Protecting the Markers of Hegemonic Masculinity: Consumer Resistance to Gender-Bending Brand Extensions

Abstract:     
I exploit a natural experiment, the Porsche Cayenne SUV launch, to ethnographically observe how men consuming a gendered brand respond to a firm's attempts to androgenize their brand. Consumers' gender work is analyzed to uncover its effects on the identity projects of the brand's consumers, on the brand and its evolving meaning as an identity marker, and on the prevailing gender order. I find that, due to their use of Porsche as a hegemonic masculinity identity marker, Porsche owners experience an identity threat when the firm launches a brand extension which evokes femininity. They resolve this threat by collectively engaging in gender work to defend Porsche against an incursion of women and to reinstate Porsche as a masculine identity marker. Through the promulgation of gender stereotypes, existing owners stratify the Porsche brand community along gender lines and create an ingroup sharply defined by and dedicated to hegemonic masculinity, and an outgroup defined by femininity and subordinate masculinities. The erection of social and symbolic barriers limits access to Porsche's identity meanings to those who live up to masculine ideals and causes men who purchase the SUV to resort to the display of hyper-masculine behaviors to combat exclusion from the ingroup. Hence, consumers' gender work reverses the firm's efforts to androgenize the brand, reinstates Porsche as a masculine identity marker, and, in the process, explicitly reifies hegemonic masculinity as the cultural standard.

Keywords: gender, masculinity, consumer behavior, self/identity, branding, brand extensions, brand community, netnography, ethnography, brand management

JEL Classifications: M31, M37, M30

Working Paper Series