The attitudes of hungarian homosexual men towards clothing brands

Abstract

THE AIMS OF THE PAPER

Our research focuses on homosexual men as well as on this target group’s attitude towards brands. The research into this topic is justified by the extremely low number of publications about the topic, in spite of that this is an important and interesting field from the viewpoint of consumer behaviour. The aim of our research is to analyse what attitudes homosexual men have towards clothing brands and whether their attitudes significantly differ, based on these, from those of heterosexual men. It is important because there have been a relatively few marketing activities targeting either homosexual men or the whole LMBTQ community in the market, and the thoughts behind them are not necessarily based on scientific results or knowledge.

METHODOLOGY

Primary research consisted of two steps: conducting in-depth interviews, then an online questionnaire survey. In-depth interviews had an important role in developing our hypothesis. It is important to note that during in-depth interviews such problems had arisen which made the involvement of a control group consisting of heterosexual men necessary. Most interviewees stressed that according to their experiences the main stereotype about homosexual men is that they have strong feminine features. Data were collected in March 2017. A total of 328 people were in the final sample. In case of the questionnaire survey attitude statements dealt with the importance of brands for the individual, brand assessment, brand awareness, brand loyalty, the relationship between brand and quality, and the relationship between brand and thrift/risk/experience/social assessment. When compiling attitude statements, we depended upon information deriving from in-depth interviews to a great extent. In case of the research we did not apply simple random sampling since we wanted to reach the analysed population’s members through predefined organisations/websites, and we wanted to collect data this way.

MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS

Our research hypothesis is as follows: H: there is no difference between homosexual and heterosexual men regarding the attitudes towards brands. Based on the findings we did not find significant difference between the subsamples. To test the hypothesis, we used the scale values of attitude statements. Our findings are presumably of practical importance as consumers, enterprises, distribution channels and media are all segmented, they deal with the diversity of consumer behaviour, and reach the consumers through targeted marketing, however, the basis of success is the precise knowledge about the features of the given consumer segment.