Is it too late now to say sorry? : A descriptive research on how brands' responses towards sexism advertisements affect consumers' attitudes.

Sammanfattning: Background: Brands that decide to publish sexist advertisements can generate issues for the company, as well as the perception the consumer has of the brand can become negative. This as consumers form attitudes towards the brand’s delivered communication which influence the overall evaluation the consumer has towards the brand. It is therefore of importance for brands to understand how to respond to sexist advertisements that have been published in order to determine the created negative publicity, where one given approach is to apply one of the image repair strategies. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how a brand’s image repair strategy towards its sexist advertisement affects consumers’ attitudes. Methodology: This research undertook a qualitative research approach with a descriptive nature. In order to ensure that the advertisements were classified as sexist and that the image repair strategies correspond with the brand’s responses according to the public, a pre-study was conducted through five semi-structured interviews. For the main study eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with both men and women as participants within the ages of 19-56 years old. Findings: The thesis identified that consumers' attitudes were affected by the four components: correspondence between advertisement and response, authenticity in the response, clarity regarding what actions to take and pre-knowledge of the brand. These components are therefore of importance for companies to take in consideration when responding towards sexist advertisements that they have sent out. Conclusion: Regarding the image repair strategies it was found that the responses given through the strategies of denial, evasion of responsibility and reduction of offensives lacked in all detected components. Furthermore, mortification as a strategy was not perceived as negative regarding the responses, however it still lacked the components. Corrective action was the only strategy where consumers' attitudes did not become negative towards the correspondence and authenticity in the response. However, all five strategies lacked clarity regarding what actions to take.