How well will this brand work? The ironic impact of advertising disclosure of body‐image retouching on brand attitudes

Abstract

Prior research has demonstrated various effects of exposure to thin-idealized models in advertisements on consumers' product evaluations. Although this past research provides important insights, it does not take into account that many of these thin-idealized images have been digitally manipulated. The present work studies the consequences of disclosure of this digital manipulation and the process consumers engage in when evaluating the brands responsible for these advertisements. We demonstrate that retouched advertisements may, contrary to conventional wisdom, have favorable consequences. Indeed, we show that individuals have more favorable brand attitudes for retouched (vs. unretouched) ads when retouching is disclosed (vs. undisclosed). We show that disclosed retouched ads utilize a two-sided persuasive appeal, therefore leading consumers to evaluate the brand more favorably. We replicate this effect and explore attractiveness-relevant products and type of disclosure as boundary conditions. K E Y W O R D Sadvertising disclosure, attractiveness-relevant products, digital manipulation, mandated disclo- sure, persuasive appealsThe girl in this photo has not been retouched! the real you is sexy! American Eagle's lingerie line, Aerie Advertising Campaign

Priming skepticism: Unintended consequences of one‐sided persuasion knowledge access

“…Furthermore, with a few exceptions (DeCarlo, ; Isaac & Grayson, ; Rozendaal et al, ; Semaan et al, ; Wei, Fischer, & Main, ), past persuasion knowledge research has tended to hypothesize and demonstrate that, when the likelihood of accessing conceptual persuasion knowledge increases, consumers become more skeptical (i.e., more distrusting and disbelieving), which leads to more negative perceptions of the persuasion agent, the persuasive message, and/or the product or brand being advertised. For example, Boerman et al () found that disclosing a company's sponsorship of a television program increased the likelihood of conceptual persuasion knowledge access among participants, which led to beliefs that the product‐related content in the program was biased, dishonest, and not credible.…”

“…However, frequent exposure to commercial persuasion can also lead to more adaptive outcomes, including greater knowledge and understanding about how marketing tactics work and thus a more sophisticated ability to cope with persuasion attempts (e.g., Boush, Friestad, & Rose, ). Researchers refer to this knowledge and understanding as “persuasion knowledge” (Friestad & Wright, , ) or “advertising literacy” (Rozendaal, Opree, & Buijzen, ; Young, ), and it has been the focus of considerable investigation over the past two decades (e.g., Campbell & Kirmani, ; Carlson, Bearden, & Hardesty, ; Hibbert, Smith, Davies, & Ireland, ; Kirmani & Zhu, ; Semaan, Kocher, & Gould, ; Wentzel, Tomczak, & Herrmann, ; Xie & Johnson, ). Because the terms “persuasion knowledge” and “advertising literacy” are often used synonymously (e.g., Tutaj & van Reijmersdal, ; Wright, Friestad, & Boush, ), we opt in this paper to use the former term exclusively to refer to knowledge structures related to persuasion episodes.…”

Image congruence and visual object structure of anthropomorphic advertisement-eye movement research based on self-construct

“…The anthropomorphic image with high congruence has a strong correlation with the product. Through the image display, the connotation and significance of the advertising image will be transferred to the product (Semaan et al, 2008). Consumers associate advertising image with products and expand the connotation of personification image.…”

El efecto de la autocongruencia en un sello de denominación de origen: el sello hecho en Puerto Rico

“…La innovación del producto figura como una parte importante para comprender el comportamiento del consumidor y sus preferencias por el lugar de origen (Sahagun y Vasquez-Parraga, 2018; Fernández-Ferrín, Bande-Vilela, Klein y del Río-Araújo, 2015). Por otra parte, las estrategias de promoción pueden tener un impacto positivo o negativo según la táctica empleada (Gong y Tung, 2017;Semaan, Kocher y Gould, 2018). Por lo tanto, el grado de conocimiento que el consumidor tiene del producto y cómo percibe esta relación a través de la publicidad tendrá un impacto en su intención de compra.…”