Is the Effect of Luxury Advertising on Consumer Evaluations of Fashion Brands Positive or Negative?

Abstract

According to previous research, consumers with low self-esteem are likely to evaluate clothing items lowly when they try them on and find that they are inferior to the attractive advertising endorser wearing the same items. However, advertisements with attractive endorsers are generally used with an expectation to have a positive product evaluation from customers. Assuming that there are two types of self-esteem, body esteem and status esteem, we hypothesized that consumers who are low in status esteem evaluate a status-related product more positively than consumers who are high in status esteem when their consumption aligns (vs. when it does not align) with an attractive endorser even though they are low in body esteem. To test the hypothesis, we conducted a laboratory experiment. The result of multiple regression analyses showed that our hypothesis was supported. The findings have important implications for marketers in terms of product evaluation.