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Introduction
Although most models in fashion ads are thin (Clements, 2013), a counter-trend within this industry toward the use of plus-size models has recently emerged (Lin, 2014; Williams, 2015; Lin and McFerran, 2016). However, the term “plus-size” is not employed consistently. Oftentimes, the term refers to women of normal weight or moderate overweight (Lee, 2015), but there is also a growing industry trend for heavier plus-size models (Marriot, 2015) and it is now becoming more common to see models that are obese, for example supermodel Tess Holliday (D’Angelo, 2015).
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the body types of normal weight and obese models affect consumers’ perception of brand attractiveness. Although there is limited knowledge on what regular plus-size models do to/for brands, we know even less about the marketing implications of obese models. Moreover, the few studies that have been conducted on models’ body types and their marketing effects (Halliwell et al., 2005; Halliwell and Dittmar, 2004; Lunau, 2008; Neff, 2008; Aagerup, 2011) have been carried out independently from each other, in one country at a time, which means that although their findings are valid in isolation for these particular cases, they say nothing about how universal consumers’ reactions to models’ body types are. This constitutes an important knowledge gap. Global mass-market fashion and beauty companies to a greater extent than companies in other industries use standardized advertising to sell products to consumers around the world (Nelson and Hye-Jin, 2007). For fashion companies, a crucial component of success is the presentation of a coherent brand to customers around the world (Wigley and Moore, 2007). If a particular type of model does not generate uniform responses among members of different ethnic groups, companies will fail to achieve a coherent brand even if they standardize their choice of models.
Ethnic groups refer to communities or populations made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent (Oxford Dictionaries, 2017). We know that people from different ethnic groups differ in how they see the body (Demarest and Allen, 2000), but it is not clear whether the impact of obese models on consumer attitudes is uniform across markets. Nor do we know if the consumer’s own gender or body type plays a...