Keeping the Body in Mind: The Influence of Body Esteem and Body Boundary Aberration on Consumer Beliefs and Purchase Intentions (original) (raw)
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Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 2011
The purpose of this study was to examine how individuals' body images influence their attitude toward an apparel brand through their perceptions of attractiveness and similarity with thin-idealized and nonidealized advertising images in the social comparison process. Data were collected from 143 female college students at a Midwestern university using a Web-based survey. Exposure to thin models did not induce more favorable brand attitudes than exposure to average-size models. However, individuals' body images indirectly influenced brand attitudes through their perceptions of similarity with model images in the social comparison process. The results indicate the importance of body image in understanding a person's interpretation of media images. The results imply that advertisers could feature more realistic model images reflecting a greater number of individuals' body images.
Body, Image and Affect in Consumer Culture
Body & Society, 2010
This article is concerned with the relationship between body, image and affect within consumer culture. Body image is generally understood as a mental image of the body as it appears to others. It is often assumed in consumer culture that people attend to their body image in an instrumental manner, as status and social acceptability depend on how a person looks. This view is based on popular physiognomic assumptions that the body, especially the face, is a reflection of the self: that a person's inner character or personality will shine through the outer appearance. The modification and cosmetic enhancement of the body through a range of regimes and technologies can be used to construct a beautiful appearance and thereby a beautiful self. The article begins by examining body images in consumer culture and their relation to photography and moving images. This is followed by an examination of the consumer culture transformative process through a discussion of cosmetic surgery. The article then questions the over-simplistic logic that assumes that transformative techniques will automatically result in a more positive and acceptable body image. The new body and face may encourage people to look at the transformed person in a new way. But the moving body, the body without image, which communicates through proprioceptive senses and intensities of affect, can override the perception of the transformed appearance. A discussion of the affective body follows, via a closer examination of the body without image, the opening of the body to greater affect and indeterminacy. The affective body image and its potential greater visibility through new media technologies are then discussed through some examples taken from digital video art. The article concludes by examining some of the implications of these shifts within consumer culture and new media technologies.
MIKE FEATHERSTONE Body, Image and Affect in Consumer Culture
This article is concerned with the relationship between body, image and affect within consumer culture. Body image is generally understood as a mental image of the body as it appears to others. It is often assumed in consumer culture that people attend to their body image in an instrumental manner, as status and social acceptability depend on how a person looks. This view is based on popular physiognomic assumptions that the body, especially the face, is a reflection of the self: that a person's inner character or personality will shine through the outer appearance. The modification and cosmetic enhancement of the body through a range of regimes and technologies can be used to construct a beautiful appearance and thereby a beautiful self. The article begins by examining body images in consumer culture and their relation to photography and moving images. This is followed by an examination of the consumer culture transfor-mative process through a discussion of cosmetic surgery. The article then questions the over-simplistic logic that assumes that transformative techniques will automatically result in a more positive and acceptable body image. The new body and face may encourage people to look at the transformed person in a new way. But the moving body, the body without image, which communicates through proprioceptive senses and intensities of affect, can override the perception of the transformed appearance. A discussion of the affective body follows, via a closer examination of the body without image, the opening of the body to greater affect and indeterminacy. The affective body image and its potential greater visibility through new media technologies are then discussed through some examples taken from digital video art. The article concludes by examining some of the implications of these shifts within consumer culture and new media technologies.
The Buying Impulse and Perceptions of the Physical Self
Theoretical Economics Letters
General trait-based approaches to the study of impulsive buying fail to explain the product-specific nature of this behavior and the relevance of specific self-motives in this context. Two related studies were conducted to understand the role of domain-specific physical self-perceptions on the context dependent nature of impulsive buying. The first study showed that physical self-perceptions are better predictors of context-specific impulsive buying than global self-measures. The second study grouped people with high and low physical self-esteem (PSE) to understand the role of PSE on product-specific, impulsive buying tendencies. Results showed that the impulsive buying tendency of individuals toward different products changes as a function of the relevance of product to physical self-perceptions. It was also found that perceived importance in the physical domain (PIP) may be an underlying factor. Overall, current research suggests impulsive buying is a product-specific behavior such that physical self-images along with perceived importance attributed to these images may affect individuals' impulsive buying tendencies, depending on the self-related function of products.
The Effect of Own Body Concerns on Judgments of Other Women’s Body Size
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
We investigated the relationships between healthy women's estimates of their own body size, their body dissatisfaction, and how they subjectively judge the transition from normal to overweight in other women's bodies (the "normal/overweight" boundary). We propose two complementary hypotheses. In the first, participants compare other women to an internalized Western "thin ideal," whose size reflects the observer's own body dissatisfaction. As dissatisfaction increases, so the size of their "thin ideal" reduces, predicting an inverse relationship between the "normal/overweight" boundary and participants' body dissatisfaction. Alternatively, participants judge the size of other women relative to the body size they believe they have. For this implicit or explicit social comparison, the participant selects a "normal/ overweight" boundary that minimizes the chance of her making an upward social comparison. So, the "normal/overweight" boundary matches or is larger than her own body size. In an online study of 129 healthy women, we found that both opposing factors explain where women place the "normal/overweight" boundary. Increasing body dissatisfaction leads to slimmer judgments for the position of the "normal/overweight" boundary in the body mass index (BMI) spectrum. Whereas, increasing overestimation by the observer of their own body size shifts the "normal/overweight" boundary toward higher BMIs.
Promotion and Marketing Communications [Working Title], 2019
The media 'effect' on consumer behaviour has long been of interest to many researchers. In part, this has been related to how movies, magazines and television programmes portrayed thinness in the nineteenth and twentieth century, a concept which has been consistently emphasised and promoted to women, thus resulting in increased body dissatisfaction. Prior to the existence of media, a curvaceous body was considered as a sign of wealth and an ideal body image. More recently, with the emergence of the Internet, there has been increasing debate over portraying a healthier body image. However, no research to date has addressed the implications of manifesting a maintainable body image in the context of the global fashion industry. Thus, to fill this gap, qualitative ethnographic approach (netnography) of studying online behaviour and consumer perception was undertaken. The chapter briefly outlines the relevance of clothing and the evolution of the ideal body image over the last decade, indicating how the ideal body image has changed, but also shows how different media channels have had an effect using television and social media examples.
This article addresses the obesity epidemic, arguably one of the biggest health issues presently facing our society, by taking a critical look at the body image dissatisfaction and self-esteem literatures. The authors delve into three key areas, namely, the constructs themselves, the media effects on these constructs, and finally the relation of these constructs with a key solution, exercise. To address these three areas, three tables are presented to accompany descriptions of each construct which provide a vast and overarching review of the crossdisciplinary literature on the topics. The authors conclude by suggesting several potential research ideas, including a transformative positive psychology intervention which combines cognitive attitude-based framing (to increase body image satisfaction and self-esteem) with applied behavior analysis (to increase exercise frequency).
Third-Person Effects of Idealized Body Image in Magazine Advertisements
American Behavioral Scientist, 2008
There have been contradictory findings concerning the direct effects of ideal body image advertising on women's body concerns. Despite numerous studies, the mechanism of how women are affected negatively by such imagery is still unclear. The current study explored why women are influenced negatively by ideal body image in the third-person effect framework. In particular, the authors proposed gendered "others" and hypothesized that when those others were men, exposure to the ideal body would create larger thirdperson perceptions; there would be a negative relationship between third-person gaps and body area satisfaction. Findings confirmed the importance of gendered others, such that women estimated close male friends would be more affected by ideal body image than close female friends. R esearchers have argued that idealized female body images in advertising have a direct or/and indirect negative impact on women's body image satisfaction; selfconcept; and, in extreme cases, eating behavior. According to , the thin, idealized female body portrayed in media has coincided with an increase in eating disorders. Although many studies have been conducted in this area, it is still unclear why and how women are negatively affected by ideal media imagery.