Why Brands Should Use Female Influencers to Endorse Male Fashion: An Abstract

The physical attractiveness of influencers is considered as one of their major success factors. However, in previous literature, attractiveness was considered as a unidimensional requirement, without regarding (potential) contingencies. This has left some research gaps and open questions: According to the attractiveness dimension of the famous Cialdini (2011) principle on Likeability, high attractiveness of a communicator is a universal advantage. However, if the receiver her/himself is of low attractiveness, this statement clashes with another dimension of the Likeability principle: Similarity. As receivers tend to like communicators being similar to them, and attractiveness-related similarity is a relevant subdimension of similarity (Bekk et al. 2017), a conflict is looming. To make matters more complicated, the advantageousness of attractiveness may also depend on the gender of the endorser and receiver: According to the theory on the anti-attractiveness bias, individuals may disadvantage highly attractive individuals of the same gender (Agthe et al. 2010). Finally, gender might also play a role, detached from attractiveness. According to the similarity dimension of the Cialdini (2011) principle on likeability, similarity can also occur on the level of gender. Most fashion endorsers stay in compliance with this principle as they merely endorse fashion for receivers of their gender. However, it also happens that an influencer endorses fashion for consumers of the opposite gender: Is such an endorsement completely absurd? Or is it, after all, worth to know what a member of the opposite gender thinks looks good on you? In this study, the effects of influencers’ and receivers’ attractiveness and gender on influencer likeability, credibility and brand purchase intention are investigated. To this aim, an experiment including 374 observations was carried out and analyzed by means of structural equation modeling in SmartPls. Two models, on female (F) and male (M) receivers were designed and statistically compared by means of multigroup analysis. The results reveal that in most of the cases, a highly attractive influencer is more advantageous than one of low attractiveness, even if the receiver is of low attractiveness. In this case the “high attractiveness dimension” of the Liking Principle seems to beat the (attractiveness based) similarity dimension. More surprisingly, for male fashion, a female influencer appears to be more advantageous. Counter-intuitively, an anti-attractiveness bias was not found to occur among females, but among males. Practitioners can gain important insights from this. (1) Selecting physically attractive influencers is more advantageous, no matter how attractive the targeted consumers are. (2) It is certainly possible to endorse fashion for male by a female, however the opposite is not advisable. (3) Males may have negative feelings towards highly attractive male endorsers.