Date of Award

Spring 2019

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Advisor(s)

Genevieve O’Connor

Abstract

Mass media has created an unhealthy idea of beauty: a thin, young, white woman. Nevertheless, this concept is not reflective of the general population. Homophily theory suggests that consumers identify, and therefore are more likely to trust, those who are more similar to them; which begs the question “why don’t models in advertisements look more like the general us (i.e. the general population)? Within the fashion industry using more diverse (e.g., plus size, older, non-white) models is highly debated, and the rate of change is still quite slow. To address this challenge, we examined how a respondent’s perception of a product, brand personality, model appeal, and ad appeal varies by whether the respondent physically looks like the model in terms of race and body type, as well as the intersection between the two (e.g. same race and same body type). Results from a nationwide sample of 200 respondents suggest that product perception is more favorable when the respondent is more like the model in terms of race and body type. With regard to brand personality, we found differences among three of the five dimensions. Our research also shows that in respect to ad appeal, ethnicity of the model had a significant influence over responses, however body type was only found to be significant among white models. Implications for marketing and theory are discussed.

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