Women empowerment in restaurants: effects of femvertising, purplewashing and feminist identity on consumers’ willingness to pay a premium
通过两项在线实验，研究了女性广告和紫色洗白策略对消费者在女性拥有的餐厅支付溢价的意愿的影响，发现女性广告能提高支付意愿，而紫色洗白会削弱高女性主义认同消费者的支付意愿，心理距离是内在机制。
Purpose Despite the increasing popularity of women-owned businesses in the marketplace, relatively few studies in the hospitality literature have focused on these businesses. Hence, this study aims to examine the impact of femvertising and purplewashing on consumers’ willingness to pay a premium at women-owned restaurants, as well as the role of feminist self-identification and psychological closeness underlying these associated effects. The study aims to provide insights into women-owned restaurant marketing strategies and to highlight the importance of authentic brand activism in consumer behavior in the restaurant industry. Design/methodology/approach Building on Construal Level Theory, this paper conducts two online experiments with 486 US participants who have dined at or ordered takeout from a restaurant. The studies aim to investigate consumers’ opinions about brand activism strategies (i.e. femvertising and purplewashing) in restaurants. Findings The results of two experimental studies indicate that a femvertising strategy increases consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for a women-owned restaurant compared to a non-women-owned restaurant. Moreover, consumers who identify more strongly as feminists are more likely to pay more for women-owned restaurants when purplewashing is absent (vs present). Additionally, psychological closeness serves as an underlying mechanism that explains these effects. Practical implications This study provides clear and actionable recommendations to help business stakeholders, owners and managers to market and advertise women-owned restaurants. For example, women-owned restaurant practitioners should feature women empowerment messaging in their advertisements to attract more consumers. However, they should avoid using purplewashing and other inauthentic brand activism practices in advertisements. Originality/value This research contributes to the hospitality literature on women entrepreneurship by exploring the effective marketing strategies of women-owned restaurants and investigating how to advertise women-owned businesses in the hospitality field. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also the very first study to explore the role of femvertising and purplewashing in consumers’ food-related decision-making.