Does attractiveness sell? Women's attitude toward a product as a function of model attractiveness, gender priming, and social comparison orientation.

In the present experiment, 85 female undergraduate students were presented with an advertisement for chewing gum, featuring an attractive or a moderately attractive same-sex model. Participants were either primed on their gender or not. Results showed that gender-primed women were willing to pay more for the product when it was promoted by an attractive model, and, with increasing levels of social comparison orientation, women showed a more positive attitude toward the product when it was promoted by an attractive as opposed to a moderately attractive model. In contrast, when they were primed on being a female, women were willing to pay less when the product was promoted by an attractive model, and, with increasing levels of social comparison orientation, they had a less positive attitude when the product was promoted by an attractive as opposed to a moderately attractive model. Implications for advertising are discussed. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.