Who Made It? How the Producer’s Gender Affects Product Preferences

Seeking more personized purchase experiences, consumers increasingly buy products directly from the producer. While extant literature has documented the positive effects of personizing market offerings, there is surprisingly little insight about whether knowing who made a product may influence consumer preference. We aim to fill this gap by exploring the critical role of the producer’s gender in consumers’ product choices. Across four experiments, we find that female consumers prefer to buy products made by women over products made by men, while male consumers’ purchase decisions are not affected by the producer’s gender. The data suggest that this difference in preferences for products made by women (vs. men) occurs because female, in relation to male, consumers hold stronger action efficacy beliefs––beliefs that their individual purchase choices can contribute to restoring gender inequalities in business.