by
School of Communications, DS-40
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
Special issue on marketing
The Journal of Homosexuality
Vol 31, Nos 1-2, 1996
†John Bowes is an associate professor of communication at the School of Communications.
Introduction
Likened by some advertisers as a market that is "upscale and cutting edge," gay and lesbian consumers have achieved a visibility unthinkable a few years ago ("Overcoming", 1991). Indeed, anecdotal accounts suggest a vibrancy to this marketing niche that spells profits for advertisers and positive recognition for the gay-lesbian community. In the past several years, major national advertisers - Phillip Morris, Shearson-Lehman, Nestlé, Columbia House, Gap Stores, Miller Brewing and Hiram-Walker - have come to advertise in the gay/lesbian press. IKEA, a national furniture chain, recently featured in national TV ads a "loving" gay male couple buying a dining table (Gay and Lesbian Alliance, 1994a, p. 1). Increasingly, mainstream advertisers have contributed as sponsors to major gay community events such as the 1993 March on Washington and the 25th Stonewall Anniversary in 1994 (Goldman, 1994; Horovitz, 1993)).
The marketing attention has encouraged a rash of new gay/lesbian publications in the last 5 years, mostly "lifestyle," magazines (Gay and Lesbian Alliance, 1994b). The gay press (weekly or monthly tabloid publications) claims circulation figures which top 30,000 in several markets with 65 newspapers collectively making claim to over 3 million readers (Wilke, 1994; "Lesbigay press," 1992).
Increasingly, marketing specialists have found the demographics of gays and lesbians attractive. In a study sponsored by major gay newspapers, Simmons reported (for 1988) gay incomes well above national averages generated by high proportions of managers and other professionals (Overlooked Opinions, 1993). More recent data suggest income differences may be exaggerated (Boulard, 1994), but that many attractive consumer characteristics remain (Elliott, 1994). A readiness by gays and lesbians to travel, use charge cards and drink wines has not only attracted the trendy travel industry and vintners, but the old guard of banking and telecommunications services as well. More basic characteristics - high levels of self-employment, concentration in top markets, heightened concern with physical well-being and stress - suggest a consumer group that is open to new technologies, health care and self-improvement.
The importance of group identity to marketing has long been recognized. Models of life goals, values, and demographics have long been built to distinguish important consumer profiles as a key to motivation (Kahle et al., 1986). Appealing to these profiles has had presumed success in promoting products as diverse as American Express cards and imported beer to the gay community. While these are important signals, they may not span the concerns of the gay community. Indeed there are allegations that the popular marketing profile of the gay community is inaccurate, ignoring the closeted, the poor and possibly lesbians (Fejes and Petrich, 1993, p. 411).
Jansen (1994) argues, for example, that gays as a new, better-than-average consumer niche has been overestimated; that they merely mirror the straight world's income, ethnic and occupational strata. Common sampling methods used to assure representation are foiled by concealment and the reactiveness of asking if a respondent is gay or lesbian. Economically secure gays, it is argued, are more likely to be openly so, and accessible to market research measures. But perhaps more important than demographic inaccuracies are differences in a psychosocial profile for gays that " . . . creates a lot of different tensions; higher levels of stress . . feelings of victimization and cynicism towards dominant-culture institutions like government or business" (Jansen cit. Briggs, p. 47).
We suggest in this paper that a simple market profile offered in the enthusiasm of legitimizing gays as a market force may need qualification. Those targeting the gay community encounter a terrain of subtlety and contradiction that is only beginning to come to light. Much of this complexity traces to a history of exclusion and discrimination that is encountered in reaching out to the gay community. Using data from a city government-commissioned survey of gays and lesbians in Seattle, Washington, we sought to augment the basic market profile in several key respects:
In short, positive marketing to the gay community involves conveying both respect for its differences and affirmation of its claims to rights in the society. Clearly, this status can't be determined from surface demographics, but rather from questions specific to these conditions. More precisely, to those seeking the characteristics of a potentially powerful market segment, it is useful to know market areas most likely to drive gays and lesbians back to the closet.
Conceptual Basis
A constant in advertising research over the past three decades has been a concern with audience problems and needs. Codified as a "uses and gratifications approach" to explaining media influence, it has become enshrined both as conceptually fertile for understanding what audiences gain from the media and as a practical focus for editors and advertisers interested in providing "useful" and congenial content to satisfy their audiences (Katz & Blumler, 1974; Frank & Greenberg, 1980). For decades, marketing professionals have been urged to respond " . . more intelligently to people, and their wants and needs, rather than to products" (Mortimer, 1959).
Analysis of uses and gratifications experienced by general population samples conventionally rests on two dimensions (Rubin, 1981, 1983). Instrumental uses speak to specific consumer needs addressed by the media while ritualistic gratifications suggest content that may reinforce a social environment, provide passive entertainment and sustain a comforting culture. On both grounds, marketing information aimed at gays can win or fail. Messages touting instrumentally needed services may fail recognition by the gay community because the social environment suggested may be alien. Clearly the reverse obtains: much may be risked by mainstream marketing in catering to the gay community, a potentially alien landscape to the straight community.1
While ambivalence of mainstream media is reasonably clear towards gay-positive content, that of gay media is more subtle. Levin (1993) notes that as gay and lesbian publications achieve advertising success, the "economic logic of national advertising begins to drive publications aimed at the lesbian and gay community." Fejes (1993) comments that the "heterosexism permeating the national media and advertising now affects the media of the gay and lesbian community. ." (p. 411)..
The publishers of Urban Fitness, a successful publication with arguably the highest circulation of any magazine targeting the gay community, maintains that as a matter of policy it is unconcerned with what its readers do in their bedrooms. As the publisher, Jim Herman, commented, " . . Mr. Corporate American can't comprehend a homosexual." Like other growing gay and lesbian publications it sees profits in temporizing the militant or sexually suggestive content that once was characteristic (O'Donnell, 1994). In short, reaction that might exclude publications from majority favor bring about content shifts to a cleaned-up gay image, "heterosexualized" for mainstream advertisers. The gay community, then, finds itself controversial not only in general circulation media, but also increasingly tested in its own. Specific implications of discrimination, political isolation and sexuality itself seem muted in marketing to the gay community.
By its very definition, mass media has to balance the need of majority interests against those of specialized minorities. As Kessler put it, media are the reflection of the homogenous middle. The tyranny of audience ratings and readership studies force a consistency on content that is designed to attract the most and offend the fewest possible (Kessler, 1984). In a system where circulation is money in the bank, it is foolish for media professionals to stray far from this formula.
For minorities, getting content relevant to their particular needs can be frustrating. A generation of occasional research highlights the needs met (and unmet) by the African American press and the ethnic press linked to immigrant arrivals from Asia, Europe and elsewhere (Greenberg et al., 1970).2 Sexual minorities, however, have had even less attention to their everyday needs. Larry Gross (1991) comments, " . . . they [the media] mostly show us as weak and silly, or evil and corrupt, but they exclude and deny the existence of normal, unexceptional as well as exceptional lesbians and gay men."
Arguably, a poor record of understanding the gay/lesbian community contradicts a generation of audience and marketing research that attempts to better target audiences by addressing their needs. From the '70s makeover of newspapers to increasingly reflect the daily needs of suburban readers to "soft news" television directed to consumer product evaluation, home fix-up and travel, the news business has found potential in everyday problem-solving (Stamm, 1985). Academic research sporadically has investigated audience needs for everyday living and problem solving (Dervin, 1976). Advertising and marketing have pulled away from simple considerations of audience size to more complex motivational formulations, based in needs, aspirations and lifestyles of specialized segments (Stamm & Bowes, 1991).
Such data are rudimentary for the gay community. The simple demographics of high disposable incomes and affinity for luxury goods are enticing for marketing, but may ignore psychosocial complexities of suspicion, concealment and alienation of gay consumers, just as they do possible reactions from the straight community. There have been many studies in recent years of discrimination encountered by gays and lesbians in their respective communities (Herek & Berrill, 1990; Comstock, 1991). But few have examined barriers on a service-by-service basis or the means used to cope with such problems.
We were particularly interested in those areas having anecdotal evidence of problems: child day care, housing, financial services, and accommodation by hotels and restaurants. Marketing plans might usefully consider past discrimination or, perhaps more importantly, the expectation of problems by gay and lesbians based on such a history. By considering these fears and negative anticipation, we believe many institutions will more humanely and effectively market to the gay and lesbian community than solely demographic profiles would suggest.
Conceptually, we hope to show the difficulty gays and lesbians endure in resolving the dilemma of gaining attention and respect from majority institutions. One cannot advance against discrimination in the marketplace without taking action, yet action may bring on unwanted attention and abuse. Alienation from the majority community is understandable, but not a practical option for gay consumers. Though the general community can (and has) ignored gays and lesbians, the reverse really isn't possible. Those who recognize the special pressures of being gay or lesbian may enjoy market success well beyond accounting for simpler characteristics of high disposable incomes and an affinity for luxury goods. As mainstream commerce targets gay consumers, it should learn the subtleties embodied in a history of discrimination. While our data do not consider marketing messages directly or test their invigoration through accounting for gay social attitudes, they strongly suggest that this link may be valuable to consider in a climate of individual caution and distrust of institutions.
Finally, marketing professionals may realize a higher social purpose in their advertising by recognizing problems gay consumers have in openly approaching mainstream institutions. The media editorially have been a vehicle of assimilation and cohesion for minorities, bridging isolation, and providing a sense of community (Greenberg et al., 1970). Marketing has been the commercial parallel of this attention, substantiating that a minority is recognized for its purchasing power and valued materially for its needs.
Method
This study is based on an opportunity survey of gays and lesbians in the Seattle metropolitan area which focused on discrimination and hate crime victimization. While it does not have the desirable controls on representation present in strict quota or random sample studies, it employed basic quota controls (gender, neighborhood and minority status) keyed to the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) for Seattle-Everett, Washington, as defined by the US Bureau of the Census (Friedli, 1990). The survey secured gender balance and representation from people of color.3 Questionnaires were distributed in numerous venues. including gay/lesbian support groups, book stores catering to the gay/lesbian community, and gay/lesbian community and social centers. In addition, many surveys were distributed at Seattle's Gay/Lesbian Pride Week festival in June, 1990. The bulk of the surveys were distributed between May 1990 and January 1991. Few if any of the questions were time-sensitive in the short term. The questionnaire was designed for self-administration. It could be picked-up and returned anonymously from several distribution points, or be openly requested by mail or telephone. Completion time for the questionnaire was about 20 minutes.
The questionnaire was developed over a period of a year and a half, beginning in early 1989. Many individuals in the community representing a variety of interests and perspectives contributed, with a prototype based on a survey constructed by Dr. Walter Tunstall and distributed in Richmond, Virginia4 Approximately 2500 surveys were used of which 1291 were completed and coded in machine-readable form, tested for coding errors, and processed with SPSS. This 52% response rate could be considered good, given the organization of volunteers that distributed and managed the survey. Since there are no census data sets or random samples further define this population, it is not possible to determine "representativeness" beyond this rough evaluation. Of the 1291 respondents, some 52 identified themselves as bisexual and 27 failed to answer this classification item. All were included in the analyses.
Questions about daily difficulties focused on 9 areas: children (day care, adoption), health care (emergency care, visitation), government services (welfare, schools), general services (restaurants, hotels), religious organizations (churches, religious counselors), financial institutions (mortgages, banks), housing (rentals, purchase), employment (promotions, harassment) and AIDS (housing, insurance).5
"Difficulties" in each instance referred to problems encountered because one was lesbian or a gay male. For example, the question concerning problems with renting or buying housing was phrased, "Have you ever been prohibited or discouraged from renting or buying an apartment or house with a non-related same-sex roommate or partner." With service industries, respondents were asked, "Have you experienced difficulties with any of the following services because you are gay or lesbian." Each item under a general topic, such as housing or financial services, was the basis of an index of difficulties endured because the respondent was gay/lesbian. These subsidiary scales making-up indices are summarized in appendix A. The kind of difficulty experienced was disaggregated for physical and verbal violence.
Originally, questions about frequency of changing behavior, frequency of violence, being openly gay socially and at work, were continuous scales or indexes. When used as independent variables, these were dichotomized to assist graphic presentation. Simple statistical testing was done of group differences using t-tests for separate variance estimates. Significance is indicated where appropriate.
Findings:
Paradoxically, given the attention to gays as a market niche, less than 0.2% of the interviewees mentioned mainstream media or advertising as a source of help or information with meeting personal needs. Seattle's gay press went unmentioned as a source of problem-solving assistance.6 The media - gay and straight - were largely irrelevant.7 In part this may trace to the open-ended nature of questions designed to pick-up sources help beyond individual action or government and civic action groups, but they are significant by their absence, nevertheless. Our focus, however, is open to a range of actions taken by the gay community to meet its needs.
The principal results of this study form a progression: from difficulty meeting everyday needs because one is gay or lesbian, through changing behavior to avoid detection, to problem-solving actions and their consequences.
Figures 1 and 2 About Here8
Difficulty in Resolving Problems Because Gay/Lesbian: Difficulty was scaled on a five step basis from "never" to "always." Results in figure 1 show generally a low problem incidence for our respondents. Children, religious organizations, housing and employment proved to be the most troublesome, but in main only approached a "rarely difficulty" level. Seattle is a venue with an established tradition of tolerance, and more to the point, statutory protection for gays and lesbians in housing and accommodation. City and state government, and the region's largest employers, the Boeing Corporation. Microsoft and the University of Washington, provide job discrimination protection as well. The region has been an international leader in policy about and treatment of AIDS. As such, the region may show a "best case" situation with difficulty levels that are perhaps modest in contrast to other, presumably less tolerant places.
For marketing considerations, despite the low level of difficulty, some areas were mentioned by more respondents: health care, financial services and "general" services industries. In examining open-ended responses, the poor legal standing of gays and lesbians couples, and feared embarrassment as a result, caused problems with mortgages, making joint health care decisions, taking loans and applying for credit, and sharing hotel accommodation.
Education and minority status had little effect on difficulties experienced, but gender did (figure 2). Across a broad range of circumstances, gay men reported fewer difficulties than lesbians with the sole exceptions of religion and AIDS. Ironically, as shown later (Figure 10), gay men were more likely to be openly gay, while lesbians were more likely to conceal or change behavior to avoid difficulties. Throughout our findings, lesbians encountered more problems and suffered more negative consequences. Religious involvement was not appreciably different for gay men and lesbians (gay men were very slightly more active) leaving this difference in want of satisfactory explanation. AIDS, with its concentration among gay men, explains this remaining difference.
Changing Behavior to Avoid Problems: Likely the most punishing self-imposed restriction for gays and lesbians is the need to change behavior from normal to avoid abuse from the straight population and its institutions. This can be highly situational: gays and lesbians are "out" in varying degrees depending on their circumstances. Family settings differ from the workplace and from church. Sadly, in this study, the family required the most concealment, followed by the workplace, religion and appearing in public. Taken together, these places typically comprise the bulk of one's waking hours. Figure 3 shows such reactions affected the preponderance of the sample, with some diminution for religion and the courts. Happily for areas most sensitive to marketing: retail, recreation, health and financial services, the least amount of concealment was necessary. Levels of change are mostly intermediate on a five step scale, approximating "sometimes necessary."
Figures 3 and 4 About Here
A central question is if those changing behavior experienced less difficulty in solving everyday problems. Concealment of being gay or lesbian can make practical sense if it reduces difficulty. Ironically, for our respondents, it didn't. Those who changed behavior the most (high changers) experienced the most difficulties. Figure 4 shows all problem areas as more difficult for these individuals. Critical areas such as housing, employment,
AIDS problems and general services showed greatest differences. The logic of concealment leading to more problems makes better sense if the causation is reversed: experiencing difficulties may force concealment. Determining causation from a single wave field study is risky at best. The causal patterns here may not be simple, unidirectional ones.
Barriers to Problem Solving: Violence experienced by gays and lesbians is of central interest in a time of rapid increase in hate crimes (Turque et al., 1992). More particularly, the threat of violence abrogates personal freedom and access to the full resources of society. In this study, violence is conceptualized as both verbal and physical. Threat, intimidation and name-calling are examples of the former, while beating, slapping and pushing around characterize the latter. In our data, violence levels are substantial. Fully 65% of respondents suffered verbal abuse from strangers, while some 12% had been physically assaulted.
Despite seemingly pervasive violence, the levels reported in this study are generally lower than those found in other US cities. Berrill (1990) summarizes ten studies, nine of which show verbal abuse ranging from 80 to 87 percent. Physical abuse ranged from 6 to 35 percent. The variation, aside from actual differences, may trace to how violence is defined. Robbery, for example, is included in some studies as anti-gay violence, but may not have been perpetrated because the victim is gay or lesbian.
Not surprisingly, those most abused tend to perceive more difficulties with everyday situations because they are gay/lesbian (figure 5). Again, simple causation is difficult to assume. Having encountered violence, we may be more sensitive to difficulties. Conversely, difficulties themselves may be part of or lead to violent confrontation.
Figures 5 and 6 About Here
A third (34%) of our respondents reported taking no action in response to abuse from "general problems," a combined category of health, children-related and government agencies and businesses. When asked why no action was taken (figure 6), respondents were consistent across three major problem areas (for this analysis, "general problems" was contrasted with employment difficulties and outright attacks). In a plurality of cases, respondents believed reporting would "make the situation worse," especially for violent abuse. Other reasons of fearing exposure, belief than no one was interested and not knowing how to complain composed the balance of responses.
Gender is important to the equation of being open and suffering the consequences. In this sample, lesbians fared poorly compared to gay men in a number of ways (figure 7). Women reported more verbal attacks, more behavior change and concealment of being gay, but were slightly more inclined to take action on problems. Gay men were more likely to be openly gay. In other studies, women have been less prone to physical violence but more likely to encounter verbal violence in family or home settings (Comstock, 1992). A problem in these contrasts is a higher level of violence against women in American society than men, regardless of gender preference. Victims may not know whether an attack is born of anti-woman or anti-lesbian sentiment or both. In other surveys, lesbians also reported greater discrimination, fear of violence and victimization in non-gay venues. This may help explain greater concealment of being gay and feelings of difficulty in dealing with straight society (Gross, et al., 1988).
We also made comparisons by education and minority status. Less educated respondents were more prone to physical attack but otherwise were not distinguishable from those with more than high school educations. Minority status showed one strong finding: a greater tendency to be closeted both socially and at work. The increased victimization of gay and lesbian minorities noted in other studies (e.g. Comstock, 1991) was not a significant effect here.
Alienation and Problem Solving: The rite of passage a gay man or lesbian woman makes in being openly gay often coincides with a commitment to a community of like individuals who supply needed social (and often) material support. In part, too, this can be a negative process of movement away from a majority straight community that may have little positive to offer the openly gay or lesbian (Herdt & Boxer, 1992). Classically, causal themes in alienation grow from institutions or governments that resist transfer of power to their clients, and, secondly, incapacity of the victimized to assert their rights. The consequences are feelings of worthlessness, futility and distrust (Pool, 1973). Our interest was to see the influence of affiliation with both the gay/lesbian and straight community upon problem solving and being openly gay. More tangentially, we wanted to explore the likelihood that mainstream media and marketing efforts could be distinguished as instruments of straight society and thus discounted as of little credence to gays and lesbians.
Some alienation from the general community prevails (43 percent) over those claiming no alienation (30 percent, figure 8). Nearly 60 percent of respondents felt no alienation from the gay/lesbian community. Community identity thus seems clearly differentiated: a hesitant tie to the mainstream and a stronger affiliation with the minority.
Figures 7 and 8 About Here
Finally, we address disaffection not in absolute terms, but in contrast to what respondents feel they enjoy as life quality compared to their heterosexual counterparts (figures 9 and 10). While the modal response is sameness with the straight population, gay men collectively view their situation as notably better than lesbians. In earlier comparisons (see figures 2 and 7), lesbians suffer the effects of discrimination more intensely, so it should come as no surprise that they collectively view themselves as generally worse off than their straight counterparts.
Figures 9 and 10 About Here
Conclusions
There are both descriptive and conceptual issues of importance from this and similar studies. We did not find exceptionally high levels of perceived difficulty across a broad range of circumstances and institutions because one is gay or lesbian. Even on detailed breakdown of our general problem categories (general services consisted of 6 sub-categories, for example)9 the problems remained uniformly moderate. The greatest perceived difficulty across all 64 sub-categories was the securing of employee benefits for a same-gender spouse. Yet differences among them in terms of numbers affected and level can suggest to media and others what proves most troublesome for most. Religious organizations, for example provided among the most problems for our respondents, but affected comparatively few of them (figure 1). Employment issues, in contrast, affected nearly everyone.
Abuse, both verbal and physical, is at astonishing levels - if slightly less so in this study venue than in other communities. Problems of children, employment, housing and general services link most visibly with high verbal abuse victims.10 For media, particularly gay owned, these topical breakdowns suggests coverage possibilities, not based on precipitating events, but on day-to-day needs. For marketing specialists, they represent not only perceptions to be overcome in proffering services to the gay/lesbian community, but rewards both psychic and monetary in successfully doing so.
Does the gay community cope with its problems with straight society and do so openly? Concealment ("changing behavior") because one is gay/lesbian to avoid problems was relevant to almost all respondents, yielding with uniformity a "sometimes" response. The tendency was pronounced for lesbians and didn't seem to lessen their difficulties. The implication for mainstream media is an old one: it is easy to underestimate the distinctiveness and breadth of gay community feeling since much can be hidden from view. For the marketing community, concealment masks the potential of this segment, but its problems as well.
The prevailing response to problems was to take no action, particularly with abuse (figure 7). This apparent stasis must be examined in light of rapid increases in gay/lesbian visibility and activism over the past two decades. From near total invisibility and marginalization, gay issues now command significant attention from mainstream media. Well organized groups take-up a variety of gay causes with government and media. Twenty years ago, it would have been largely unthinkable. We are perhaps seeing the bare beginnings of this attention by mainstream marketing professionals. Organizations such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) are in place to monitor both media and marketing for their inclusiveness and prejudices.
The data do suggest much work remains with everyday needs in contrast, perhaps, to major political issues. Media have given the gay/lesbian community increased attention, but much of it remains colored by stereotypes or focused on divisive political agendas and the threat of AIDS. Marketing and its most visible manifestation, advertising, has walked a narrow path between alienation of a powerful and possibly homophobic majority and catering to a lucrative new consumer group. But for nearly all of the respondents in this study, the mainstream community, the majority media and marketing likely are remote from the personal problems of being gay and meeting problems arising from it.
Reasons for inaction are based only modestly on lack of knowledge, but dominantly on fear of retribution ("making the situation worse"), exposure or the belief that no one would be interested. Media's forte is in providing information and reporting major events, but far less so in providing clear support defending gay rights, giving emotional support and in exposing subtle discrimination and daily abuse. Advertising's advantage is in targeting products and appeals to a minority community, but very little shows gays and lesbians thematically in these efforts. For the most part, mainstream ads grace gay publications, unaltered. Media and advertisers have moved mainstream content to gay publications, but they have barely included the gay community, positively, in their content mix for consumption by the majority community. That our respondents believed their needs ignored is hardly remarkable.
About 70 percent of our respondents felt at least somewhat alienated from the majority community and more than 40 percent from the gay/lesbian community. Media's influence on nurturing community attachment is murky at best, locked in difficult causal reasoning that isn't especially clear on whether press use leads or follows community involvement (Stamm & Weis, 1984). The influence of advertising "inclusion" is less so. The strongest focus of gay community activism, AIDS, likely owes its organizational momentum not so much to media leadership, but to the techniques of public relations, lobbying, activist confrontation and fund-raising. The silence of all but a few media to the growing AIDS crisis in the early 1980s has been well documented (Shilts, 1988).
Methodological problems abound with descriptive studies of this kind. Beyond the simple variability people hold for the questions asked (e.g. what does "alienation" mean?), come the implications of answers given. Concealment or changing behavior in the straight world, for example, cloaks as a uniform percentage poignant comments like "Most of us [gay/lesbians] act the way we do to make straights comfortable." Or, "As a lesbian I continually monitor my behavior and appearance to ward off verbal attacks."
Causation and logic also can be easily confused or reversed. Do lesbians encounter more difficulty and suffer greater violence and alienation because they are lesbian or women, or both? Parallel studies with contrasting populations rarely exist to provide the contrasts necessary to control such artifacts. Do media follow or lead agenda on gay issues? Does marketing to gays have a positive net effect on sales? Careful panel or matched group studies essential to clear causal delineation are costly and difficult. They are virtually absent in considering gays and the media.
Sampling is a constant threat to external validity. It is almost impossible to field a probability sample of a large, geographically diverse gay and lesbian sample - at least with acceptable costs and safety for interviewers (Harry, 1986). Accidental samples tap the willing and articulate (book stores constituted major distribution points for the present study; hardly the place for marginally literate or TV-addicted respondents to secure a questionnaire). Further, when a misplaced questionnaire itself may reveal a closeted respondent, few may be willing to take a chance despite precautions and assurance of anonymity. In short, the population represented could easily be skewed to the those "out," articulate and living in heavily gay-populated neighborhoods near questionnaire distribution points.
Recommendations
While much has been written on minority needs, mass media and marketing, little discussion has been directed to the gay community. Hopeful signs are present in study of gays and lesbians in media institutions - as reporters, primarily11 - and in histories of gays in the entertainment industries.12 But these are more organized and accessible populations.
The breadth of the gay/lesbian community is more difficult to reach and describe. Simple demographics provide a useful beginning, but ignore a unique and troubled history of this emerging market segment. Seeing advertisements for gay-owned businesses may help the gay audience feel legitimized and connected to their community, yet it may serve no immediate problem-solving need. News of an openly gay state representative defending a schools budget has little specific to do with particular gay community needs, but serves as a powerful symbol of political legitimacy for this community. Both situations while quite different superficially may provide a similar validation of the gay community as legitimate and its citizens substantial.
Going beyond demographics to understand consumer motivation and values has promise for gains in the gay community as it has had with other target groups. A recent advertisement for five Pacific Northwest hotels built their joint ad on the idea that "people stay with us without any [personal] reservations." The copy went on to promise that "comfortable means more than a well-appointed guest room. It means you feel great about who you are and where you're staying."13 Accompanying the copy was a picture of a gay male couple having a convivial discussion in the hotel bar. The acceptance and welcome is clear from the ad, confronting an issue of ease in choosing lodging with a same gender mate. The hotels' venues have significant gay populations, so the advantages of such targeting may be obvious in a sophisticated hospitality market that specializes in groups from Japanese tourists to backpackers. But extension beyond major, culturally diverse cities may be questionable.
Our present analysis suggests the utility of psychosocial characteristics in addition to traditional demographic indicators. Marketing appeals that reassure, validate and offer open access to products and institutions for the gay community may counter consumer wariness and resistance. Promotions which simply patronize gay media unchanged from their mainstream character may avoid offending the heterosexual world, but it is questionable whether they realize their potential by engaging needs particular to the gay community.
How much should majority media generally and marketing in particular should pay attention to specific minorities? Our working premise here is that there may be gain for marketing programs in doing so, but that the advantages may be qualified. Marketing that mixes gays and lesbians in with the majority community evokes the same notoriety witnessed a generation ago when African-Americans were, for the first time on mainstream media, allowed to hold a bowl of Jello or brush with Crest toothpaste. Mainstream ads reprinted in the gay press afford little more than an extension of traditional marketing reach. But marketing depicting gays and gay lifestyles in the majority community carries a very different set of assumptions. All of these campaigns may at first glance attract the loyalty of a community starved for recognition and legitimacy. But do the closeted or fearful respond favorably? And what of a possible backlash by an offended heterosexual community?
Moreover, the problems of alienation, concealment and inaction in the face of discrimination beg the question of whether the media really provide a means of breaking this cycle. As described earlier, empirical studies of press and community are few and causality is suspect. While progressivist views of media from the early years of the century suggest media leadership fosters social justice, there are few hard data that sustain this comforting prescription (Baldasty, 1993). It is a distinct research need as gays and lesbians seek to maximize their impact for change.
Aside from conceptual problems, there are a host of methodological needs. Time-based studies to check causation alleviate the difficult logic that tries to tease causal progressions from single-shot studies. Contrasts in coverage and slant of gay-directed with mainstream media could better describe the unique role each may have in the gay community. Sampling and cooperation is a recurrent problem in a community where significant numbers remain closeted and fearful of confidentiality in answers they might give. Lesbians and gays of color were especially difficulty to contact. Use of social clubs, organizations and other intact groups was essential in this study. These techniques need to be refined. Finally, needs of lesbians are significantly different from gay men and need to be considered separately. Combining them in the aggregate with gay males obscures many important, distinct relationships based in gender.
Capitalizing on existing data remains a problem. Organizations such as GLAAD provide a valuable monitoring and archiving resource of media treatment of gays and lesbians. Yet no widely known parallel structure exists for archiving scholarly studies of gays and lesbians in the media. Groups such as the ICPSR (The Intercollegiate Consortium for Political and Social Research) provide a distribution mechanism for social science data on a broad range of issues. A cooperative or parallel structure is needed to archive mass media data for the gay/lesbian community. Electronic networks, such as the Internet, provide low cost, efficient means of retrieval and distribution.14
These recommendations simply suggest improved collection and sharing of what have been mostly exploratory and descriptive data. They are, perhaps, essential first steps toward conceptualization and models that better explain how majority media, marketing and marginalized communities interact.
Appendix A:
Indexing of problem items involved averaging specific difficulties into composite measures. The list below shows the component scales, rated on a 1 (Never difficulty because lesbian/gay) to 5 (Always a problem) basis. These were combined and averaged for each respondent, adjusting for unused items.
Index of Problem Items
References
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Notes
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