The impact of inclusive fashion advertising with plus-size models on female consumers: The mediating role of brand warmth

Female advertising models and their body mass index (BMI): How does BMI similarity affect perceived product quality?

“…Apparel retailers aiming at enhancing their marketing effectiveness could implement BMI recognition technology (Wen & Guo, 2013) in their online and physical stores, which would allow them to dynamically tailor displays of apparel models according to their customers' BMI. Such an approach would also help marketers with an organic inclusion of plus‐size models in their marketing campaigns (Joo & Wu, 2021). This is consistent with the benefits from message personalization, which has proved to be effective in digital environments to target diverse retail consumers as in the case of social commerce (e.g., Vazquez et al, 2023).…”

“…Situating our research in the context of comparably thin female advertising models allows us to avoid confounds related to the body size (e.g., thin, average, plus-size) of the model and to explore the phenomenon under a theoretical perspective that builds on the prevalence of thin models in contemporary advertising (Cohen et al, 2017;Volonté, 2019). Hence, our work complements research about female portrayals of diverse body sizes and the positive effects of inclusive advertising of plus-size models (e.g., Åkestam et al, 2017;Cinelli & Yang, 2016;Janssen & Paas, 2014;Joo & Wu, 2021;Pounders, 2018).…”

“…Even though these BMI values are not necessarily exceptional and fall in the range of healthy weight (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021), they are substantially below the average US female population of about 28.42 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). Thus, there is an opportunity for future research to investigate whether the effect of BMI similarity shown in the current research holds in the context of plus‐size advertising models, given that some marketers have begun to employ plus‐size advertising models in their marketing campaigns (Cinelli & Yang, 2016; Joo & Wu, 2021; Pounders, 2018). For example, future research on BMI similarity might build on the research design from McFerran et al (2010a, 2010b) who manipulated body type by exposing participants to either thin or heavy people around them.…”

Do female adolescents respond better to thin or plus-size ad characters?

“…Recognizing that a sizeable portion of the adult population is overweight and more readily identifies with heavier individuals, companies such as Nike, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Subway have been featuring plus-size characters in their ads (Horovitz, 2012) and curvier models such as Ashley Graham have been appearing on the cover of fashion magazines such as Vogue, Glamour and Elle. Research indicates that many larger-sized consumers have responded favorably to these changes (Cinelli and Yang, 2016; Joo and Wu, 2021). Whether overweight and obese adolescents might respond similarly to plus-size characters is not known.…”

“…Peck and Loken (2004) and Loken and Peck (2005), for example, found that larger-sized models were evaluated as more attractive when nontraditional stereotypes were activated, while other studies (Clayton et al , 2017; Talbot et al , 2021) have reported that women reported greater body satisfaction when viewing plus-size models. Interestingly, Joo and Wu (2021) found that the use of plus-size models in ads had a positive impact on brand attitudes and purchase intentions, while Lou et al (2019) found that US women expressed increased purchase intentions upon seeing an average-sized model versus a thin model. Collectively, these studies suggest that body size might be a relevant visual cue when targeting adolescent females.…”