Executive Summary
Prior research along with current business practices suggests that beauty and attractiveness have an important role to play in the retail context. Although the effectiveness of sales appeals that use themes of beauty and attraction on brand attitudes and purchase intentions has been mixed, retail managers seem to believe strongly that beauty can be an extremely powerful persuasion tool. For example, Abercrombie & Fitch has been in the headlines for specifically trying to hire “young, attractive, athletic types, and the cheerleaders who might be their girlfriends” to work in their stores. To date, most research has focused on the use of attractive models in retail advertising but has neglected a possible role of attractiveness in the retail consumption experience itself. Thus, the current research provides insight into the effects of an attractive social influence in the context of consumer touching and contamination of store products. Specifically, the authors investigate how consumers respond when they see other people of varying levels of attractiveness touching the same products they want to purchase.
Building on previous work in contamination that shows people have lower evaluations of products that are touched by other shoppers, this research proposes that consumer contamination can also have positive effects (e.g., raise product evaluations). This prediction is tested in an actual retail environment in which a product is perceived as having been physically touched by another person. This investigation examines both the attractiveness level of the person and the role he or she plays in the shopping environment (i.e., shopper or salesperson) on consumer reactions. Furthermore, the authors consider the moderating role that gender may have on consumer contamination by varying whether the other person is a man or a woman and whether this matches or mismatches the gender of the consumer.
Three field experiments examine the impact of level of attractiveness, gender (of both the participant and the contaminator), and the contamination event. The first two studies find that male participants evaluated a product (i.e., a shirt) more favorably when they believed that a highly (versus average) attractive female shopper had previously touched the product, whereas female participants’ evaluations were equal regardless of the female shopper’s level of attractiveness. Study 2 also shows that the reverse is true when participants believed a male shopper had previously touched the product. Women evaluated the product significantly more favorably when a highly (versus average) attractive male shopper touched the product, whereas men evaluated the product equally low regardless of the male shopper’s level of attractiveness. Study 3 attempted to identify whether a physical or nonphysical contagion process explains the results while extending the contamination event to include a salesperson. The study demonstrated that a physical model best explains the results as participants evaluated a product significantly more favorably when a highly attractive salesperson had previously worn the product and had not cleaned it (versus cleaned). In contrast, when the product was previously worn by a salesperson of average attractiveness, participants evaluated the product more favorably when the product was cleaned (versus not cleaned).
Biography
Jennifer J. Argo is Roger S. Smith Associate Professor in the School of Business at the University of Alberta. Her research interest primarily focuses on understanding how social influences in a retail setting affect how a consumer thinks, feels, and behaves. Her research has been published in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Marketing. Professor Argo teaches marketing strategy to undergraduate students and consumer behavior to doctoral students. Both her research and teaching have been acknowledged through her selection to attend the Marketing Science Institute’s Young Scholars Program and being awarded the BSA undergraduate teaching award.
Darren W. Dahl is Fred H. Siller Professor in Applied Marketing Research at the University of British Columbia. His research interests are in the areas of new product design and development, creativity, consumer product adoption, the role of social influence in consumer behavior, and understanding the role of self-conscious emotions in consumption. His research has been published in various texts and journals, such as Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Management Science, and Journal of Consumer Psychology. Professor Dahl teaches courses in consumer behavior, marketing research, and strategic marketing at the undergraduate, MBA, and executive education levels. He has won awards for both his research (e.g., Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar) and his teaching (e.g., CGA Graduate Teaching Award) efforts. Before coming to the University of British Columbia, he held a faculty appointment at the University of Manitoba for four years. He also has been a visiting professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Thammasat University in Thailand. Professor Dahl received his PhD from the University of British Columbia.
Andrea C. Morales is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. She received her PhD and MS in Marketing from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Economics and Liberal Arts from the University of Texas at Austin. Before joining Arizona State University, she was Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, where she received their prestigious Golden Apple award for teaching excellence. Andrea teaches the core marketing management class in the MBA program in the W.P. Carey School. Her research interests include the role of emotions in a consumer context—specifically, disgust and gratitude—and consumer responses to retail and service environments. Her work has been published in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Retailing. For her dissertation article, she received an honorable mention for the Robert Ferber award, an award given annually to the best interdisciplinary dissertation article published in Journal of Consumer Research. In 2007, she was also selected to participate in the Marketing Science Institute’s Young Scholars Program.
J Marketing Research, Volume 45, Number 6, December 2008
View Table of Contents.