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To sell or not to sell: Overweight users’ effect on fashion assortments
Halmstad University, School of Business, Engineering and Science, Centre for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Learning Research (CIEL), Centre for Technology, Innovation and Marketing Management (CTIM2).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0419-8654
2010 (English)In: Journal of Brand Management, ISSN 1350-231X, E-ISSN 1479-1803, Vol. 18, no 1, p. 66-78Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Overweight people claim to be mistreated by the fashion industry. Fashion companies disagree. Despite the controversy, actual research has been scarce. This study compares the sizes of clothes that the four leading mass-marketing fashion retailers in Sweden offer to the body sizes of the population. Although branding theory would support the idea of rejecting fat consumers to improve user imagery for fashion brands, such practices were not evident. The main contribution of this article is that it provides the first quantified empirical evidence on the theory of typical user imagery. In the discussion, it is posited that, although mass-market fashion brands should be susceptible to negative user imagery related to overweight and obese users, the companies avoid such problems by making garments that are not directly attributable to a specific brand, thus mitigating the negative effect of overweight and obese user imagery. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Vol. 18, no 1, p. 66-78
Keywords [en]
assortments, brands, fashion, product and brand management
National Category
Business Administration
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-14215DOI: 10.1057/bm.2010.23Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-77956455294OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hh-14215DiVA, id: diva2:392205
Available from: 2011-01-26 Created: 2011-01-26 Last updated: 2017-12-11Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. The Impact of User Weight on Brands and Business Practices in Mass Market Fashion
Open this publication in new window or tab >>The Impact of User Weight on Brands and Business Practices in Mass Market Fashion
2010 (English)Licentiate thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Overweight people claim to be mistreated by the fashion industry. If they were, it would be in line with branding theory supporting the idea of rejecting fat consumers to improve user imagery for fashion brands. However, fashion companies do not confess to such practices.

To shed some light on the subject, I have conducted two studies.

The first attempts to illustrate what effect, if any, user imagery has on fashion brands. It is an experiment designed to show how the weight of users affects consumers’ perceptions of mass market fashion brands. The findings show that consumers’ impressions of mass market fashion brands are significantly affected by the weight of its users. The effect of male user imagery is ambiguous. For women’s fashion on the other hand, slender users are to be preferred.

In the second study I examine what effects these effects have on assortments. I compare the sizes of mass market clothes to the body sizes of the population. No evidence of discrimination of overweight or obese consumers was found -quite the contrary.

The reasons for these unexpected findings may be explained by the requirements a brand must fulfil to make management of the customer base for user imagery purposes viable. The brand must be sensitive to user imagery; a requirement that mass market fashion fulfils. However, it must also be feasible for a company to exclude customers, and while garment sizes can be restricted to achieve this, the high volume sales strategy of mass market fashion apparently cannot.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet, 2010. p. 84
Keywords
brands, brand personality, user imagery, assortments, fashion, fashion retailing
National Category
Business Administration
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-31482 (URN)
Supervisors
Available from: 2016-06-30 Created: 2016-06-30 Last updated: 2016-06-30Bibliographically approved

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Citation style
  • apa
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  • Other style
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Output format
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