Leveraging Social Media Advertising to Foster Female Consumers’ Empowerment and Engagement: The Role of Regulatory Mode

While prior research has gleaned important insight into consumers’ social media engagement, an important literature-based tension exists that warrants further attention. On the one hand, females are increasingly empowered (e.g., through their rising spending power). On the other hand, advertising-based gender stereotypes persist, thus limiting female consumers’ empowerment and decelerating advertising-based inclusion, equity, and diversity. Deploying regulatory mode theory, we propose that the adoption of a locomotion (vs. assessment) orientation, which emphasizes the initiation and continuation of the consumer’s goal pursuit (vs. focusing on the individual’s arrival at the “right” decision), respectively, can be leveraged to empower female consumers and boost their engagement with social media–based advertising. These predictions are tested across field studies 1a–1b and experiments 2–3. These findings can benefit marketers in developing effective communication strategies that resonate positively with female consumers, thus boosting their advertising-based inclusion, equity, and diversity.