YAZI TİPİ, YAZI KARAKTERİ VE YAZI RENGİNİN MARKA CİNSİYET ALGILAMASINA ETKİSİ

Marka cinsiyeti konusunu ele alan bu çalışma, yazı tipi, yazı karakteri ve yazı renginin cinsiyet algısına etkisini inceleyen Türkiye’deki öncü çalışmalardan biri olması bakımından önem taşımaktadır. Marka cinsiyeti, uygulamada markaların hedef pazarını etkileyebilmede ve bazı zamanlar karşı cinsiyetteki tüketicileri de hedef pazarı haline getirmede önemli bir rol oynamaktadır. Araştırma, nitel veri toplama yöntemlerinden biri olan mülakat yöntemine göre amaçlı örneklemeye göre seçilmiş 14 katılımcı ile gerçekleştirilmiştir. Marka isimlerinin cinsiyet algılamasında yazı tipi, yazı karakteri ve yazı renginin etkisi olup olmadığını araştıran bu çalışma sonucunda, farklı yazı tiplerinin ve yazı karakterlerinin markaların maskülen ya da feminen algılanmasında etkili olduğu ortaya çıkmıştır. Marka isminin hangi yazı tipi ve hangi karakterle yazıldığı, o markanın cinsiyet algılamasını etkileyebilmektedir. Bu çalışma sonucunda ‘Impact’, ‘Stencil’ ve ‘Showcard Gothic’ yazı tiplerinin maskülen algılandığı, ‘Kristen ITC’, ‘Brush Script’ ve ‘Lucida Handwriting’ yazı tiplerinin ise feminen algılandığı belirlenmiştir. Ayrıca bu yazı tipleriyle beraber bold, italik ve bold italik gibi yazı karakterleri marka isminin cinsiyet algısına etki etmekte ve ayırt edici bir faktör olarak yazı tiplerinin algılanan cinsiyetini değiştirebilmektedir. Bu çalışma ile birlikte mavi rengin baskın şekilde maskülen, pembe rengin ise feminen algılandığı ortaya çıkmıştır. Mavi veya pembe renkle yazılan marka isimleri markaların cinsiyetleri hakkında otomatik olarak kullanıcılara sinyal vermektedir.

EFFECT OF FONT TYPE, FONT CHARACTER AND FONT COLOUR ON BRAND GENDER PERCEPTION

1. LITERATURE The concept of gender is considered as one of the most important and determining variables of marketing. Although the segmentation made according to the visible biological gender (male and female) have yielded positive results until today, the changing roles and status of women and men require taking their gender into consideration. Increasing influence of women in business life, existence in the ruling class, metrosexual and sharing characteristics of men, pressures on equality, activist actions of social groups make it necessary to rethink and redefine the concept of gender. Now, marketers and brand managers take into account social gender along with biological gender, which is easily evident and frequently used in segmentalization, and evaluates the effects of multiple factors such as culture, family, business and friend environment, occupation on this concept. The concept of gender plays an important role in brand expansion strategies, advertising slogans, packaging preferences and color selection, and has an impact on the brand's perception of feminine or masculine. 1.1. RESEARCH SUBJECT When consumers do not have brand connotations, when they first encounter a new brand name on a sign or packaging, they rely on the meanings conveyed by brand name sound systems to create inferences about brand features and performance. The letters phonetically owned by the brands (consonant and vowel case, thickness and fineness of the letters, etc.) are excluded from the scope of this research. The effect of only font type, font characer and font colour is the focus of the research. For this reason, six font types (Impact, Stencil, Showcard Gothic, Kristen ITC, Brush Script, Lucida Handwriting) and three font characters (bold, italic and bold-italic) were determined in this study. It has been investigated whether these font types and font characters have an effect on brand gender perception, and to what extent blue and pink font colour affects these perceptions. 1.2. RESEARCH PURPOSE AND IMPORTANCE The main purpose of this study is to examine whether font type, character and colour have an effect on consumers' perceptions of gender. The scope of the research is also to reveal the general perceptions of consumers regarding brand gender, to test their beliefs that the brand may have a certain gender, and to reveal the reasons why consumers of different genders are interested in different brands. Existing studies on brand gender in Turkey is rather limited (see Bas and Merter, 2013; Yildirim and Komurcu, 2019). Although there are studies in other areas such as gender, gender difference in advertising message perception, market segmentation towards sex, loyalty, satisfaction, and sex relation, it is seen that studies directly related with brand gender are limited. This study is a leading that addresses the issue of brand gender within the context of font type, font character and font colour, and investigates the effect of font styles on brand gender. In this sense, the study, which is the first in terms of its subject, is important in terms of expanding the literature and offering some administrative suggestions about brand gender. 1.3. CONTRIBUTION of the ARTICLE to the LITERATURE This is the first study done in Turkey which takes into account type fonts, characters and colour effects on brand gender perceptions. Previous studies focused on biological sex and investigate effect of sex on ads messages, market segmentation. As known, sex is used different from gender as a meaning. This study directly focuses on brand gender and correlates font types, characters and color with brand gender perceptions. 2. DESIGN AND METHOD The population of the research is 14 brand professionals in Ankara and Istanbul. The “Purposive Sampling” method was used in the research, and the people who were able to answer the questions to be asked in the most accurate way, were included in the sample group. In the research, semistructured interview technique was used as data collection technique. During the interview, 7 semistructured questions were asked to the participants. In addition to seven open-ended questions, 6 font type s (Impact, Stencil, Showcard Gothic, Kristen ITC, Brush Script, Lucida Handwriting) have been identified. The article "Communicating Brand Gender Through Type Fonts" by Grohmann (2016) was used to determine

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