Does She Have to Be Thin? Testing the Effects of Models' Body Sizes on Advertising Effectiveness

Abstract

This study examined how different body sizes of a female model—thin, average, and large—influenced advertising effectiveness after controlling for social comparison, body mass index, and facial attractiveness. Findings from a 3 × 2 experimental study with college students (N = 201) indicated that the use of a thin model in advertising was not more effective than using an averaged-bodied model. The use of an average-sized model generated more positive brand attitude and purchase intention over the use of either thin or plus-sized models. This study also investigated the moderating roles of product-body image congruence and skepticism toward advertising to explain conditions under which body sizes are (or are not) effective. No interaction effect of product-body image congruence and a model's body size was found. Moreover, different body sizes mostly generated similar responses among the high skeptics. Of interest, the use of average-sized model generated the most positive responses among the low skeptics.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 19 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.