Viewer Responses to Character Race and Social Status in Advertising: Blacks See Color, Whites See Class

The Color of Their Collar: Effects of Social Status Portrayal in Advertising on Self-Esteem

“…However, regarding advertising effectiveness, the presence of racial outgroup members has generally been found to reduce the effectiveness of persuasive messages for minority viewers (Appiah, 2001(Appiah, , 2007Whittler & Spira, 2002). Recent research has also found that social status portrayals do not serve to influence how Black consumers respond to products in advertising (Hoplamazian & Appiah, 2013). Further, although negatively portrayed outgroup members may serve to boost self-esteem from a SIT perspective, it is unlikely such portrayals will make products more desirable for ingroup members.…”

“…However, efforts have largely centered on viewers' outward response toward the advertisements, products, or ad characters in terms of measuring degrees of advertisement liking and disliking, product purchase intentions, and character similarity and identification (e.g., Hoplamazian & Appiah, 2013;Forehand, Deshpandé, & Reed, 2002;Whittler & Spira, 2002). The consequences of advertising character race and portrayal on views pertaining to the self-such as self-esteem-have received much less attention and warrant investigation.…”

“…Rather, scholars argue that socioeconomic status can have a greater effect on Whites' evaluations of a source than race alone (Coleman, Jussim, & Kelley, 1995;Smedley & Bayton, 1978). In fact, Whites have been found to use social status as a primary cue of similarity to characters in print advertisements (Hoplamazian & Appiah, 2013), although this effect did not directly influence advertising outcomes.…”

“…Social status was manipulated by using bodies of significantly different socioeconomic appearance as determined by the pretest. White-collar (business suit) dress was used for the higher status conditions, and blue-collar (informal) dress was used for the lower status conditions, as these portrayals have been successful proxies for socioeconomic status in previous advertising research (Hoplamazian & Appiah, 2013;Qualls & Moore, 1990). See Figure 1 for sample advertisements.…”

“…Participants' purchase intentions were measured using three items assessing the degree to which they were willing to buy, try, and seek out the product on a 7-point scale (Hoplamazian & Appiah, 2013). The items were averaged to create a single purchase intention index for each advertisement (α = 0.81).…”