Prof. Yang Shuai from the Department of Business and Management, Glorious Sun School of Bussines and Management, recently published an article entitled EXPRESS: Virtual Fitting Room Effect: Moderating Role of Body Mass Index in the Journal of Marketing Researchas the first author.
Based on a field experiment and five laboratory experiments, the author suggests that a virtual fitting room (VFR) has asymmetric effects on different consumer groups, i.e., although virtual fitting can facilitate product purchases by consumers with lower bodymassindex (BMI), it poses a self-image threat to the high-BMI consumers. To address this threat, high-BMI consumersmay attribute responsibility to the apparel item, resulting inadversereactions toward the product. The author proposes four feasible solutions to alleviate the negative responses among high-BMI users of VFR, namely, promoting diverse aesthetic standards, featuring mannequin faces for VFR avatars, providing consumers opportunities to engage in prosocial behavior, and presenting high-status products. The conclusions of this study can have important theoretical and practical implications for fashion retailers to leverage virtual fitting technology to enhancecorporate performance and consumer well-being.
