Gender Representation in Chinese Tobacco Advertising

Abstract

The broad development prospects of the Chinese tobacco consumer market have attracted an increasing number of international companies to do business and invest in China. In tobacco marketing campaign, gender representation in advertising is a common and effective means to attract consumers. It has a great significance to marketing practitioners and advertisers, especially in the emerging market of China. A comprehensive understanding of gender representation in Chinese advertising can provide a universal framework for marketing campaign and help establish an academic foundation for market segmentation. This literature review aims to research the portrayal of gender representative images and roles in Chinese advertising, their formation reasons and changing trends. Drawing on huge number of academic journals, research papers and academic books in the online academic literature database, this literature review will critically analyze and summarize the literature related to gender representation in Chinese tobacco advertising. The results show that the characteristics of gender representation in traditional Chinese advertisements are influenced by traditional Chinese culture, socialist political policies and Western value culture, and tend to modern Western advertising models. The gender representation in Chinese online advertising emphasized the concept of self and began to show more Chinese characteristics. In the future, the booming Chinese online advertising will have more variables and more complex trends, and there will be a huge academic gap left for future research.