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The paper attempts to gain a better understanding of the reasons for advertisers to use nudity in European advertising campaigns and, more precisely, whether a print ad that uses nudity is more or less effective than an ad without nudity in the Czech Republic, Spain, and France.

An experiment carried out in three European countries (Czech Republic, Spain, France) exposes young consumers to an experimental magazine containing an advertisement that shows either a woman's face or her topless body.

Nationality does not appear to influence preferences for advertisements with or without nudity. Although differences emerge among the three countries in attitudes toward the ad (Aad), they are independent of the ad type and consistently reflect the same trends within each country. Gender influences Aad, and women adopt more negative Aad when they see nudity compared with when they do not, in contrast with men, regardless of their country.

Attitudes toward advertising in general vary significantly among European countries, even for seemingly homogeneous targets. Specific adaptations likely are needed not just with regard to nudity but more generally in terms of the content of ads.

Advertisers that question the relevance of nudity in their advertising campaigns should take great care to define their target market by gender – even more so than in terms of the European country in which the advertising will appear.

Women adopt more negative attitudes toward advertisements that use sexy female models than do men, and this effect is independent of nationality in a European context.

Few empirical studies have probed the effects of culture on the standardization/adaptation decision in the context of controversial products. This study aims to investigate the relationship between sociosexuality and the adaptation decision for editorial images and advertisements in Playboy magazine through content analysis.

This study is a qualitative research using content analysis as the research approach. The content analysis is done for Playboy magazines from four culturally diverse countries conducted for this study.

The result shows that editions of the magazine across four culturally diverse countries reveal that sociosexuality is positively correlated to the degree of nudity in photographs and to the usage of advertising for controversial products. Moreover, the paper uses the concept of sociosexuality to gain a better understanding of the empirical discrepancies concerning nudity or sex appeal.

This research is an empirical study developed by author to confirm the influence of culture on the standardization/adaptation decision in the context of controversial products. This research is originally developed by author and has not been published before.

Building on institutional theory, the purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for analyzing how consumer attitudes toward nudity in ads change as a result of modernization. Modernization is driven by the currents of pluralism and rationalism. The authors highlight the inherent contradiction of these two pillars and how this contradiction results in an inverted-U pattern in the relationship between level of modernization and consumer attitudes toward sex appeals. Consumers’ sexual permissiveness and their perceived insufficiency of regulatory control over sexual content in the mass media are the individual-level mediators of the two pillars.

The data were collected from three Chinese cities at different levels of modernization. A total of 811 college students from the three cities participated in the study.

The relationship between level of modernization and attitude favorability followed an inverted-U pattern. Female participants in the most modernized city possessed significantly less favorable attitudes to the ads than their male counterparts. Female and male participants were similar in their attitudes in the less modern cities. Sexual permissiveness mediated the relationship between modernization and male participants’ attitudes, but not with female participants’ attitudes. Perceived sufficiency of regulatory control over sexual content mediated the relationship between modernization and their attitudes among both male and female participants.

The paper makes an empirical contribution by testing the hypotheses regarding consumers responses to sex-appeal advertising with data collected from three Chinese cities at different levels of modernization. Additionally, it offers an institutional perspective on social attitude changes. Social attitude change is of great interest to researchers, but a systematic theoretical analysis is currently lacking.

Explores gender specific attitudes toward the ad and attitudes toward the brand under varying degrees of female nudity in ad treatment conditions. Shows that while female nudity is extremely common in women′s magazines, men are not only far more positive than women in their attitude toward an ad using explicit female nudity, but also stronger in their positive feelings toward the product and the brand. Finds that women are far more tense than men when exposed to overt female nudity in ads. Discusses implications for advertising strategy.

This paper aims to shed new light on the consumer response toward sex appeal in advertising and investigates ad skepticism in a culturally diverse context.

By using the qualitative research methodology, the following study draws upon informant opinions regarding the extent of graphic nudity in print advertising is needed to avoid undesirable reactions from potential consumers and how religiosity influences their attitudes toward sexually appealing advertisements. The information was obtained through semi-structured in-depth interviews with 22 interviewees from four groups, namely, academia, advertising practitioners, religious figures and general consumers.

The remarkable findings to emerge from the interviews relate to the following: the role of religiosity vis-à-vis nudity and the “lowering of the gaze” concept in Islam, the objectification and stereotypical portrayals of women, the irrational depiction of sexuality and intimacy and factors that lead to contextual interpretation.

The result provides further evidence that skepticism does not only exist on a cognitive basis but also on an emotional level as a response to the exaggeration, unrealistic and irritating claims made in some adverts.

This study suggests that advertisers should advance their cultural comprehension by taking into account the moral and social differences.

This has been the first study to investigate the skepticism toward sex appeal in advertising and integrate both cognitive and affective context of skepticism.

This chapter examines the locker room practices of Brazil's first transexual (their term) men's amateur soccer team, the Meninos Bons de Bola (MBB), or Soccer Star Boys. Drawing on a photo shoot with the MBB inside the locker room, and on conversations with photographer Isabel Abreu as well as members of the team, this chapter explores the debates surrounding queer and trans body politics amidst the rise of the right in Brazil and the Americas. Taken in 2017 and released in 2018, the photo series capture a moment of political transition in Brazil; the images are taken after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and her socialist Workers’ Party and before the election of ultra-rightwing candidate Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro rose to power, in part, by positioning himself against so-called ‘gender ideology’ and attacking marginalized populations, including LGBTQIA+ people. Bolsonarismo and its followers are politically fascist; they believe changing gender norms are linked to Brazil's perceived decline; they claim these shifting norms are humiliating, and respond with nationalism and violence. In this climate, the MBB have shifted their approach to trans politics by becoming more discerning about the teams' visibility and representation. Analysing both the images and their context, this chapter suggests that the Meninos' experiences highlight the connections between political fascism and what queer sport theorist Brian Pronger refers to as Body Fascism. The MBB contest such forms of repression through strategic uses of nudity and through representational choices that insist on the player's humanity and beauty. By asserting that their bodies on the pitch and in the locker room is ‘art, activism and resistance’ (the team's tagline), the MBB fight for trans justice in and through futebol.

This paper aims to examine the role of personality in how people respond to sexual appeals in advertising. The impact of three traits (extraversion, neuroticism and openness) was tested.

A mixed‐factor experimental design was used. Gender, level of sexual appeal (manipulated over two levels) and participants' standing on each of the three personality trait scales were the between‐subjects factors. Relevance of the product to the appeal, which was also manipulated over two levels, was the within‐subjects factor. The sample comprised 156 undergraduate students, and each student was randomly assigned to either a mild appeals or an overt appeals condition.

The results show that levels of extraversion and openness directly affect responses to advertisements as measured with attitude towards the advertisement.

Recommendations are made, including that overt sexual appeals should not be used on a target audience of “introverts”, or people who are characterised as quiet, shy and reserved.

This research extends existing work on the effect of individual differences on consumers' reactions to advertising and is the first to show that personality traits affect responses to sexual appeals.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the perceived personality of brands featuring different levels of sexuality in advertisements of luxury fashion brands.

To determine the identity of the company a “personality traits” scale by Geurens et al. (2015) was used with 25 brand personalities: conscientiousness/responsibility, extraversion/activity, emotional stability/emotionality, agreeableness/aggressiveness, and openness/simplicity. The final survey was then made available on Amazon Turk for two weeks. Each participant assessed one photograph at a level of sexuality given the gender they identified with the most.

There were 1,266 participants including 701 females and 565 females. Statistical analysis of the responses revealed that the degree of sexuality in the advertisements impacted brand perceptions. Among both genders, the greater degree of sexuality in the advertisement, the more the brand was considered less conscientious and responsible. The results also suggested that men and women view levels of sexuality differently. They varied most in the area of openness and simplicity, with men viewing advertisements of male models that had greater sexuality as simple. Men felt less sexuality was more emotional and romantic, while women viewed mid-level degree of sexuality in this manner.

Limited research has examined how level of sexuality influences perceived brand personality. The results contribute to theories pertaining to motivations to identify with a luxury fashion brand and provide strategies for luxury fashion brands to enhance their intended brand image.

In the current information age, when the attention spans of most people have become very short, marketers are facings serious challenges to grab the attention of their target audience effectively and fruitfully. From street corner to bedroom, virtually every perceivable location of human traces are littered with activity of marketers, whether they are small or large in scale or the recipients of their information understand the message properly. Studying consumers’ acceptance of the main ethical issues in communication, mainly in advertising, has recently been receiving much attention from scholars. Therefore, to grab the attention of people in the increasing competitive environment, advertisers have resorted to using what they feel can quickly attract the audience. For example, the attachment of attractive women with their physical natural endowments presented in explicit sexually appealing postures to products/services that have no linkage with women. These practices have raised some moral and ethical questions within the society. Therefore, this study aims to focus on discussing marketing communication through presenting women as a sexual object from the morality, ethics and religious perspectives.

This is a descriptive study based on the systematic literature review. Initially, this paper discusses the ethical issues of using women and sexual appeals in the process of marketing communication, as well as the current level of practices in the industry. Then, it discusses the consequences and dimensions of the issues from different types of ethical grounds. Finally, it provides recommendations with the objective of finding a common ground from business and social perspectives. It also mentions the scopes of further research, which could lead the secular world to modify their moral values and come closer to the norms of other civilized societies.

The position of the paper takes is that considering the negative effects of the prevalent advertising in society, the practice falls short of human moral values; as a result, it is considered unethical.

This review paper examines the ethical implication of using women as marketing tools from the perspectives of morality, business and Islamic principles that will help business groups, as well as the whole religious community, especially Muslims.