Romantic Love and Sex: Their Relationship and Impacts on Ad Attitudes

Headnote

ABSTRACT

The fact that romatic love in advertising is often subsumed under sexual appeal, and taht not all types of romantic love are sexual, has led to an undervaluation of romantic love as an independent ad theme, despite its universality and importance in consumers' lives. This article validates spiritual companionate love and sexual passionate love as two subtypes of romantic love separable from sex. Their impacts on ad attitudes were examined in two studies assuming pleasure and arousal to be the two underlying mechanisms. The two subtypes of romantic love demonstrated ad impact on ad attitudes that is similar to sex, rather than to companionate love. The implications of these findings are discussed. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The theme of romantic love is commonly used in advertising, reflecting its importance in the lives of consumers. However, an understanding of the role that romantic love plays in advertising is hindered by the following two factors. First, romantic love is often subsumed under sexual appeal. Second, not all types of romantic love are sexual in origin or purpose. This article is an endeavor to clarify these hindrance factors and further the understanding of the role of romantic love in advertising.

Sexual appeal has long been studied in advertising, and has tended to overshadow romantic love. For example, romance novels (Gould, 1994), romance (Stern, 1991), romantic fantasy (Richmond & Hartman, 1982), and romantic setting (Biswas, Olsen, & Carlet, 1992) are romantic materials that have been used in sexual ads to arouse consumers, yet they are not treated as independent ad themes. The variations in the sexual implications of romantic love create further ambiguity. Partners can have spiritual companionate love in addition to sexual passionate love. An example of companionate love in advertising is found in the campaign for Taster's Choice instant coffee, which depicts the development of a romance between two people with the aid of coffee, and involves very limited sexual implications. An example of passionate love is the ad for the Peugeot 306 automobile, which depicts the wife of a young, married-with-children family lovingly looking on while her husband washes the car, and then shows the couple passionately making love.

The lack of specificity that arises from not isolating romantic love from sex, and...