The Representation of Different Genders in Product Advertising: Comparison of TV Advertisements in Thailand and the United Kingdom

With the strong impact of advertising to the business by which it could limit or expand the perception of customer towards the product and the organisation, the marketing strategists then wonder on how to cope with gender role portrayal in advertising; especially within the television advertising which are watched from most of the family members. Until now there are extensive researches on the issue of gender roles in advertising which were trying to support the debates about differential portrayal of the two genders in international television advertisements. However, these researches were mostly focused on the North American commercials and only a few from the following countries; China, Singapore, Australia, Mexico, Malaysia, France, and the UK. Therefore, this study is the attempt of filling the gap of researching to focus more on the rest of the world. Thailand is selected for this and the United Kingdom is reasonably obvious one to compare. Main part of this study is to investigate the difference and similarity in advertising from both countries to the extent of gender portrayal. The investigation is conducted in order to compare the results with the assumptions from the previous researches. Summing up, the findings indicate that genders role is the significant part in implementing any advertisement. There are differences in the advertising from Thailand and the United Kingdom. With the difference in national culture, male and female characters are portrayed differently in terms of physical, functional, sexual, emotional, and interpersonal. The difference is also found among the same gender from these two countries