Abstract
The authors hypothesize and find that an advertising model’s body size has an inverted U-shaped relationship with ad attitude in the apparel product category, in which moderately thin advertising models are optimal. They assess the moderating effect of consumers’ fashion leadership on this quadratic relationship, proposing that this moderation may shift the optimum and/or create a flatter inverted U-shape. In the empirical studies, the authors find both types of moderation may occur and that there may be conditions under which slightly larger, intermediate sized models are most effective for fashion followers and that under other conditions model body size seems to be irrelevant for fashion leaders. As expected, the authors find a positive effect of ad attitude on brand attitude and purchase intentions.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Gijs van der Wal for the graphic manipulations of the advertisements, used as stimuli in the reported studies, and for useful suggestions. They also thank Kobe Millet and Remco Prins for their useful suggestions on previous drafts of this article. Thanks are also due for the suggestions that were provided during various presentations of the research.
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Janssen, D.M., Paas, L.J. Moderately thin advertising models are optimal, most of the time: Moderating the quadratic effect of model body size on ad attitude by fashion leadership. Mark Lett 25, 167–177 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-013-9249-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-013-9249-y