RETAILOMANIA

Advertising Product Results? Put Images Closer Together

2013-05-14T20:13:00.003+02:00

Consumers believe a product is more effective when images of the product and its desired outcome are placed closer together in advertisements, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“Merely changing the spatial proximity between the image of a product and its desired effect in an advertisement influences judgment of product effectiveness. Consumers tend to judge the product to be more effective when the two images are closer versus farther apart,” write authors Boyoun (Grace) Chae (University of British Columbia), Xiuping Li (National University of Singapore), and Rui (Juliet) Zhu (University of British Columbia).
Many advertisements promoting the effectiveness of a product show both a product image (anti-wrinkle cream) and an image of the promised results (a face without wrinkles). Objectively, the distance between the two images should not affect how consumers judge the product’s quality.
In a series of studies, consumers were asked to judge the effectiveness of a variety of products promising specific results (acne cream, pain reliever, nasal allergy spray, bug spray, fabric softener). Consumers tended to assume a product was more effective when its image was placed closer to that of its promised effect. The proximity of the images was more influential when consumers were less knowledgeable about a product category or when the results were expected sooner rather than later.
Companies should understand the subtle effect that spatial proximity between images has on consumer judgment of product effectiveness. When companies want to promote the immediate effects of their products, images of the product and its desired effect should be put closer to each other in an advertisement.
“The spatial proximity between visual representations of cause and effect in an advertisement can influence consumer judgments of product effectiveness. The closer the distance between an image of a product (an acne treatment) and that of its potential effect (a smooth face), the more effective consumers will judge the product to be,” the authors conclude.

Why we love it or hate it: The 3 E's

2013-05-11T17:42:00.002+02:00

Why do brands such as Manchester United and Apple capture hearts and minds? When consumers feel a strong emotional attachment to a brand, there is seemingly nothing we would not do–from paying more for it to defending it against detractors. For all the millions of dollars spent on advertising and other efforts, however, consumers rarely feel an affinity for brands. So how do marketers make consumers develop a strong attachment for a product or service? According to a recent study from USC Marshall School of Business, it is achieved by appealing to people's aesthetic needs (enticing/annoying to the self), functional needs (enabling/disabling for the self) and spiritual needs (whether something is enriching/impoverishing). In short, brands to which we are loyal, evoke warm feelings and provide pleasure, speak to who we are and help manage the problems we have in daily life.
"Attachment-aversion (AA) model of customer-brand relationships," published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology and co-authored by USC Marshall's C. Whan Park, Joseph A. DeBell Chair in Business Administration and professor of marketing; Andreas B. Eisingerich, associate professor of marketing, Imperial College (London) Business School; and Jason Whan Park, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, identifies three factors that must be in place in order to build strong emotional attachment to brands and, conversely, limit aversion to a product or service. Marketers who want to build emotional affinity for their brands need to appeal to consumers on three fronts: strong aesthetics or self-enticing properties such as the taste of deep chocolate or the sleek design of a European car, have self-enabling benefits or the ability to solve customer problems (such as Swiss Army Knife, which allows one to feel power over one's environment) and self-enriching benefits or those that resonate with customers' beliefs or values and support their self-identities (activated for example, by location brands such as one's hometown, a membership to nonprofit or a luxury brand such as Rolex that is aspirational). These factors, the three E's—enticement, enablement and enrichment—are critical for all brands and their interplay determines our distance to the brand: whether we are more attached or have an aversion.
"There are many cases these days where people are very adverse to certain brands. This is a serious issue," said Park. "Why people become so antagonistic toward a brand is based on these three reasons, when it displeases them aesthetically or doesn't help them solve their daily problems or is contrary to their personal beliefs."
To test their attachment-aversion model, the researchers carefully developed the four-item scale of the attachment-aversion measure and conducted three studies, assessing consumer purchasing behavior over time, based on carefully chosen products: Apple, a product brand that draws strong consumer loyalty from their compelling design and emphasis on creativity; Manchester United, a soccer franchise that tends to generate extreme reactions in Great Britain (both positive and negative); and a grocery store chain in Austria. The scholars measured attachment and aversion by looking at attitudes and actions: what consumers would do for these brands, including defending them against criticism, participating in an affiliated charity event and feeling happy (sad) when good (bad) things happened to a brand. The researchers found that their model was better able to predict consumer reactions through not only their stated future intentions, but actual purchasing behavior during the final study.
Whether a brand was self-enriching was the stronger predictor of whether there would be a small distance/attachment or a larger distance/aversion to a brand. The researchers cite the strength of Nike's "Just Do It" as an example. In addition, the researchers also found that the older consumers were more motivated by self-enriching qualities of brands versus self-enticing benefits (aesthetic appeal), while the opposite was true for younger consumers.
The study also distinguished two other attitudes towards brands that marketers need to address quite differently: the mixed (both positive and negative) perceptions of a brand and indifference. Brand managers need to focus on reducing the distance between customers and a brand, by examining how much value customers perceive from the current offering of a brand with respect to those three E's.
"Great brands simultaneously offer sensory pleasure and self-pride. Sensory pleasure comes from the self-enticing product cues (e.g., product design, package design, color, brand logo, etc.). Self-pride comes from two different sources: self-enabling benefits of a product and self-enriching message of a brand," said Park.
Self-enabling benefits provide a boost of self-efficacy and self-confidence. "That's when you feel proud of yourself—when you can deal with daily problems without difficulty and feel secure," said Park. "Self-enriching messages of a brand makes you feel good about yourself because you relate yourself to its moral values and philosophies."

We almost always buy in the same shops

2013-05-07T08:21:00.000+02:00

Consumers are a lot more predictable than they seem. This is the main discovery of an international scientific study, in which the Universidad Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M) has participated, which reveals how to predict people’s shopping patterns.

This research study attempts to identify just how predictable we consumers are with respect to shopping patterns. As explained by one of its authors, Esteban Moro of the Department of Mathematics at UC3M, “the main conclusion we have drawn is that people’s behavior is repetitive when it comes to visiting and spending in shops, and as such it is possible to have some success in predicting where we are going to buy in the future”. Published in Scientific Reports, the open journal of the Nature group, the study was also produced by scientists from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, the University of California in San Diego (U.S.A), M.I.T (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and NICTA (Australia).

In order to carry out the study, researchers analyzed hundreds of thousands of de-identified economic transactions made with credit cards on both sides of the Atlantic. The goal was to find the ´predictability’ of the time series of consumption in almost a year’s worth of credit card purchases made by more than 50 million accounts. “What we found”- the researcher points out- “is that people are quite regular when visiting (and purchasing in shops and that there is quite a bit of ´predictability’, above all in the long term”. To put it another way, it is difficult to predict where your next purchase will be on the basis of where you are doing your shopping now. However, as Professor Moro indicates, it is possible to know with a fair degree of probability where you will go shopping during the next month. In short: we go back to the same shops with remarkable regularity.
As pointed out by the researchers, the study has various applications that range from geomarketing (marketing in specific areas of the city), provision of points of sale, locating cash tellers or detecting fraud. There is still not enough information available to the researchers as to whether this data can be extrapolated to cash operations.

Over the past few years there has been a good deal of research on the ‘predictability’ of social behavior. By using different data sources (telephones, Wi-Fi points, GPS data, etc.), many groups of scientists have studied how predictable our mobility is- that is, the routes, walks and places that we use to move about in the city. While this mobility is determined by the tasks we have to carry out throughout the day (going to work, going home, etc.), there are also many variables throughout the day that are not completely predictable (where to, take out money, etc.). As Esteban Moro puts it, “our goal was to try to observe to what extent this ‘predictability’ also exists in economic decisions (how much and where I use the credit card). Although they are conditioned by our daily mobility, these decisions have a completely different dimension.”

The Rational Consumer

2013-05-06T07:31:00.000+02:00

Does the rational consumer exist, or is shopping just a result of chemical reactions?

Hubspot Magazine May/June 2013

2013-05-05T15:56:00.000+02:00

Read it for free by clicking here.

Our Futures Look Bright

2013-04-19T21:53:00.001+02:00

People believe they’ll be happy in the future, even when they imagine the many bad things that could happen, because they discount the possibility that those bad things will actually occur, according to a new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the changeability of people’s perceptions of happiness,” says psychological scientist Ed O’Brien of the University of Michigan. “On some days our futures seem bright and exciting, but on other days the same exact future event can feel stressful and terrifying.”

With this new research, O’Brien wanted to explore whether fluency — how easy or difficult it feels to think about different events — might play a role in how people think about well-being.

He conducted five studies, asking participants to complete online surveys with questions that addressed past and possible future experiences and perceptions of well-being.

In line with previous research, fluency amplified the effects of past events on participants’ reports of well-being: The easier it was for people to generate positive past experiences, the happier they said they were in those times. Likewise, the easier it was to come up with negative past experiences, the more unhappy people said they were.

But, in an interesting twist, this trend did not hold true for future experiences.

While thinking about positive future events was still correlated with people’s predictions of future happiness, thinking of negative future events didn’t have the corresponding effect — easily imagining negative possibilities didn’t sway people to believe that they would be unhappy in the future.

“People seem to ‘explain away’ the presence of bad possibilities, thinking that they won’t really occur,” explains O’Brien. “But they have a harder time explaining the absence of good possibilities. The absence of good events in our future feels much worse than the presence of bad ones.”

That doesn’t mean bad things can’t happen to our friends, though. When participants were asked to imagine events and happiness for one of their close friends, they predicted that negative events would have a significant effect on their friend’s well-being.

Having to recall many positive events was more difficult than having to come up with only a few, and participants’ happiness ratings reflected this: People who were asked to recall twelve past events gave lower ratings of happiness for that period than people who were asked to recall only three experiences.

“Once you struggle to think about the good things, your life seems a lot less happy,” says O’Brien. “Ironically, trying to think of ten good things that could happen to you and struggling with that list may be worse for your wellbeing than thinking about only two good things without any problem.”

But, just as before, the trend didn’t apply to negative events: There was no difference in predicted happiness whether participants were asked to think about three or twelve negative events.

These findings suggest that, when it comes to negative events in the future, fluency doesn’t seem to matter — people expect that experiencing a few negative events is just as unlikely as experiencing many negative events, and they discount the likelihood that the experiences will occur at all.

O’Brien hopes to continue this research, looking for individual differences in the patterns, and also applying them to other domains such as consumer behavior: “Think about the counter-intuitive implications for increasing real buying behavior and customer satisfaction — maybe customers should be asked to consider all the bad things that could go wrong with the product they’re about to buy, rather than the good.”

Ultimately, these findings have implications for how we think about what makes us happy.

“Anecdotally, many people endorse the belief that more happiness in quantity yields more happiness in quality. But these findings suggest that struggling to think about many happy aspects of your life can yield less happiness than easily imagining the negative aspects,” O’Brien concludes.

Why humans are notoriously incapable at predicting future events...

2013-04-11T20:37:00.000+02:00

Why humans are notoriously incapable at predicting future events...

No Regrets: Close That Menu and Enjoy Your Meal More

2013-04-09T20:42:00.003+02:00

Certain physical acts of completion provide consumers with a sense of closure that makes them happier with their purchases, according to a new study in
the Journal of Consumer Research.
“Choice closure, the psychological process through which consumers perceive a decision as complete and stop reassessing their choice, can increase satisfaction with decisions involving many alternatives. Subtle physical acts that symbolize closure can trigger choice closure and increase satisfaction,” write authors Yangjie Gu, Simona Botti, and David Faro (all London Business School).
After making a purchase, consumers often revisit their decision and think about other options that were available. This tendency can lower satisfaction with a decision, especially when the choice is a difficult one.
In a series of studies, consumers were asked to choose from a large selection of products (chocolates, teas, biscuits) and then either performed or didn’t perform a physical act of closure. In one study, consumers were asked to choose one of twenty-four chocolates displayed on a tray covered by a lid and then either put the lid back on the tray or not before eating the selected chocolate. In other studies, consumers chose an item from an extensive menu and either closed the menu or not before tasting the chosen item. Consumers who closed the lid or the menu liked what they ate more than those who didn’t perform an act of closure.
Not all acts of completion are equally effective in facilitating choice closure. For example, acts of closure performed by the decision maker after making a choice are more likely to lead to choice closure.
“Consumers are less likely to be satisfied with a purchase when they compare it to other options. Physical acts of closure enable consumers to perceive a difficult decision as complete and limit their tendency to compare their selection with the options they have rejected. Since such comparisons tend to be unfavorable, closure triggered by acts of closure will increase consumer satisfaction when there are many choices,” the authors conclude.

High-resolutions scans + motion sensors = virtual fitting room

2013-03-27T14:48:00.002+01:00

The Soda Report vol 1 2013 Digital Marketing Outlook

2013-03-25T19:38:00.002+01:00

The SoDA Report (Volume 1, 2013) from Society of Digital Agencies

Do We Forgive Television Characters for their Bad Actions?

2013-03-23T20:37:00.002+01:00

When watching a television show, the bad decisions that characters make are more likely to be forgiven if you think they have a good reason for their behavior, according to a study out of the University of Colorado.

The article, published in the March 2013 issue of Mass Communication and Society, analyzes why individuals still cheer for a character, even when that character has made a wrong decision. The authors found that people were more likely to morally disengage, which occurs when someone justifies the immoral actions of a character, if a character’s motivation was seen as selfless rather than selfish.

“We want people to know that in many ways, we respond to entertainment characters as we would to individuals in real life,” Dr. Maja K. Krakowiak, the article’s author said. “That is, we judge characters and their actions based on the character’s intentions, and to a lesser degree, on the outcomes that the character’s actions produce. However, our tolerance for immorality is likely greater in entertainment than it is in real life.”

Over 120 participants were surveyed after reading different stories containing the same characters. The stories varied on the choices one of the main characters made and the outcomes these decisions had. The research may help to explain why characters from shows such as Breaking Bad and Dexter may be breaking the law, but audiences still tune in every week. Viewers may be more likely to morally disengage from Breaking Bad’s Walter White because he is making and selling drugs, but is doing so to ensure his family is taken care of after he passes away from his terminal illness.

“So many characters in entertainment content behave immorally yet people seem to love these characters and root for them to succeed,” Krakowiak said. “We conducted this study to better understand how people are able to justify these immoral actions and how this may impact their perceptions of characters.”

Why gamification is serious business

2013-03-19T08:03:00.001+01:00

By using the mechanics of digital gaming, companies in a wide range of industries are boosting innovation, building more effective marketing campaigns and driving value. Download the article by Accenture by clicking here .

The ultimate guide to successful marketing and advertising

2013-03-19T07:28:00.002+01:00

Ultimate guide to successful marketing and advertising from André Skagervik

Marketing In 2020

2013-03-13T20:32:00.001+01:00

Get ready for Marketing 2020 from steven van belleghem

Survival of the Most Adaptable: Becoming a change-ready culture

2013-03-12T07:45:00.003+01:00

Download the pdf by clicking here.

New Research Shows How Consumers Use and Value Online and Social Media During Purchases

2013-03-11T08:42:00.003+01:00

Marketers continue to grapple with how to optimize the role of online and social media in their media mix. A new study from leading market research firm Radius Global Market Research (Radius GMR) sheds light on the matter by asking consumers about how they use online and social media as they consider purchases within a number of key product categories.

“While marketers understand the importance of managing their brands online, there’s still uncertainty as to the proper weight to put behind digital media channels, especially social media, to optimize return on investment,” says Chip Lister, Managing Director of Radius GMR. “Our study put the question to consumers, and results yield some important insights that may impact marketing strategies.”

Social media is used less often than traditional channels for informing purchase decisions, but its influence is still meaningful.
Radius GMR’s study shows that consumers remain much more likely to obtain or share information via more traditional online channels (typically used 50% of the time or more, depending on product or service category) than they are via social media when considering a new purchase. However, social media still has an influence over anywhere from 9% to 39% of purchases, depending on the product or service category.

Consumers turn to online resources most often for big ticket and emotional purchases.
Consumers surveyed by Radius GMR indicted that they are most likely to use online information to inform purchase decisions around big-ticket purchases, such as travel (76% used during last purchase), electronics (73%), automobiles (67%), baby care equipment (66%), and household appliances (64%). Social networking is most often used around baby care equipment (39%), electronics (35%), automobiles (28%), Toys and games (23%), and household appliances (23%). Online sources and social media are less often used around several CPG and personal care categories including makeup/personal care, home care products, OTC pharmaceuticals, beverages, and packaged foods.

“It’s apparent that social media is more influential in those more emotionally connected service and product categories like baby care,” adds Lister. “From our survey results it appears that mothers tend to seek out via social media the opinion of other mothers and are influenced by them fairly often.”

Consumers are less likely to engage online about brands after making a purchase.
As a general rule, purchasers across all categories are most likely to utilize online sources before making a purchase vs. sharing information about their experience with the product after purchase. Two categories are an exception to this rule. Purchasers of personal care and makeup products are more likely to gather or share information after purchasing than they are while making a purchase.

And smartphone purchasers are almost as likely to utilize an online source after a purchase as they are during a purchase.

Social CRM

2013-03-08T08:39:00.001+01:00

Chill out dude, it’s only Social CRM from Nicolas Moerman

Big Data

2013-03-05T20:34:00.002+01:00

Big data is big business nowadays.

A Primer on Big Data for Business from Leslie Bradshaw

Social Media Landscape 2013

2013-03-05T20:34:00.001+01:00

CMO has updated the guide to the social media landscape by cutting out the clutter from earlier years and has focused on "six key social sites that are of real use to CMOs and their digital marketing plans."

Download it by clicking here or watch the interactive version here.

Thank God for Showrooming!

2013-03-05T11:01:00.003+01:00

Showrooming takes place when a consumer examines a product in a traditional offline store, but then chooses to buy it from an online retailer at a lower price.

Showrooming is percieved as a threat by many traditional retailers. Their side of the story is that consumers research online to come down to a shortlist of products, and then go to a brick and mortar store in order to see and touch the products to help them make a decision, after which they go home and order it online, or while instore by using their smartphone.

So how can I thank God for showrooming???

Well, you could look at it from another standpoint. The fact that consumers inspired by some internet retailer that have invested good marketing money and made them come to your store, with an intention to buy a product that you carry. That is that someone else has triggered a buying process that has led to that you get visitors eager to examine your merchanise. After all, life could be worse.

The trick is to make them shop while in the store instead of letting them out with empty hands.

1.Sob, sob. Stop whining about the good old pre-internet days. Online retailing is not to blame if you loose business. You are, for not keeping pace with development. If online shopping wouldn´t kill you, another competitor will. New concepts and offerings has been a part of retailing the last 200 years. Products and categories flows in and out of

2.They are in your store. Why not make them buy?! Focus on what online is not.

- Touching and feeling the products is the key to trigger sales. That is why Apple store have everything on easy to touch displays.

- Human touch is a winner no matter if you are a sales person or recruiter for the Marine Corps. People that touches others are percieved as warmer, and more trustworthy than others. An online retailer could never do that.

- The product is available right away. No shipping, no charges and no delay. Even if there is a minor price difference between you and the online retailer, the odds are on your side.

- Even if they leave without having bought the object of desire that originally triggered the visit, there are still hundreds of possibilities that they end up shopping something else. If not, your store probably was´nt so tempting and you will soon be out of business anyway.

3. No, you probably can´t beat online when it comes to price. But if the price difference is to big, you will have to compete with something else:

- Extended guarantees

- Home delivery

- Payment solutions

- Store environment

- Service package

4. Make your own online presence in synk with your offline experience. Easy to search, easy to choose, easy to buy.

5. Experiment, invent and re-invent. Retail has never been an easy business. New competitors have taken market shares from the old ones since the dawn of retailing and there is only one way to react. By constant change and re-invention. Lift would have been that way even if the internet would´nt have been invented.

Why Are Consumers More Willing to Take Risks When They Can Compare Products?

2013-03-04T18:30:00.003+01:00

Consumers are more willing to take risks and accept delays in exchange for greater benefits when they are able to compare products, according to a new study in
the Journal of Consumer Research.
“Rationally speaking, consumer preferences should be the same whether their product choices are presented side-by-side and evaluated comparatively or presented one at a time and evaluated in isolation, but it makes a remarkable difference in consumer decision-making,” write authors Christopher K. Hsee (University of Chicago Booth School of Business), Jiao Zhang (University of Miami), Liangyan Wang, and Shirley Zhang (both Shanghai Jiaotong University).
Consumers regularly face decisions such as whether to buy a current iPhone model today or wait six months for a newer and better model (a time preference dilemma), or whether to invest retirement money in a risk-free savings account or a risky mutual fund with higher expected returns (a risk preference dilemma).
In one study, consumers had to choose between two internet service plans. One featured a higher speed but wouldn’t be available for three months; the other featured a lower speed but was available immediately. When both options were presented side-by-side, consumers were willing to pay significantly more for faster service with delayed installation. When they were presented with only one of the two options, there was a stark “preference reversal” and consumers were willing to pay significantly more for slower service with immediate installation.
Consider a financial services company offering both safe (lower expected return) and risky (higher expected return) investments. All investment options should be presented side-by-side to allow comparison if the company wants to encourage investors to choose riskier products with higher expected returns, while options should be featured individually to encourage investors to choose safe products.
“When consumers can compare products, they tend to prefer delayed or riskier options with greater potential benefits, but tend to value certain and immediate benefits when product comparison is not possible,” the authors conclude.

Product Promotion: When Do Emotional Appeals Trump Celebrity Spokespeople?

2013-03-04T18:29:00.003+01:00

Emotional appeals could be more effective than celebrities when promoting products related to a consumer’s identity, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“Specific emotions can help consumers strengthen their identities by providing information about how to feel a particular identity, especially when emotions are associated with distinct patterns of action. Consumers tend to choose products that bolster emotions associated with a particular identity,” write authors Nicole Verrochi Coleman (University of Pittsburgh) and Patti Williams (Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania).
Imagine you are selling a new energy drink targeted at two different groups of consumers—athletes and business people. Each group might respond very differently to the same upbeat and energetic appeal consistent with the product’s benefits.
In one study, athletes chose to listen to “angry” music and indicated they would pay more to see “angry” bands in concert, while volunteers chose to listen to “sad” music and were willing to pay more to attend “sad” concerts. In another study, athletes found an advertisement more persuasive when the model’s face in the ad expressed anger, while volunteers were more persuaded by a model with a sad face, and environmentalists by a model expressing disgust.
Consumers can benefit from matching their emotional experiences to their identity. For example, turning up some angry head banging music on the way to the gym might make you a better athlete, or listening to sad love songs on the way to the soup kitchen might make you a better volunteer.
“Identity-based marketing has generally used spokespeople but poor performance or personal issues can undermine a spokesperson’s reputation and reflect poorly on a brand. However, companies can employ identity-based marketing without directly mentioning an identity by simply incorporating emotions related to that identity,” the authors conclude.

Five Fresh Trend Predictions for 2013

2013-02-28T15:05:00.001+01:00

Five Trend Predictions for 2013 from Social@Ogilvy

Nike´s interactive window

2013-02-28T07:51:00.001+01:00

Do Thin Models and Celebrities Really Help Sell to Women?

2013-02-27T17:43:00.005+01:00

Advertisers who put images of female celebrities and models next to their products spark scorn rather than shopping, according to new research.A new study from Warwick Business School has found women are turned off products placed next to ‘attractive’ images of female models, but they are likely to buy the product if the images are used subtly instead.

Previous studies on how using attractive models affects women’s perception of the product have been contradictory, but a new look at the subject has found that only adverts using images of perfectly shaped models subtly actually lead to consumers liking the product.

Dr Tamara Ansons, Assistant Professor at Warwick Business School, said: “To successfully use idealised images in marketing communications, they should be presented subtly. “We found that the way the picture of the perfectly shaped model was used was very important in determining a positive or negative effect on women’s self-perception.

“We showed that when exposure to these images of beautiful models is subtle, a sub-conscious automatic process of upward social comparison takes place leading to a negative self-perception. But that led to a more positive attitude towards the brand. “Yet when the exposure to the idealised image of a woman is blatant, a conscious process is activated and consumers employ defensive coping strategies, ie they belittle the model or celebrity to restore a positive perception of themselves. So the product in the advert becomes associated with negative reactions.”

The women were put through various experiments including being shown magazine pages that contained different adverts, one of which was for a vodka. Some women received adverts that did not feature an attractive model, other women received adverts that had a bikini-clad model on the opposite page to a picture of the vodka – meaning they were subtly exposed to the idealised female image - and the third had the attractive model on a whole page next to the vodka – meaning they were blatantly exposed to the idealised female image.

Through a series of tests the team of researchers found different responses to the adverts from the women. Dr Ansons said: “Attractive female models and celebrities are routinely used in advertisements and yet previous research has shown mixed reactions, some have found the effect to be positive, while others have found it to be negative.

“We wanted to find out why this was. We found that a woman’s self-perception and consequent effects on product evaluation depend on the degree of attention paid to the idealised image of a woman in advertisements.”

This study in a paper entitled ‘Defensive reactions to slim female images in advertising: The moderating role of mode of exposure’ published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes could have far reaching implications for the marketing industry and how they use models and celebrities to sell their products. “It is important to understand when we might expect positive effects by using idealised body images in marketing on customers’ self-perception and how that influences purchase decisions,” said Dr Ansons. “We showed that when consumers are blatantly exposed to idealised images of thin and beautiful women they are more likely to use a defensive coping strategy to boost self-evaluation by denigrating the pictured woman. This can negatively affect the products these models endorse through the transfer of the negative evaluation of the model to the endorsed product.

“However when subtly exposed to these perfectly shaped models consumers do not engage in defensive coping by disparaging the model. Instead it leads to negative self-evaluation but does not interfere with their evaluation of the pictured model. Thus, the generally positive evaluation of the model leads to a favourable reaction to the product she is endorsing.”