From ads to action: Femvertising’s impact on brand image and purchase probability through well-being dimensions

Femvertising stands for feminism advertising and its goal is to support and empower girls and women through advertisements. Despite its increasing relevance, femvertising is still an underexplored research in academia, and we know little about how femvertising affects recipients. In this experimental study, we investigated whether femvertising increases brand image and purchase probability, mediated via increased eudaimonic and hedonic well-being. Building on Self-Determination Theory, eudaimonic well-being was operationalized using the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, plus empowerment and self-esteem; hedonic well-being was captured using positive affect. Results showed that femvertising slightly increased purchase probability by 1%. Mediation analyses suggested that the effect was mediated by increased empowerment, improved positive affect, but also slightly reduced autonomy and competence. No significant effect of femvertising on brand image was detected. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that femvertising markedly fostered empowerment and produced a small increase in purchase probability.