The effect of traditionally marginalized groups in advertising on consumer response

An anonymous reviewer raised the question of how people may have interpreted the description of “successful woman,” and whether it was possible that the overweight model was perceived as active but not successful in weight management. Qualitative data from a second pre-study (sample N = 130) examining people’s schemas suggests that over 50% of respondents characterized a successful woman using terms related career and professionalism, whereas only 10% mentioned descriptors related to health or weight. Specifically, many participants described the “successful woman” schema as someone who dresses professionally. These findings suggest that people’s schema of a “successful woman” focused on professional dress to a much greater extent than weight management. When we combine this information with results from our other pre-study showing that the overweight model was incongruent with participants’ schemas about success, we believe that our primary findings occurred because of differences in how participants process the incongruity of overweight and success versus the incongruity of overweight and active (e.g., differences in perceived controllability), not because there was a misinterpretation in the intended schema violation for the success condition.