Sizes are Gendered: Impact of Size Cues in Brand Names on Brand Stereotyping

What comes to your mind when you think of the brand name Mini Cooper or Grand Cherokee? Physical size would probably be among the first few associations that come to mind - Mini Cooper is physically smaller, whereas Grand Cherokee is physically bigger. However, size cues in brand names also evoke other associations? This research proposes that such size cues would trigger ingrained gender associations. Specifically, we argue that size cues of “smallness” (e.g., little, small) versus “bigness” (e.g., grand, big) in brand names can activate female versus male gender associations, which subsequently affect the warmth and competence perceptions of the brand. This possibility arises from anecdotal evidence and linguistics research. With some exceptions, men are generally physically bigger in size than women (Touraille and Gouyon 2008). Linguistically, people tend to generate descriptions such as big (vs. little) when they evaluate an object that has a masculine (vs. feminine) grammatical gender in their native language (Aikhenvald 2016; Boroditsky, Schmidt, and Phillips 2003). These findings lead to the proposition that consumers have a general mental association between size (small vs. big) and gender (female vs. male). As such, brand names involving size cues related to smallness (vs. bigness) would evoke female (vs. male) gender associations, and this has important implications on how consumers perceive a brand. Specifically, it has been well-established that women are stereotyped as warm whereas men are stereotyped as competent (Fiske et al. 2002; White and Gardner 2009). Building on this stream of research, we hypothesize that size cues in brand names can evoke gender associations, which subsequently affect consumers’ perceptions of warmth and competence of the target brand.