THE EFFECT OF BEAUTY PRODUCTS ADS EXPOSURE ON THE WOMEN’S SELF-EVALUATION

Abstract

This paper examines how ads for beauty products affect the way women self-evaluate. We investigated the effect of exposing beauty products in advertising vs. non-advertising contexts and hedonic beauty versus utility products in consumers through three experiments, two in the laboratory and one in the field. Two of the three studies support the effect of exposure of beauty product ads on women's self-assessment. The results show that when women are exposed to advertisements for beauty products, they self-evaluate worse than when exposed only to images of products. This effect, however, applies only to hedonic products. Hedonic products in ads affect how consumers self-evaluate, suggesting that the advertising context itself evokes different ways of thinking about women in themselves.