DOES THE INTENSITY OF SEXUAL STIMULI AND FEMINISM INFLUENCE THE ATTITUDES OF CONSUMERS TOWARD SEXUAL APPEALS AND ETHICAL JUDGMENT? AN ECUADORIAN PERSPECTIVE

The objective of this piece of research was to analyze if the attitude toward feminist thought, in a Latin cultural context, influenced the attitude toward different advertisements that used sexual appeals to the body of women. This study was based on theoretical research conducted by Hojoon Choi, Kyunga Yoo, Tom Reichert and Michael LaTour (2016). There were 4 advertisements with various types of sexual appeals: complete nudity, semi-nudity, no nudity and hostile sexism. The results show that the average feminist attitude (M = 3.52, SD = 0.82) is from fair to good and there is a significant difference between men (M = 3.38, SD = 0.87) and women (M = 3.64, SD = 0.77). Women show a slightly more feminist attitude than men. Regarding attitudes to advertisements with different types of sexual content, it was evident that there was a significant difference in the means of ethical attitude towards them. The higher the level of nudity used in the advertisement, the more negative the ethical attitude was. In addition, the average ethical judgment on the ad with "hostile sexism" was significantly different from the ad with semi-nudity and complete nudity. Of the four ads, a significant difference could be found between the feminist attitude and the ethical attitude toward the ad that contained images of hostile sexism. The group with a high degree of feminism had a more negative ethical attitude toward the ad with hostile sexism (M = 3.81, SD = 1.69) compared to the low grade feminism group (M = 4.19, SD = 1.40).