with the emergence of new conceptualizations of gender identity in the mid-1970s (e.g., Bem 1974; Spence, Helmreich, and Stapp 1975), the study of gender identity in consumer research intensified, continuing into the 1980s and 1990s. Even when criticism of the most frequently used gender identity measures, the Bem Sex Role Inventory and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire, surfaced in the 1980s (see, e.g., Gill et al., 1987; Marsh and Myers 1986), inclusion of gender identity in consumer research continued unabated.
However, significant gender identity findings in consumer research have been rare, causing some as early as the mid-80s to suggest that the inclusion of gender identity in consumer research is unproductive and should be abandoned (Roberts 1984). Several reasons have...