Market Lett (2006) 17: 5–16

DOI 10.1007/s11002-006-3545-8

The effects of gender on processing advertising and

product trial information

DeAnna S. Kempf · Russell N. Laczniak ·

Robert E. Smith


C Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006

Abstract Consistent with past research and theory explaining gender differences in infor-
mation processing, the empirical study reported here showed that men process two forms of
marketing information (advertising and product trial) differently than women. Specifically,
women are more sensitive to the comprehensiveness of the trial information, recognizing
manipulated differences in trial diagnosticity. In contrast, men tend to use readily avail-
able information to form brand judgments and are less likely to notice that other attribute
information is unavailable in the product trial.

Keywords Product trial . Gender effects . Diagnosticity

There is a rich literature base in both psychology and marketing suggesting that men and
women process information differently. One much-cited theory explaining gender differences
in information processing is the “selectivity hypothesis” (Meyers-Levy, 1989). This theory
states that, in general, women tend to engage in more detailed, elaborative, and comprehensive
processing of information than do men, unless extrinsic motivations are present that prompt
men to do so (Meyers-Levy, 1989; Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran 1991). Moreover, absent
such extrinsic motivations, women are more likely to attempt to assimilate all available
information, while men tend to rely on a single cue (or multiple cues that imply a single
inference) that is readily available during processing.

D. S. Kempf ()
Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Management and Marketing, P.O. Box 440,
Murfreesboro, TN 37132-0001
e-mail: dkempf@mtsu.edu

R. N. Laczniak
Iowa State University, Department of Marketing, College of Business, Iowa State University, 3183
Gerdin Business Building, Ames, Iowa 50011

R. E. Smith
Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, 426A, Department of Marketing, 1309 E. Tenth Street,
Bloomington, IN 47405
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6 Market Lett (2006) 17: 5–16

Putrevu (2001) offers a more detailed explanation of gender differences in information

processing that is complementary to the predictions of the selectivity hypothesis. He suggests
that men are more likely to perform item-specific processing (Einstein and Hunt, 1980),
whereby they tend to focus on individual attributes or message cues in ads, and do not attempt
to decipher the interrelationships between them. On the other hand, he suggests that women
are more likely to engage in relational processing (Einstein and Hunt, 1980), in which they
look for interrelationships, similarities, and differences between multiple attributes and/or
message cues, as they process information. Therefore, Putrevu (2001) describes in more
detail the nature of the detailed, comprehensive processing that women are more likely to
engage in than men.
Prior studies investigating gender and processing of marketplace information have focused
almost exclusively on advertising as the information source (e.g., Darley and Smith, 1995;
Kempf et al., 1997; Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran, 1991). Yet, advertising is only one source
of product information available to consumers, and is not necessarily the most powerful one.
Indeed, research suggests that other sources of product information, such as word-of-mouth
communication (Herr et al., 1991; Laczniak et al., 2001) and product trial (e.g., Smith,
1993; Smith and Swinyard, 1983, 1988) are superior to advertising in generating strong
and confidently held brand beliefs and attitudes. These findings highlight the need to study
gender-based differences in consumer processing of non-advertising product information
sources. Given this need in the literature, the objective of the present research is to test
predictions suggested by extant gender-difference theories by comparing men’s and women’s
integration and evaluation of information from two distinct marketplace sources—advertising
and product trial.
Not only does this research extend the context of past theory testing beyond an advertising
context, in many respects it represents a more comprehensive test of the selectivity hypothesis
and item-specific versus relational processing theories. This is the case since advertising
provides multiple cues that potentially conflict with information acquired in subsequent
product trials. For example, an ad may say that a diet cola does not have a bitter aftertaste,
but a subsequent trial of the product may indicate otherwise. Given that both the selectivity
hypothesis and relational versus item-specific information processing theory suggest that
males and females process multiple-inference information differently than single-inference
information, the study of gender information processing differences in this context provides
an important contribution to the literature in this area.

1. Literature review and conceptual framework

1.1. Product trial research

Product trial is a powerful source of product information for consumers because it leads to
the development of strong and confidently held brand beliefs and attitudes (e.g., Fazio and
Zanna, 1978; Smith and Swinyard, 1983, 1988). Its power is especially evident for experiential
attributes (i.e., those for which product experience provides direct information). Examples of
experiential attributes include taste, weight, fit, etc. Nonexperiential attributes (i.e., those for
which product experience provides little or no direct evidence) include characteristics such
as nutritional content and long-term reliability.
Kempf and Smith (1998) demonstrated that consumers process product trial information
pertaining to experiential and nonexperiential attributes differently. That study introduced
the concept of trial cognitions, which represent a consumer’s evaluation of the trial as an
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Market Lett (2006) 17: 5–16 7

information source, to demonstrate processing differences. According to Kempf and Smith,

consumers engaging in a product trial may generate three types of trial cognitions: (1) per-
ceptions of the validity of the trial (the consumer’s perceptions of whether the product trial
offered a fair and valid test of the brand), (2) subjective perceptions regarding the consumer’s
own ability to judge the trial (perceived expertise), and (3) evaluations of the overall diag-
nosticity of the trial (the perceived usefulness of the product trial in evaluating the brand).
Moreover, Kempf and Smith contend that trial diagnosticity is a function of the level of trial
validity, perceived expertise, and the proportion of the salient product attributes that are ex-
periential (as compared to nonexperiential). All else being equal, a trial should be relatively
more diagnostic when a product’s salient attributes are mostly experiential and relatively less
diagnostic when a product’s salient attributes are primarily nonexperiential. Trial should also
be more diagnostic when perceived expertise and validity are higher.

1.2. Gender research

As noted above, theory suggests that females are comprehensive processors who consider a
broad scope of information, potentially including that which is related but unobservable in
the immediate processing environment (Meyers-Levy, 1989, p. 232) and relevant information
held in memory. This is also consistent with Putrevu’s (2001) view that females are more
likely to use relational processing, whereby they consider the potential relationships among
items of information received in the immediate environment, and information that is held
in memory. Theory suggests that males, on the other hand, tend to focus on one or a few
salient attributes that are readily available in the environment, and use them independently as
cues or heuristics to achieve processing efficiency. These predictions have been tested in an
advertising context and have generally been confirmed (e.g., Meyers-Levy, 1989; Meyers-
Levy and Maheswaran, 1991).
Empirical research (Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran, 1991) suggests that when attribute
information supplied by an ad is available for subsequent use, men are less likely than women
to access or use the information in subsequent tasks. Women, as part of their greater elabo-
rative processing of information, tend to attempt to integrate newly encountered information
with previously learned information available in memory. Such a finding is relevant to a
context where consumers receive ad information, and then subsequently, product trial infor-
mation (which is common in the marketplace—consumers will try a brand after seeing an ad
for it). Relational processing theory would similarly predict that females are likely to access
ad-based information during subsequent trial processing and will try to relate information
from both sources of information. Males, in contrast, will more likely focus exclusively on
attribute information readily available in the immediate trial environment and will be less
likely to access and integrate prior ad-based information.
Much of the strength of product trial stems from the fact that it is self-generated infor-
mation. That is, the information gleaned from the trial is derived from a consumer’s own
interactions with the physical product (Fazio and Zanna, 1978). Advertising, on the other
hand, represents an other-generated information source. Past research shows that women are
more likely to use information from others when forming judgments than are men (Meyers-
Levy, 1988). This notion provides additional support for the prediction that women will be
more likely to attempt to integrate and use information from both sources (ad and trial) to
evaluate a brand.
It is important to note, however, that in some cases, attribute information supplied in the
ad will not be available during trial processing. This will be the case for information about
nonexperiential attributes, which, by definition, cannot be provided via trial. Since theory
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8 Market Lett (2006) 17: 5–16

suggests that females will attempt to comprehensively process all attribute information during
the trial, a side effect of this attempt is that females should also be more sensitive to what the
trial is not telling them about the product. Therefore, differences in the information value of
trial for products that differ greatly in their proportion of experiential versus nonexperiential
attributes may be noted by females but not by males. In addition, when asked directly about
product attributes individually, women will be more likely to consciously note that the trial
was less useful for evaluating these nonexperiential attributes. Men are less likely to note
these significant differences in trial diagnosticity between attribute types. Men will focus
more on what is present in the product trial, rather than thinking about what is not present.
The observed and predicted gender differences described above collectively suggest sev-
eral important hypotheses about how women and men will process ad and trial information
differently, with differential results in terms of the cognitions produced during a product trial,
and post-trial evaluations of trial’s diagnosticity, both on an overall product-level level and
on the individual attribute level.

2. Hypotheses

As comprehensive processors, women can be expected to produce a greater number of cog-

nitions (of all types, including cognitions about the trial itself and about the brand) following
exposure to ad and trial information than men. Women, according to the selectivity hypoth-
esis, tend to focus on a greater number of attributes during exposure to ad and trial data and
process the information in a more elaborative fashion than men, resulting in a larger number
of total cognitions produced.
More specifically, as comprehensive processors, women should produce a greater number
of brand cognitions when experiencing a highly diagnostic trial that provides information
about multiple experiential attributes of the brand, and comparably fewer brand cognitions
when experiencing a trial of a product dominated by nonexperiential attributes. In the latter
case, there is simply less brand information available to process. In contrast, according to
the selectivity hypothesis, men will tend to focus on a small number of highly salient cues,
regardless of the total volume of attribute information available in the trial, and thus the
number of brand cognitions produced will not be significantly affected by the experientiality
of the product being tried.
H1a: Following exposure to ad and trial information, women will produce a greater number
of total cognitions than will men.
H1b: Women will produce more brand cognitions following the trial of a product dominated
by experiential attributes, compared to the trial of a mostly nonexperiential product. Men
will produce an equal number of brand cognitions following trial, regardless of product
experientiality.

When trial is not highly diagnostic (e.g., the product is dominated by nonexperiential
attributes, the trial is considered invalid for some reason, or the consumer believes he/she
does not have the requisite expertise to understand the data from the trial), women will
produce fewer brand cognitions as predicted in H1b, but will be more likely to generate
trial cognitions regarding the lack of informativeness or diagnosticity of the trial. Kempf
and Smith (1998) describe the production of such trial cognitions as being governed by a
“management by exception” rule. A consumer’s default judgment of a product trial is that it
will provide useful information about the brand, and it is only when a trial noticeably fails to
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Market Lett (2006) 17: 5–16 9

provide useful information for some reason that conscious thoughts will be produced about
perceived trial diagnosticity. Extending this reasoning, and considering the gender effects
suggested by the selectivity hypothesis and women’s greater propensity to perform relational
processing, we predict that women are more likely than men to produce trial cognitions,
and that women will produce more of these cognitions when the product is dominated by
nonexperiential attributes. Men will focus on the information that is present in the trial, and
will therefore be less likely to produce a significant number of trial cognitions regarding the
trial’s diagnosticity, even when trial is not highly diagnostic.

H2: Following exposure to ad and trial information, women will produce a significant
number of cognitions regarding perceived trial diagnosticity when the trial is of a product
dominated by nonexperiential attributes. Men will not produce a significant number of trial
diagnosticity cognitions, regardless of product type.

When a trial is preceded by an ad, the selectivity hypothesis (Meyers-Levy, 1989) and
women’s higher probability of using relational and elaborative processing (Putrevu, 2001)
suggest that women will attempt to evaluate all brand attribute information during the trial,
including information about both the experiential and nonexperiential attributes mentioned in
the ad, while men will tend to focus exclusively on information that is immediately available
in the trial (i.e., information regarding only the experiential attributes, by definition).
Women should therefore be more sensitive to the presence or absence of direct physical
evidence offered by the trial for each attribute. Further, women are more likely to access
the prior ad information (Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran, 1991) during trial processing and
will therefore be likely to notice what information the trial did and did not provide. Thus,
women, when asked directly, will report significantly lower levels of overall perceived trial
diagnosticity for the mostly nonexperiential product than for the more experiential product.
Men, on the other hand, will use the available, self-generated information from the trial
(about experiential attributes), and be less cognizant of the attribute information presented
in the ad that is not available in the trial (Meyers-Levy, 1988). Therefore, men will be less
likely to note differences in trial diagnosticity between the experiential and nonexperiential
product types.

H3: Following exposure to ad and trial information, women will rate the trial of the product
whose salient attributes are primarily experiential in nature as more diagnostic than the trial
of the product whose salient attributes are primarily nonexperiential in nature. Men will
show no significant difference in perceived diagnosticity between the two types of products.

Hypothesis 3 involves consumers’ ratings of the trial’s diagnosticity on an overall basis.

However, one can also conceptualize and measure perceived trial diagnosticity on a per-
attribute basis. Attribute-level trial diagnosticity is the perceived usefulness of the product
trial for evaluating a particular product attribute. Furthermore, when considering attribute-
level differences in diagnosticity in addition to the product-level differences described above,
one would expect a similar pattern of gender effects. That is, across both products, when
asked about the diagnosticity of the trial for judging each specific attribute, women will
rate the trial as being less diagnostic for the nonexperiential attributes (that trial cannot
provide information on) than will men. For the experiential attributes, there should be no
significant gender differences in attribute-level perceived trial diagnosticity judgments be-
cause trial will, in fact, be diagnostic for these attributes and will be perceived as such by
both genders.
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10 Market Lett (2006) 17: 5–16

H4: Following exposure to ad and trial information, across products, women will report lower
levels of attribute-level perceived trial diagnosticity for the nonexperiential attributes than
will men. There will be no significant gender differences in perceived trial diagnosticity for
the experiential attributes.

3. Method

Seventy-five subjects (40 women and 35 men) participated in the experiment. Subjects were
randomly assigned to one of two product conditions (between-subjects design) that were
selected to significantly manipulate the information value of the trial experience. For the
highly informative trial, a product was selected that is dominated by experiential attributes,
and for the low-information trial, a product was selected that is dominated by nonexperiential
attributes. Participants were drawn from a subject pool consisting of introductory marketing
students at a major Midwestern university. To increase motivation and involvement with the
study tasks, participants received class credit for their participation and were entered into a
lottery for a $100 first prize and two $50 second prizes.
The experimental sessions were conducted in a “technology classroom” containing 36
personal computers. Participants were told they would be receiving information about a new
computer software product and would be asked questions about the ad and the advertised
brand. Subjects were first shown a print ad for one of the two software packages and were
asked to carefully read the ad and form a judgment of both the software package and the
ad itself. These instructions were designed to create a brand processing goal during the ad
exposure consistent with that used in past ad/trial studies. Participants were then asked to fill
out the ad-related dependent measures. Then, participants experienced a short hands-on trial
of the software package featured in the ad. Next, they completed a thought-listing task and
dependent measures pertaining to the trial and the brand.
The use of student consumers is appropriate because they are a major target segment
for the types of computer software used in the experiment (a virus scanner and a grammar
evaluation software program—see below). Software marketers often target students through
on-campus promotions and educational discounts on software. Thus, students are likely to
be somewhat familiar with these products and see them as meaningful for their own lives.

3.1. Product selection

Two stimulus products were needed to test the hypotheses in this study: one dominated
by experiential attributes, and one dominated by nonexperiential attributes, to create a more
informative trial and a less informative trial, respectively. The criteria for the stimulus products
also included: (1) they must permit a realistic trial in a laboratory setting, (2) they must have
brand names unfamiliar to participants, and (3) they must be as equivalent as possible in
all ways except the relative experientiality of their salient attributes. A series of pretests,
including one in which participants (n = 63) experienced a hands-on trial of (one of) three
software products, narrowed down the stimulus products to two software programs: a virus
scanner and a grammar evaluation software package. The salient attributes for these product
categories were identified through a free-elicitation task where pretest subjects were asked to
list all product attributes that would affect their purchase decision for these types of software
packages.
Pretest results suggested that a majority of the attributes of the virus scanner program were
nonexperiential (i.e., they could not be directly judged by product trial), while the grammar
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Market Lett (2006) 17: 5–16 11

evaluation software was perceived to be dominated by experiential attributes. Pretest subjects

(n = 63) rated overall trial diagnosticity (1–7 scale) for the virus scanner at 4.29, and the
grammar evaluation software scored a 5.18 in overall trial diagnosticity (t61 = 1.99, p < .05).
Similarly, when pretest subjects were asked to rate how useful the trial was in judging each
of the products’ attributes individually, the average for the virus scanner was 3.71, and the
average for the grammar software was 5.08 (t61 = 4.64, p < .0001).
Specifically, the nonexperiential attributes for the virus scanner were: (1) effectiveness at
detecting viruses, (2) ability to clean detected viruses, and (3) comprehensiveness of the list
of viruses the software scanned for. The virus scanner also had two experiential attributes:
speed and ease of use. For the grammar evaluation software, the experiential attributes were:
(1) ease of use, (2) speed, (3) usefulness of correction tips, and (4) accuracy. One attribute
was rated as nonexperiential—the adequacy of the dictionary used by the software.
In addition, pretest results indicated that participants perceived the two products to be
equivalent in terms of their hedonic versus functional nature (7-point semantic differential
scale, 1 = functional, 7 = hedonic, virus scanner: 1.48, grammar software: 1.23 (t61 = 1.12,
p < .27)), thus minimizing this potential source of extraneous variation. In the final study’s
sample, the two products were also shown to be perceived as equivalent in terms of their
perceived cost and perceived risk levels.

3.2. Stimulus advertisements

Professionally produced, full-page, color print ads were developed for both products that
included claims about each of the five salient attributes for each product. The layout and
style of the print ads were developed by a professional graphic artist. The ads were designed
to be similar to software print ads found in personal computing magazines, both in terms of
content and layout. The ads for the two products were designed to be as similar as possible
in color, layout, graphics, length, etc., to minimize extraneous variance in the results. In both
ads, positive attribute claims were presented in bullet points surrounding the graphic of the
box in the center of the page.

3.3. Trial procedure

Participants experiencing the trial of the grammar evaluation software (experiential product)
were presented with a short paragraph containing several grammatical and spelling errors.
They were told to mark on the page any grammar, spelling, or style problems that they saw.
After doing so, they ran the grammar software on this same paragraph.
For the virus scanner, participants were asked to review a listing of the major commands
available in the virus scanning software. They were then instructed to scan the hard drive
of the computer they were working on, and to clean any detected viruses using the cleaning
command of the software. They were then instructed to follow this same procedure on a
floppy disk already inserted into the a: drive. The decision was made to not intentionally
insert a virus on the computer or the floppy drive the participants would be scanning for the
following reasons: (1) the vast majority of the time, when using a virus scanner no virus is
detected, and the user has to trust that there were in fact, no viruses to be found, and (2)
inserting a virus would tend to artificially overstate the diagnosticity of the trial of the virus
scanner, compared to most real-world trials of such software. Since we wanted to create a trial
that was, in fact, low in trial diagnosticity in order to test our hypotheses about participants’
perceptions, it was not desirable to artificially inflate the diagnosticity of the trial.
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3.4. Dependent measures

Perceived diagnosticity. This variable was measured using both an overall product-level
diagnosticity measure and attribute-level measures, as in Kempf and Smith (1998). Overall
diagnosticity was assessed by asking respondents: “Overall, how helpful would you rate the
trial experience you just had in judging the quality and performance of the software?” The
five attribute-level trial diagnosticity items (one for each of the five salient product attributes)
were: “To what extent did your trial experience with the software enable you to directly
judge whether the package (possessed attribute X)?”
Cognitions. Cognitions were collected via a thought-listing task immediately following
the product trial. The recorded cognitions were coded by two judges into one of four subject
categories: ad cognitions, brand cognitions, trial cognitions, or other. The thoughts were also
coded for valence (positive, negative, or neutral). The inter-judge agreement rate was 91.3%.
All disagreements in codes assigned to individual thoughts were resolved by discussion.

4. Results

Before testing the individual hypotheses regarding the effects of gender and product type,
an overall MANOVA was performed to control the overall experiment’s Type II error rate.
The results of this analysis indicate that gender and product type had a highly significant
interactive effect on the set of dependent variables being studied: total cognitions, brand
cognitions, trial cognitions, and overall product-level perceived trial diagnosticity (Wilks’
Lambda for Sex × Product interaction = .83, F4,67 = 3.55, p < .01). The mean patterns
specified in the hypotheses will be tested using t-tests or planned contrasts, as outlined
below.
Hypothesis 1a states that women, because of their more comprehensive processing style,
will report a greater number of total cognitions following product trial than will men. The
mean number of total cognitions recorded by women was 3.6 and the mean for the men was
3.0 (t73 = 1.59, p = .05, one-tailed). However, an ANOVA revealed a significant gender x
product interaction indicating that women produced more total cognitions only when the trial
was for an experiential product. This finding is logically consistent with H1b, which predicts
this same pattern of interactive effects for brand cognitions. Since brand cognitions are a
subset of total cognitions, this finding is not surprising. Thus, H1a was supported only for
the experiential product.
H1b predicts that women will produce more brand cognitions during the trial of the
experiential product, compared to the trial of the nonexperiential product. The number of
brand cognitions produced by men, on the other hand, was predicted to be unaffected by
product type. This hypothesis was supported. Using planned mean comparisons, the predicted
mean pattern was found (see Figure 1). For the grammar evaluation software (experiential
product), women produced an average of 4.16 brand cognitions, and for the virus scanner
(nonexperiential product), they produced only 2.05 brand cognitions, on average (F1,73 =
24.85, p < .0001). For men, the mean number of brand cognitions did not differ by product
(MeanGrammar Software = 2.71, MeanVirus Scanner = 2.41; F1,73 = .41, p < .52).
To test H2, the mean number of cognitions produced regarding the trial’s diagnosticity
(or more specifically, the lack thereof) was compared across gender and product type. It is
important to note here that the trial cognitions recorded by subjects were always negative in
nature. This supports the statement made by Kempf and Smith (1998) that trial cognitions are
consciously elicited only when the trial is noticeably lacking in diagnosticity for some reason.
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Market Lett (2006) 17: 5–16 13

Fig. 1 Cell means for brand 5

Brand Cognitions
cognitions
4
3 Males
2 Females

1
0
Nonexperiential Experiential
Product Product
Product Type

We predicted that women would produce a significant number of trial diagnosticity cognitions
for the nonexperiential product, but not for the highly experiential product. Men were not
expected to produce a significant number of trial cognitions, regardless of product type.
Although the absolute number of trial cognitions recorded by subjects across the entire sample
was small, H2 was fully supported. For the virus scanner, women produced a statistically
significant number of thoughts about the trial’s lack of diagnosticity, on average (mean
= .43, Student’s t = 3.29, p < .002), while men produced only .24 thoughts, which was
not significantly greater than zero, Student’s t = 1.73, p < .10). For the grammar checker,
neither men nor women recorded a significant number of conscious thoughts about the
trial’s diagnosticity (MeanWomen = 0.0, Mean Men = .05 (Student’s t = 1.0, p < .33)). See
Figure 2.
Hypothesis 3 predicted that women would be more sensitive than men to differences in
trial diagnosticity due to the products’ relative proportion of experiential and nonexperiential
attributes. To test this hypothesis, planned orthogonal contrasts were performed based on
the predicted cell mean differences in H3. Specifically, the perceived trial diagnosticity
means between the experiential and nonexperiential products for women were found to be
significantly different (5.58 for the grammar tool vs. 4.33 for the virus scanner, F1,71 = 6.13,
p < .02), as predicted, while the cell means for men were not significantly different (4.94 for
the grammar software vs. 4.76 for the virus scanner, F1,71 = .11, p < .74). The cell means
are depicted graphically in Figure 3. These results are supportive of H3.
To test H4, we examined subjects’ trial diagnosticity ratings by individual attribute type
(experiential vs. nonexperiential), across products. Although the theoretical rationale for H3
and H4 are identical, H4 is perhaps a finer-grained test of the theory in that it is not subject
to any potential confounding of inter-product differences unrelated to trial diagnosticity. The

Fig. 2 Cell means for trial 0.5

Trial Cognitions

cognitions
0.4
0.3 Males
0.2 Females

0.1
0
Nonexperiential Experiential
Product Product
Product Type
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14 Market Lett (2006) 17: 5–16

Fig. 3 Cell means for overall 7

Trial Diagnosticity
perceived trial diagnosticity
6
5
Males
4
Females
3
2
1
Nonexperiential Experiential
Product Product
Product Type

results support H4. Specifically, the mean trial diagnosticity rating for the nonexperiential
attributes was 3.52 for the women and 4.23 for the men, a statistically significant difference
(t73 = 1.87, p < .033). As predicted, there was no significant gender difference in perceived
trial diagnosticity for the experiential attributes (MWomen = 5.25, MMen = 5.32, t73 = .30,
p < .77 .)

5. Discussion and conclusions

The intent of this research was to examine the manner in which gender influences consumers’
processing of advertising and trial information. While past studies in the gender area have
focused primarily on the processing of verbal and pictorial information, which is descriptive
of the type of information that is commonly available in an advertisement (e.g., Meyers-Levy
and Maheswaran, 1991), the present study focused on advertising information combined with
a self-generated source of information—hands-on product trial.
The study results provide support for the notion that women are more sensitive than men
to the comprehensiveness of the information that they are processing during a product trial
(as evidenced by their greater sensitivity in terms of perceived trial diagnosticity judgments).
Men tend to rely on available information to make judgments (Meyers-Levy, 1989) and are
less likely to notice that other information was unavailable. That is, while women noticed
the lack of information about advertised nonexperiential attributes in the trial, this did not
appear to be the case for men, who rated the trials of both products as relatively (and equally)
diagnostic. Even when questioned directly about the diagnosticity of the trial for each specific
attribute, which would have drawn the men’s attention to the nonexperiential attributes, men
reported significantly higher levels of trial diagnosticity for the nonexperiential attributes
than did the women.
In general, our results provide support for the selectivity hypothesis proposed by
Meyers-Levy (1989), and also provide some indirect support for Putrevu’s (2001) hypothesis
that women are more likely to engage in relational processing, and men are more likely to
perform item-specific processing. When exposed to ad and trial information, it appears that
women engage in more detailed processing, and are more discriminating than men in terms
of evaluating the information content of the trial when making brand judgments. Conse-
quently, marketing practitioners implementing integrated marketing communications in the
form of trial-inducement promotional programs (e.g., sampling or trial purchase inducement)
should ensure that information regarding nonexperiential attributes is provided (from a non-
trial source such as advertising) when targeting women (but only when positive claims can
be made about these attributes, of course). However, when targeting men, marketers using
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Market Lett (2006) 17: 5–16 15

trial-based promotions should focus more on ensuring that their brand performs in a superior
manner for the experiential attributes that men will focus on during the trial. Further, it is
perhaps more important to provide women with pre-trial ads than it is for men. Since women
seem to desire full information and notice when it is not available, it is important to provide
access to data that may be better communicated via an ad than a trial (i.e., nonexperiential
attribute data).
The study reported here suggests numerous opportunities for future research in the area of
gender differences in processing market information. For instance, the results reported here
are consistent with both the selectivity hypothesis and the item-specific versus relational
processing styles that are used differentially by men and women. Future research should
strive to use measures that will allow us to determine the exact nature of the information
processing styles of men and women, perhaps using verbal protocols.
In our study, we exposed subjects to an ad prior to the product trial. The ad contained claims
about both the experiential and the nonexperiential attributes. One explanation given for the
observed gender differences was that women may have accessed the ad-supplied information
regarding the nonexperiential attributes during trial processing, and thus the lack of trial
information regarding these attributes may have been made salient. Future research should
include an ad present/absent manipulation in combination with the trial so that it can be
determined whether, without the ad exposure, females still note the lack of trial diagnosticity
regarding the nonexperiential attributes.

Acknowledgment The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of Indiana University for this
project.

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