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Introduction
Consumers tend to judge brands by their users; if consumers have a clear picture of what kind of person would use a specific brand in their minds, the brand takes on similar characteristics (Aaker, 1997; Keller, 2000; Hayes et al., 2008). The tendency to equate brand personality to the personality of the user is particularly pronounced, and particularly relevant for, symbolic offerings that relate to the consumer’s self-image (Sirgy et al., 2000). Fashion fulfills these criteria (Levy, 1959; McCracken, 1988) and this is the reason companies display attractive models alongside their products in ads (Vermeir and Sompel, 2014). However, user imagery is not just a result of advertising. It can also be formed through consumers’ observation of real-world users (Keller, 1993). From a marketing standpoint, it would therefore make sense, not just that companies would try to attract customers with desirable traits, but also that they would reject customers who display undesirable traits. While advertising imagery has received ample attention from scholars (e.g. Bower and Landreth, 2001; Steadman, 1969; Vermeir and Sompel, 2014), brand building via customer rejection has not. Historically, the emphasis on advertising imagery is understandable, because advertising has until now provided most brand imagery (Sotiropoulos, 2003), making it crucial to consumers’ brand perception. However, the marketing environment is changing rapidly. The advent and growth of the Internet makes it increasingly easy for individuals to see what real-world brand users look like. The display of consumption is occurring on an unprecedented scale (Williams, 2003), and nowhere is typical user imagery more visible than on social media (Durayappah, 2011; Copeland, 2011). What is more, social media is becoming increasingly visual in character (DeMers, 2013), which further boosts the number of real-world users consumers are exposed to. The fashion industry is at the heart of this development. Fashion is self-expressive (McCracken, 1986), visual in character (Kawamura, 2007), and one of the most popular product categories to photograph and publicize on social media (Azuma and Fernie, 2003). The trend toward increased display of consumption through new channels of communication means that the study of real-world user imagery is becoming increasingly relevant, and fashion’s unique character makes it a suitable object of study.
To study brand building via customer rejection, I turn to overweight...