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How well will this brand work? The ironic impact of advertising disclosure of body‐image retouching on brand attitudes
Author(s) -
Semaan Rania W.,
Kocher Bruno,
Gould Stephen
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/mar.21133
Subject(s) - advertising , attractiveness , appeal , product (mathematics) , psychology , appeal to emotion , business , political science , law , geometry , mathematics , psychoanalysis
Prior research has demonstrated various effects of exposure to thin‐idealized models in advertisements on consumers’ product evaluations. Although this past research provides important insights, it does not take into account that many of these thin‐idealized images have been digitally manipulated. The present work studies the consequences of disclosure of this digital manipulation and the process consumers engage in when evaluating the brands responsible for these advertisements. We demonstrate that retouched advertisements may, contrary to conventional wisdom, have favorable consequences. Indeed, we show that individuals have more favorable brand attitudes for retouched (vs. unretouched) ads when retouching is disclosed (vs. undisclosed). We show that disclosed retouched ads utilize a two‐sided persuasive appeal, therefore leading consumers to evaluate the brand more favorably. We replicate this effect and explore attractiveness‐relevant products and type of disclosure as boundary conditions.