| 1. |
- Aagerup, Ulf, 1969-
(författare)
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Accessible luxury fashion brand building via fat discrimination
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management. - Bingley : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 1361-2026 .- 1758-7433. ; 22:1, s. 2-16
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: To investigate if accessible luxury fashion brands discriminate overweight and obese consumers.Design/methodology/approach: The physical sizes of garments are surveyed in-store and compared to the body sizes of the population. A gap analysis is carried out in order to determine whether the supply of clothes match the demand of each market segment.Findings: The surveyed accessible luxury garments come in very small sizes compared to the individuals that make up the population.Research limitations/implications: The survey is limited to London while the corresponding population is British. It is therefore possible that the mismatch between assortments and the population is in part attributable to geographic and demographic factors. The study’s results are however so strikingly clear that even if some of the effect were due to extraneous variables, it would be hard to disregard the poor match between overweight and obese women and the clothes offered to them.Practical implications: For symbolic/expressive brands that are conspicuously consumed, that narrowly target distinct and homogenous groups of people in industries where elitist practices are acceptable, companies can build brands via customer rejection.Social implications: The results highlight ongoing discrimination of overweight and obese fashion consumers.Originality/value: The study is the first to provide quantitative evidence for brand building via customer rejection, and it delineates under which conditions this may occur. This extends the theory of typical user imagery.
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| 2. |
- Aagerup, Ulf, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Building a warm and competent B2B brand personality
- 2022
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Ingår i: European Journal of Marketing. - Bingley : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 0309-0566 .- 1758-7123. ; 56:13, s. 167-193
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose This study aims to investigate how business-to-business (B2B) companies build brand personality via the products they provide and via their interactions with customers. Design/methodology/approach A multiple case study, which spans 10 years, investigates via interviews, observations, workshops and document analysis how two fast-growing B2B companies selling industrial equipment to manufacturers build brand personality. Findings The studied companies concentrate on different brand personality dimensions depending on the activities in which they engage. By focusing on brand competence in the realm of the actual product and brand warmth in the realm of the augmented product, the companies manage to create a complete and consistent brand personality. Research limitations/implications The research approach provides in-depth knowledge on how the companies build brands for a specific type of B2B product. However, the article's perspective is limited to that of management and therefore does not take customer reactions into account. Practical implications The study describes how firms can build strong B2B brands by emphasizing competence in product design and R&D and warmth in activities related to sales and customer service. Originality/value The study introduces a conceptually consistent view of brand personality in the form of warm and competent brands to the B2B marketing literature. It builds on and contributes to the emerging research on B2B brand personality. By relating the companies' brand-building activities to the type of products they sell, this study illustrates how context affects B2B brand building, and by integrating brand personality theory with product levels and marketing philosophy, it extends previous theory on B2B branding.
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| 3. |
- Aagerup, Ulf, 1969-
(författare)
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Building nightclub brand personality via guest selection
- 2020
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Ingår i: International Journal of Hospitality Management. - Oxford : Elsevier. - 0278-4319 .- 1873-4693.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper identifies that guest selection at exclusive nightclubs is a brand building process, and that the guests’ primary value to the clubs therefore is the image they bestow on the brand. The paper contributes to theory by providing empirical support for several mechanisms that have previously been stipulated in literature. It validates that companies build brand personality by controlling typical user imagery, and that for self-expressive product categories, negative user stereotypes are particularly powerful. It supports the theory of symbolic brand avoidance, as well as the notion that social rejection encourages people to elevate their perceptions of their rejecters and strengthens their predilection to affiliate with them. For practitioners, the paper shows managers in the hospitality industry that it is possible to build brands by controlling who is allowed to become a brand-user, and under which conditions this applies.
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| 4. |
- Aagerup, Ulf, 1969, et al.
(författare)
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Green consumer behavior: Being good or seeming good?
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Product & Brand Management. - Bingley : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 1061-0421. ; 25:3, s. 274-284
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose This paper aims to expand the emerging field of symbolic green consumer behavior (GCB) by investigating the impact of anticipated conspicuousness of the consumption situation on consumers’ choice of organic products. In addition, the paper also explores whether self-monitoring ability and attention to social comparison information (ATSCI) influence GCB in situations of anticipated high conspicuousness. Design/methodology/approach Two experiments test the study’s hypotheses. Findings The results of both experiments show that the anticipation of conspicuousness has a significant effect on GCB. Moreover, in Experiment 2, this effect is moderated by consumers’ level of ATSCI but not by their self-monitoring ability. Research limitations/implications Because ATSCI significantly interacts with green consumption because of the anticipation of a conspicuous setting, although self-monitoring ability does not, we conclude that social identification is an important determinant of green consumption. Practical implications Marketers who focus on building green brands could consider designing conspicuous consumption situations to increase GCB. Social implications Policymakers could enact change by making the environmental unfriendliness of non-eco-friendly products visible to the public and thus increase the potential for GCB. Originality/value The results validate the emerging understanding that green products are consumed for self-enhancement, but also expand the literature by highlighting that a key motivating factor of GCB is the desire to fit in.
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| 5. |
- Aagerup, Ulf, 1969-
(författare)
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Intermediate Luxury Fashion : Brand Building via Fat Discrimination
- 2016
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Ingår i: 11th Global Brand Conference. - Saltaire, UK : Greenleaf Publishing. ; , s. 23-28
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate if intermediate luxury fashion brands discriminate overweight and obese consumers.Design/methodology/approach: 1,454 intermediate luxury garments were tallied and measured in-store in London. The physical sizes of the garments were matched to the body sizes of the population, and a gap analysis was carried out in order to determine whether the supply of clothes match the relative importance of each market segment.Findings: While previous research shows that mass-market fashion companies do not discriminate overweight and obese consumers, intermediate luxury garments come in very small sizes compared to the individuals that make up the population.Research limitations/implications: The findings show that purveyors of intermediate luxury fashion limit assortments of garments so they avoid fat typical user imagery.Practical implications: Companies that market products that are sensitive to the typical user imagery can optimize their brands by limiting undesirable customer types access to their brands, provided that 1) they have the financial strength to reject customers whose image would be detrimental to the brand, 2) the companies are active in an industry in which people would tolerate customer rejection, and 3) they sell a product that actually can be denied undesirable customers.Social implications: The study shows that fat consumers are relegated to mass-market fashion but are excluded from intermediate luxury fashion. This constitutes a social inequality.Originality/value: The result of this study provides quantitative evidence that companies control assortments to exclude undesirable typical user imagery. It also delineates under which conditions they do it. This adds to the theory of user imagery.
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| 6. |
- Aagerup, Ulf, 1969-
(författare)
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Obese models’ effect on fashion brand attractiveness
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management. - Bingley : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 1361-2026 .- 1758-7433. ; 22:4, s. 557-570
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: To investigate the effect of obese models vs. normal weight models on fashion brands’ attractiveness.Design/methodology/approach: An experiment was carried out in which 1,225 university students in Sweden and Brazil rated the attractiveness of a fashion brand worn by a normal weight model and an obese model.Findings: The overall effect of obese models’ effect on fashion brand attractiveness was insignificant. Further, neither culture, nor the consumer’s own weight had a significant effect. There was, however, a significant effect of the participant’s own gender; women rate fashion brands worn by obese models significantly higher on attractiveness than they did fashion brands worn by normal weight models. Men displayed the inverse response.Research limitations/implications: The effect of the model’s ethnicity was beyond the scope of the experiment, and the brand attractiveness scale captured only one aspect of brand character, leaving other potential brand effects for future studies.Practical implications: Companies can use obese models with no overall brand attractiveness penalty across markets and for marketing to women of all sizes. Given men’s negative reactions, such models might however be unsuitable for the male-to-female gift market.Social implications: The results support the use of obese models, which can lead to greater representation of larger women in the media, and consequently, reduced fat stigma.Originality/value: The study validates the theory of user imagery, and it extends the theory by examining how different target consumers react to user imagery traits and thus provides evidence for gender bias towards obese models.
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| 7. |
- Aagerup, Ulf, 1969-
(författare)
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The Impact of User Weight on Brands and Business Practices in Mass Market Fashion
- 2010
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- 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.
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| 8. |
- Aagerup, Ulf, 1969-
(författare)
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The influence of real women in advertising on mass market fashion brand perception
- 2011
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Ingår i: Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management. - Bingley : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 1361-2026 .- 1758-7433. ; 15:4, s. 486-502
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the weight of ideal users affects the perception of mass market fashion brands. Design/methodology/approach: An experiment was carried out in which 640 university students replied to a web survey, rating the brand personality of jeans and shirts according to Aaker's Big Five construct. The garments were worn by thin, overweight, and obese models. Findings: The findings show that consumers' impressions of mass market fashion brands are significantly affected by the weight of ideal users. Slender models lead to the most positive brand perception followed by obese models. Overweight user imagery is for pure fashion brand building the least attractive kind. Research limitations/implications: A limitation of this study is the use of convenient student samples. Consequently, the generalization of the results beyond this convenience sample may be limited. It is further possible, even probable, that high fashion would suffer more from the negative imagery of overweight and obese users than mass market fashion. It would therefore be interesting to replicate this experiment using clothes of higher fashion grade and price. Practical implications: The demonstrated effects of user imagery support the industry practice of slim ideal female imagery. Social implications: The results inform the debate over skinny models vs real women in advertising. Originality/value: Previous research regarding the effectiveness of real women in advertising has been inconclusive. This paper demonstrates not only that model weight affects consumers' brand perception, but also how.
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| 9. |
- Aagerup, Ulf, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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The persuasive effects of emotional green packaging claims
- 2019
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Ingår i: British Food Journal. - Bingley : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 0007-070X .- 1758-4108. ; 121:12, s. 3233-3246
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of rational green packaging claims vs emotional green packaging claims on consumers' purchase propensity for organic coffee.Design/methodology/approach - Three within-subjects experiment were carried out (N=87, N=245, N=60). The experimental design encompasses packaging with rational green claims, emotional green claims, as well as a neutral (control) claim. Measured variables are introduced to assess participants' environmental commitment and information processing ability. A manipulated between-subjects variable is introduced to test how distraction interacts with preference for the claims.Findings - Overall, consumers prefer products with green claims over those with neutral (control) claims, and products with emotional green claims to those with rational green claims. The studies also reveal that this effect is moderated by participants' environmental commitment, information processing ability and by distraction. The findings were statistically significant (p<0.05).Research limitations/implications - As a lab experiment, the study provides limited generalizability and external validity. Practical implications - For most organic FMCG products, it is advisable to employ emotional packaging claims.Social implications - The presented findings provide marketers with tools to influence consumer behavior toward sustainable choices.Originality/value - The paper validates previous contributions on the effects of product claim types, and extends them by introducing comprehensive empirical data on all the Elaboration Likelihood Model's criteria for rational decision-making; motivation, opportunity and ability.
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| 10. |
- Aagerup, Ulf, 1969-
(författare)
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To sell or not to sell : Overweight users’ effect on fashion assortments
- 2010
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Ingår i: Journal of Brand Management. - Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan. - 1350-231X .- 1479-1803. ; 18:1, s. 66-78
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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