Romantic love and sex: Their relationship and impacts on ad attitudes

The fact that romantic love in advertising is often subsumed under sexual appeal, and that not all types of romantic love are sexual, has led to an undervaluation of romantic love as an independent ad theme, despite its universality and importance in consumers' lives. This article validates spiritual companionate love and sexual passionate love as two subtypes of romantic love separable from sex. Their impacts on ad attitudes were examined in two studies assuming pleasure and arousal to be the two underlying mechanisms. The two subtypes of romantic love demonstrated ad impacts with distinct paths, with passionate love having a pattern of impact on ad attitudes that is similar to sex, rather than to companionate love. The implications of these findings are discussed. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.