Exaggerate on the Catwalk and You Will Sell More in the Shop

Consumers often think that fashion shows are too theatrical or plain extravagant. Yet, sooner or later, they will probably buy an item of clothing with a concept similar to the ones seen on the catwalk, but not that "loud". Paola Cillo (Department of Management and Technology), Irene Scopelliti (Cass Business School in London), and David Mazursky (Hebrew University in Jerusalem) asked themselves how to make consumers rapidly familiar with new concepts.

In late 2014 they did two experiments on 150 female students aged 19-22. They directed their attention to fashion, whose survival depends on persuading consumers to appreciate a new style. Two groups of students were exposed to a sequence of pictures of fashion clothes. The experimental group saw clothes with more exaggerated features than the control group. Then, they were asked to value the simpler item that was sold in the retail stores (a similar test had been conducted in 2011, see Cillo-Scopelliti-Mazursky, Effects of Exaggerated Priming on Processing Fluency and Judgment).

"Those who were exposed to the exaggerated version were more willing to accept the new fashion style", Cillo says. It turns out that the visual exaggeration that we call extravagant contributes to make a style easier to process and improves our evaluations.

Experiment number two aimed to test the best way to present a novel style. "We exposed subjects to the Moschino's Barbie collection and discovered that a consumer gets a stronger message and is more willing to accept the new style when there's a concept that connects cloth items. The exaggerated content should be conveyed through a significant concept".