Take Your Pick: Kate Moss or the Girl Next Door? The Effectiveness of Cosmetics Advertising

Résumé En

In the last several years, marketers have started to use "nonidealized" models in advertisements (i.e., "Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty"). Little is known, however, about the effects of "nonidealized" advertising on consumers and whether this type of advertising-when compared to idealized advertising-is truly beneficial for the branded products promoted in these ads. Based on a sample of 347 French women exposed to either idealized or "nonidealized" models, the authors established that the way these advertising models have an effect on brand responses-specifically, the attitude toward (and the purchase intention of) a brand-operates through a dual-process model.When a viewer had a high sense of self-esteem, it was crucial that both processes be understood simultaneously: the effect of the portrayed model's body image on the brand responses can be suppressed by the model-evaluation process. The authors also note that consumers' ages influenced the self-evaluative process following a quadratic function.Their place of residence (i.e., urban versus rural) influenced the self- and model-evaluation processes.