- Full Text
- Scholarly Journal
Gender differences for appearance-related attitudes and behaviors: Implications for consumer welfare
Full text preview
Consumer vanity as it relates to physical appearance represents an important value within the American culture. A variety of behaviors of interest to psychologists, sociologists, and marketers reflect aspects of appearance-related perceptions, such as level of concern about appearance and self-assessment of one's own looks (e.g., Solomon 1994). For example, it is estimated that 53 million Americans will go on a diet annually (Silberner 1992), and up to $50 billion will be spent on weight loss related products by the end of this decade (Stoffel 1989). Clothing and cosmetics are used as forms of physical adornment (Bloch and Richins 1992), and retail sales of cosmetics and fragrances reach $20 billion annually (Reilly 1994). Elective cosmetic surgery reportedly increased from approximately 300,000 cases in 1981 to an estimated 1.5 million cases in 1988 (Faludi 1991). Some consumption behaviors that are associated with Americans' high level of concern and, in extreme cases, almost obsessive focus on physical appearance, have severe health consequences. These include such behaviors as intentional sunbathing, despite risk of skin cancer, use of body-building steroids (with potentially harmful side-effects), and eating disorders (e.g., anorexia nervosa, bulimia). Because of the severe consequences of many of these behaviors--for example, some anorexics have literally starved themselves to death--we believe that the roles of appearance concern and perception as they pertain to health-related behaviors have important implications for consumer welfare.
Our study examines a number of gender-related issues relevant to consumers' perceptions of physical appearance. Specifically, we postulate that cultural socialization processes result in gender-based differences in concern and perceptions about appearance. In Study 1, we hypothesize that both of these aspects concerning appearance, as well as gender, are associated with various attitudes and behaviors (e.g., dieting). We also predict that gender moderates relationships between appearance concern and related constructs. We then conduct follow-up...