Marketing, Gender and Feminism: A Synthesis and Research Agenda

Brown and Stern (2000) note that at the turn of the millennium, feminism and feminist research occupied a niche as a sub-discipline of 'mainstream' contemporary marketing literature. Gender and feminist marketing research represents a growing body of insightful studies and reviews that persuasively argue that theoretical, conceptual and practical research from a feminist perspective constitutes one of the most important and challenging arenas for marketing scholars. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the wide ranging extant literature on gendered research in marketing, giving prominence to research from a feminist perspective. The inclusion of research from a feminist perspective is valuable since such research tends to span a variety of issues that are often ignored or overlooked. An objective of this paper is to synthesise this research through drawing upon studies and reviews from a wider range of 'mainstream' and 'sub-disciplines' of the broader marketing academy. This process is intended to form a useful summary of the main avenues of such research and culminates with a necessarily concise suggested agenda for future studies.