The influence of real women in advertising on mass market fashion brand perception

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how the weight of ideal users affects the perception of mass market fashion brands.Design/methodology/approachAn experiment was carried out in which 640 university students replied to a web survey, rating the brand personality of jeans and shirts according to Aaker's Big Five construct. The garments were worn by thin, overweight, and obese models.FindingsThe findings show that consumers’ impressions of mass market fashion brands are significantly affected by the weight of ideal users. Slender models lead to the most positive brand perception followed by obese models. Overweight user imagery is for pure fashion brand building the least attractive kind.Research limitations/implicationsA limitation of this study is the use of convenient student samples. Consequently, the generalization of the results beyond this convenience sample may be limited. It is further possible, even probable, that high fashion would suffer more from the negative imagery of overweight and obese users than mass market fashion. It would therefore be interesting to replicate this experiment using clothes of higher fashion grade and price.Practical implicationsThe demonstrated effects of user imagery support the industry practice of slim ideal female imagery.Social implicationsThe results inform the debate over skinny models vs real women in advertising.Originality/valuePrevious research regarding the effectiveness of real women in advertising has been inconclusive. This paper demonstrates not only that model weight affects consumers’ brand perception, but also how.

Does size matter? An exploration of the role of body size on brand image perceptions

“…The model's body size was manipulated to enable four different versions of the same advertising image -ranging from very skinny (clinically underweight), slender, normal and obese body silhouette. In contrast to Aagerup (2011) who used a single image to depict underweight and normal body shapes, this study used different images to capture clinically underweight and slender body sizes, as, given the prevalence of very thin imagery in fashion advertising, the core focus was to understand if, and how, this affects brand perceptions. Thompson and Gray's (1995) contour drawing scale functioned as a template to help manipulate the model's body silhouette.…”

“…Thompson and Gray's (1995) contour drawing scale functioned as a template to help manipulate the model's body silhouette. This approach of digitally manipulating photos to measure attitude effects has previously been used and validated (Lin & Kulik, 2002, Halliwell, & Dittmar, 2004, Aagerup, 2011. The model depicted in the advertisement image wore tight clothing (jeans and tight t-shirt, displaying a small amount of midriff) to ensure the body size was clearly visible.…”

“…Indeed, Heine (2010) suggests that for luxury fashion brands these may not capture relevant personality characteristics. Although Aagerup (2011) utilised Aaker's traits in his study, as he comments, not all of these may reflect desirable brand personality characteristics -in particular he suggests (p. 497) that "… as ruggedness is comprised of the traits tough, rugged, western, masculine, and outdoorsy, it may constitute a poor fit for ladies fashion". Therefore, to overcome such limitations, this study conducted consumer interviews to generate brand characteristic adjectives that were relevant to the images employed in the final survey.…”

“…It does so through an exploration of perceptions of fashion apparel advertising of German consumers, and in keeping with Halliwell and Dittmar (2004) utilises computer imaging software to enable different model sizes to be used, while keeping attractiveness constant. Although previous studies have explored the role of body size on fashion brand personality perceptions (Aagerup, 2011) and advertising effectiveness (Halliwell and Dittmar, 2004), this is the first paper to explore German consumer perceptions. Germany is Europe's largest clothing market with total sales of €61.20 billion in 2010 (Mintel, 2011) which makes the market highly attractive for fashion companies.…”

“…More specifically it explores how non-product based attributes of brand image, namely user imagery, brand personality, price positioning and brand symbolism, are impacted by model body size, thus furthering our understanding of how body size might influence brand image perceptions. Furthermore, and in contrast to Aagerup (2011), the study considers different age groups in response to Halliwell and Ditmar's (2004) call for more research on older women. The paper begins by exploring the concept of body image, and goes on to consider the role of body image in advertising and brand image, drawing on self-concept theory.…”