When thinking is beneficial and when it is not: The effects of thin and round advertising models

Abstract

This study addresses the advertising effectiveness of round and thin models. Integrating previous findings and theories, the authors predict and find that impulsive and reflective product evaluations as responses to thin and round advertisement models diverge. Specifically, four experiments indicate that impulsive product evaluations follow a priming logic, such that the beauty of the model spills over directly onto product evaluations; thin models thus produce more favorable implicit responses than do round models. For reflective product evaluations however, this pattern appears reversed. Moreover, these explicit product evaluations are mediated by campaign liking.

Retracted: The Self-Activation Effect of Advertisements: Ads Can Affect Whether and How Consumers Think about the Self

“…[this] implies that comparison relevance is determined by the social nature of perceivers and not necessarily by the social nature of the target." In line with this idea, the pattern of findings in the current studies 2 and 4 may be interpreted as a social comparison effect: exposure to beauty-enhancing products in an advertisement lowered consumers' self-evaluations in much the same way as exposure to thin models in advertisements has been found to lower self-evaluations (Häfner and Trampe 2009;Smeesters and Mandel 2006). It should be noted that the contrast effect typically observed after exposure to thin models seems a more general phenomenon than the social comparison effects reported in the current studies.…”

Intended and Unintended Reverberation of Traditional and Pro‐age Commercials as a Function of Viewer Age

“…We simply do not know whether the use of pro-age models promotes or decreases positive self-esteem, both among their target audience (middle-aged women) and young adults. Contrary to the widespread assumption that young models have a universally negative impact on viewers, or that pro-age campaigns have a universally positive influence, they could have both positive and negative effects, depending on the match or mismatch between viewer age and model age (Häfner & Trampe, 2009;Häfner et al, 2008).…”

“…Future research should determine if the relationship between the effectiveness of campaign models and sales is mediated by viewers' self-esteem. Alternatively, any affect elicited by the models might spill over to the advertised products themselves, as observed by Häfner and Trampe (2009), who found that product evaluations were directly affected by thin and round models and mediated by campaign liking (rather than self-esteem). It might be possible to use realworld models with normal body shapes and average attractiveness and still modify consumer behaviour, just without any harmful affective consequences (cf.…”

Implicit and Explicit Measures: What Their Dissociations Reveal About the Workings of Advertising

“…For example, one study used an affective priming task in combination with explicit attitude measures to examine the effect of skinny or full-figured models on product liking (Häfner & Trampe, 2009). Here, findings show a positive effect of skinny (versus full-figured) models on implicit product evaluations, but a negative effect on explicit product evaluations.…”

“…The studies that found advertising to have a different impact on implicit than explicit attitudes (Carraro et al, 2010;Forehand & Perkins, 2005;Häfner & Trampe, 2009) can also be explained in terms of the different evaluative processes. In these studies, there were rather obvious cues that the intention of the advertisement was to persuade people (think about the celebrity voice-overs, the skinny models, and the negative campaigns of political candidates).…”