Last night I was paging through the Land's End catalog, and a thought struck me: Am I subconsciously influenced by the race of the model?
I'm not viewing this in a negative way, but does the model's race subconsciously make the given clothing item seem more appropriate to me?
I don't have an answer, and Land's End is probably a bad example, since their clothes are relatively generic.
It's been ages since we purchased from Land's End. I took a quick look at the website and, yes, there's been a major change in the ethnic diversity of the models.
Whether that reflects customer preferences or corporate policy, I don't know. I've purchased items from Asian online stores where most of the models were decidedly non-Asian. Imprinted ideals of beauty must surely influence consumers, and I can imagine the disappointment that Asian buyers feel when a dress doesn't look as good on them as it did on a slim, leggy blonde. Now that I think of it, the items I purchased from those stores weren't a good fit. I chose what I thought were the correct sizes, but the items were probably tailored on Asian fit models before going into mass production.
I remember sitting in on a seminar at which two researchers presented a paper on targeted advertising in the cosmetic industry. Ethnicity came into that as well. After a great start the two ladies drifted into a denunciation of male-dominated capitalism and the enslavement of female consumers. I was hoping for specific examples of subtle psychological triggers influencing the choice of make-up.