Journal
JOURNAL OF BUSINESS RESEARCH
Volume 132, Issue -, Pages 787-799Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.10.063
Keywords
Clothes style; Food choice; Clothes-image associations; Clothes-food congruence; Enclothed cognition
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [71772108, 71272014]
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The style of clothing worn by consumers can influence their choice of healthy or unhealthy foods, with formal clothing being associated with healthier food choices.
Consumers often spend a considerable amount of time and resources on clothing, with the hope of influencing how others perceive them. Little is known, though, about how the clothes one wears might influence him/her to behave differently. This research examines the impact of clothes style (formal vs. informal) on consumers' choice of healthy or unhealthy foods. We find that formal and informal clothes styles can activate different clothesimage associations and thus make consumers more likely choose a food type (healthy or unhealthy) that is congruent with a specific set of clothes-image associations, referred to as clothes-food congruence. For example, wearing formal clothes can activate such formal-clothes associations as being self-controlled and organized. Formal- (vs. informal-) clothes associations are perceived to be congruent with healthy (vs. unhealthy) food choices. Hence, we suggest that clothes-food congruence mediates the relationship between clothes-image associations and food choice. Implications for research as well as for practice are discussed.
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