Beauty Types of Female Advertising Models in Asia

Abstract

Previously published research has addressed the beauty types of female advertising models from Western perspectives, which have also been applied directly to classify Asian models. We report qualitative research results which show that Asian consumers’ beauty typologies differ from Western consumers’ typologies and are mostly based on models’ facial characteristics. We identified 10 beauty types for classifying Asian advertising models, of which seven are newly established. The subsequent quantitative study shows that eight of these types are either sexually oriented (international beauty, Korean beauty, sexy, cool) or aesthetic (pretty, natural, sweet, local beauty). Furthermore, we find that cosmetic surgery procedures lead to respondents perceiving the model as displaying more sexually oriented beauty types. We discuss the implications of these findings for advertising effectiveness in Asian contexts, and for academic and societal relevance.