ABSTRACT
Product pictures with “headless” decorative models, whose heads have been cropped out of the pictures, are often used in online retailing. This article reports findings from three ...experiments comparing attitudes for clothing displayed in pictures with cropped and uncropped male and female models, focusing on the moderating effects of consumer and model gender and the mediating effects of product self‐referencing. Results indicate that the effects on product attitudes are moderated by the gender of both models and consumers and mediated by self‐referencing. Pictures with uncropped male models result in more positive product attitudes, irrespective of consumer gender. For product pictures with female models, male consumer attitudes are also more positive for products displayed with uncropped models. In fact, attitudes are only more positive for clothing shown with cropped, “headless” models when both models and consumers are female. Implications of the findings for research and practitioners are discussed.
•We examine consumer size perceptions based on online product pictures.•Online size perceptions require more effort and are less accurate.•Size perceptions take more time and consumers pay more ...attention to labels online.•Consumers overestimate the sizes of small products online.•Consumers underestimate the sizes of large products online.
This study examines consumers’ liquid volume size perceptions based on standardized product pictures in online stores. Four empirical studies compare liquid volume size perceptions for the same products when displayed online and offline. The findings indicate that size perceptions require more effort online than they do offline and that the online display decreases the accuracy of the size perceptions. Online size perceptions require more effort in terms of time and visual attention, as consumers need to study product labels to determine product sizes. The study also introduces a new visual bias to consumer research: the familiar size bias. A consideration of this bias reveals that consumer size perceptions are less accurate online, where consumers tend to overestimate the sizes of small products and underestimate the sizes of large products.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of happiness expressed by service firm employees when they are depicted in marketing communications materials, such as printed ads and ...videos.
Design/methodology/approach
Two experiments were conducted in a fitness service setting, in which employee display of happiness was manipulated (low vs high).
Findings
Both experiments showed that expressions of high levels of happiness produced a more positive attitude toward the service employee than expressions of low levels of happiness. Moreover, the impact of the expression of happiness on the evaluation of the employee was mediated by several variables, which suggests that the influence of depicted employees’ emotional expressions can take several routes.
Practical implications
The results imply that service firms should not only be mindful about which specific employee they select for appearing in marketing communications materials, they should also pay attention to the emotional displays of selected employees.
Originality/value
The present study contributes to previous research by assessing a set of potential mediators to explain why displays of happiness influence consumers, and by examining these effects in a marketing communications setting in which the customer is exposed to still images or video-based representations of the employee. The present study also focuses explicitly on happiness rather than on smiles.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of happiness expressed by service firm employees when they are depicted in marketing communications materials, such as printed ads and ...videos.
Design/methodology/approach
Two experiments were conducted in a fitness service setting, in which employee display of happiness was manipulated (low vs high).
Findings
Both experiments showed that expressions of high levels of happiness produced a more positive attitude toward the service employee than expressions of low levels of happiness. Moreover, the impact of the expression of happiness on the evaluation of the employee was mediated by several variables, which suggests that the influence of depicted employees’ emotional expressions can take several routes.
Practical implications
The results imply that service firms should not only be mindful about which specific employee they select for appearing in marketing communications materials, they should also pay attention to the emotional displays of selected employees.
Originality/value
The present study contributes to previous research by assessing a set of potential mediators to explain why displays of happiness influence consumers, and by examining these effects in a marketing communications setting in which the customer is exposed to still images or video-based representations of the employee. The present study also focuses explicitly on happiness rather than on smiles.
This paper reports a theme‐based structured systematic literature review of the growing body of marketing research about elderly consumers. By synthesizing, explicating, and relating this research, ...the paper offers a structured view of the past and present state of the research field and integrates it into a theoretical framework. The literature review was based on 209 marketing research articles published from the early 1970s to 2021. It identified 13 research topics, which were subsequently grouped into three themes: (1) describing and defining the elderly market segment, (2) age changes and the elderly consumer, and (3) marketing responses of elderly consumers. Based on these themes, the paper presents a theoretical framework and provides directions for future marketing research on elderly consumers. The systematic literature review thus provides clarity to a wide and interdisciplinary research field, facilitating its continued growth.
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate cross-gender effects of gender stereotypes in advertising. More specifically, it proposes that the negative effects found in studies of women’s reactions to ...stereotyped female portrayals should hold across gender portrayal and target audience gender.
Design/methodology/approach
In two experimental studies, the effects of stereotyped portrayals (vs non-stereotyped portrayals) across gender are compared.
Findings
The results show that advertising portrayals of women and men have a presumed negative influence on others, leading to higher levels of ad reactance, which has a negative impact on brand-related effects across model and participant gender, and for gender stereotypes in terms of physical characteristics and roles.
Research limitations/implications
Whereas previous studies have focused on reactions of women to female stereotypes, the current paper suggests that women and men alike react negatively to stereotyped portrayals of other genders.
Practical implications
The results indicate that marketers can benefit from adapting a more mindful approach to the portrayals of gender used in advertising.
Originality/value
The addition of a cross-gender perspective to the literature on gender stereotypes in advertising is a key contribution to this literature.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer response to pictures of smiling models in marketing, focusing on the roles of emotional contagion from the smiling models and the perceived ...typicality of marketing with smiling models.
Design/methodology/approach
– This paper reports the findings from three experimental studies, comparing consumer response to two versions of an advertisement (Study 1) and a packaging design (Study 2 and 3), including either a picture of a smiling or a non-smiling model. To measure consumer response, a combination of self-report questionnaires and eye-tracking methodology was used.
Findings
– The pictures of smiling models produced more consumer joy and more positive attitudes for the marketing. The positive effects on attitudes were mediated by consumer joy, and the effects on consumer joy were mediated by the perceived typicality of the marketing with smiling models.
Originality/value
– Despite the ubiquity of photos of smiling faces in marketing, very few studies have isolated the effects of the smile appeal on consumer response to marketing objects. By comparing marketing where the same model is shown smiling or with a neutral facial expression, the positive effects were isolated. The roles of emotional contagion and perceived typicality in this mechanism were also examined and implications of the findings for research and practitioners are discussed.
Purpose
Co-creating consumers are often featured prominently in marketing communications for new co-created products. Previous research has only investigated the responses of non-participating ...consumers by describing co-creating consumers in text. This paper aims to examine consumer responses to combinations of text descriptions and pictures of co-creating consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
An experimental study used a reference group perspective to explain non-participating consumer responses to communications about co-creation with consumers in new product development.
Findings
Pictures of co-creating consumers moderate the effects of texts describing consumer co-creation on brand attitudes. The brand effects of describing the co-creating consumer in text as belonging to a dissociative group are negative when the picture looks similar to the non-participating consumers. If the co-creating consumer looks dissimilar to the in-group, the reference group text has no effect. Self–brand connection mediates these effects on brand attitudes.
Research limitations/implications
A reference group perspective is introduced as a boundary condition to the research on the communication of consumer co-creation. The effects on brand attitudes depend on the pictorial representations.
Practical implications
Companies should be advised to avoid portrayals of co-creating consumers that could cause dissociation in relevant consumer groups.
Originality/value
Neither reference group associations nor pictorial descriptions of co-creating consumers, have hitherto been investigated with regards to consumer co creation, despite the frequent inclusion of consumer imagery in advertising for consumer co-created new products.
Mannequins are ubiquitous; this research investigates a specific element of mannequin style, namely, the presence or absence of a humanized head. Study 1 demonstrates that in physical stores, the ...presence of a humanized head enhances purchase intentions for the merchandise displayed on that mannequin. However, in online stores, mannequin styles with and without humanized heads are equally effective. Study 2 confirms the physical store results among customers with less fashion knowledge (novices), but among customers with more fashion knowledge (experts), the results reverse, such that mannequins without humanized heads enhance purchase intentions. Further, accessories are more likely to be viewed by experts when the mannequin is headless. These results are based on experiments whose dependent measures included both survey and eye-tracking data.
•Investigates how the presence/absence of mannequin head impacts shopping behavior.•In physical stores, head enhances purchase intentions for merchandise displayed.•In online stores, head doesn't impact purchase intentions for displayed clothing.•In physical store, head enhances purchase intentions, but only for novices.•In physical store, headless enhances purchase intentions for experts.
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