Body Image and Advertising: A Meta-Analysis

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Eisend
• Subject Area: Management and Marketing
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 508934830

The way people perceive and evaluate their bodies (i.e., “body image”) influences body satisfaction and beauty-related beliefs and behaviors. If evaluated negatively, body image can lead to severe pathologies such as eating disorders or depression. Thus, high rates of body dissatisfaction in a society raise public health concerns. Advertising is a powerful promoter of unrealistic body ideals that increase viewers’ negative body image. At the same time, plenty of research has provided evidence that the attractiveness and beauty of advertising endorsers can increase advertising effectiveness. This leads to a dilemma for advertisers: The idealization of bodies has positive advertising effects, but leads to negative non-advertising effects for consumers and society, which does not only call into question the social responsibility of advertisers but can indirectly reduce advertising effectiveness. The current research project tries to solve this dilemma that has not been addressed in the extant literature. It does so by quantifying prior research on idealized bodies in advertising and by comparing advertising effects with non-advertising individual effects of such idealized bodies. By analyzing various moderator variables of this relationship, the project identifies how bodies of endorsers in advertising should be depicted to achieve positive advertising effects but avoid negative non-advertising effects for consumers and society. To that end, the research project applies a meta-analytic approach that includes a broad set of relevant studies and that promises generalizability and a high potential to explain heterogeneity in existing findings as well as the identification of relevant theories. The proposed project aims to provide a first-time, novel, and up-to-date review of the effects of idealized bodies in advertising. Based on the findings of the project that can be compared with findings of prior meta-analyses on effects of idealized bodies in media and help to identify and evaluate related theories, the project will provide an integrative framework for the future examination of idealized bodies. The project provides practical implications for marketers and advertisers and will identify depictions of idealized bodies that increase advertising effectiveness while at the same time reducing or avoiding negative consequences for consumers’ body-related beliefs and behaviors. These findings help advertisers to act socially responsible while at the same time achieving their marketing and business goals and to develop more effective strategies. By this, the project also provides implications for society and help public policy and regulators to find benchmarks and examples that support further discussion about meaningful recommendations and regulations of idealized body depictions in media and advertising.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants