Men Beware: The Abercrombie and Fitch Effect

From the article:

the scientists looked at the ratio between ring and index finger, which is correlated with one’s level of testosterone.

I wasn't aware of this. Wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio

That a greater proportion of men have shorter index fingers than ring fingers than do women was noted in the scientific literature several times through the late 1800s,[16][17] with the statistically significant sex difference in a sample of 201 men and 109 women established by 1930,[18] after which time the sex difference appears to have been largely forgotten or ignored.

The article doesn’t go as far as to make any explanations so I’ll drop what I think is happening: the tall masculine figure is making the targeted men insecure (the shorter, lower test level men) about their masculinity and they make up for it by buying luxury goods, which is an alternative expression of masculinity (think expensive whiskies and fine taste).

It of course doesn’t affect women because they aren’t threatened, and it doesn’t affect men who are already physically masculine because they’re secure there.

And now I wonder if you can run variations:

1. Have some well dressed guy in a suit lead underdressed buff guys buy clothing because they’re insecure about their appearance

2. Have skinny women lead more overweight women to buy health products that promote weight loss

In the case of female shoppers, the measured purchase patterns were exactly same, regardless of the amount of muscle at the entrance. On the other hand, male shoppers were clearly influenced.“

“This alone provides a valuable marketing insight. Women clearly don’t care that much about the employees’ physical appearance – from a shopping point of view, that is. Men are much more easily swayed.”

To back that assertion, I would want to see the experiment repeated with female sales employees. In that situation, would women shoppers respond in a similar way to attractive and confident female employees as the men did to dominant male employees?

Anyone got a link to the “research” cited in here? From the article it doesn’t seem like the most rigourous methodology, and I don’t see any p or n values listed.

Honestly if this was actually true every male shop assistant working on commission would already be ripped because they would be selling double that of the scrawny ones, who would have been fired months ago.

For the next Apple keynote, Tim Cook is gonna be shirtless and ripped.

Abercrombie and Fitch share price is at a 17 year low and they have put themselves up for sale. I don't think their strategy is working out too well for them in a market where foreign competitors like Zara and H&M entered with much more effective marketing messages.

Abercrombie and Fitch "failed to keep up with changing preferences among customers, and has suffered as a result, plagued with a number of periods of declining sales."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/05/10/wh...

From the couple of pictures, the "dominant" men were a little taller than average, and fairly well muscled.

I wonder what would happen if you went even more extreme, such as staffing the store with men who look like, both physically and in dress, as if they just stepped out of a "Tom of Finland" drawing?

My guess is that if the gap between the salesman and the customer is much more than what the customer believes they realistically can achieve, the salesman will not be as effective as one who is more similar to the customer.

This reminds me of the observation you often see that when men get into bodybuilding or grow their beards it's often not women, but other men, who seem most impressed.

Research aside, isn't this intuitive? My sexuality doesn't come into the feeling I have when I go clothes shopping. If they've got guys wearing the merchandise and they look attractive and confident, I'm going to feel empowered by that - they look hot in those clothes and so I'm interested.

I might even feel confident in myself because I've realised I can feel that for myself. The physique doesn't even matter, it's just the energy of it.

If they hire a bunch of models who give off nothing more than anxiety and discomfort in themselves then my first thought isn't that they're making great clothes look good.

I can't imagine that we as men have this different compared to women who shop for clothes. Attraction, sexuality, and aspiration is in your face at all times there. The main difference I see is that a man will rarely call another man attractive, as if the instant assumption is that admiring them makes you gay. Plenty of men out there who look and feel awesome without needing to challenge your heterosexuality.

Although the exact numbers and who was affected were probably unknown, I can't help but think the general effect was already known because of the shape of mannequins.

I don't think A&F is the right name for this effect, because A&F intentionally sells products that fit big muscular guys, and tries to avoid selling products for and to small guys. (see the related comment about FitchTheHomeless).

They don't want scrawny customers in public as brand mis-ambasssadors That's different from buying an expensive watch or couch or car because you feel inferior sized.

Bezos' fitness routine may have been responsible for some of the AMZN rally. ;)

Can confirm this works. Then again, I'm gay, so I'd be interested in the differences between straight and gay men.

It's worth noting that the company endured years of flagging sales and stock price while employing this tactic. They somewhat recently made a concerted effort to move away from this image. And after doing so saw their numbers improve:

>"While it once called its store front staff “models,” the company later announced in 2015 that it would no longer hire based on “body type or physical attractiveness.” [1]

[1] http://fortune.com/2016/02/25/this-is-the-most-hated-retaile...

I've only visited an A&F store once. The lighting was bizarrely low. It was like one of those 'horror house' rides at a crappy fair, with only the occasional dim spot on an exhibition of clothes. This extended to the dressing rooms.

Is this general for A&F? If so no wonder they've been doing poorly.

Wow, apparently the length of your ring finger is correlated with your testosterone levels.

First thing which came to my mind was #FitchTheHomeless - http://adage.com/article/the-media-guy/fitchthehomeless-watc...

There seem to be a lot of uncontrolled variables here. This feels less like professional science, and more like a science fair project.

I must be a woman then, because I find the bulky man to be off-putting. I'd still buy from him, but I wouldn't enjoy the interaction. I'd much prefer to buy from the non-dominant man.

Manipulating people like this is wrong, but then so are most marketing techniques.

I find that kind of research disgusting, because their ONLY purpose is to manipulate customers.

I also question the ethics of such studies: how can you justify this, ethically?

Treating your customers like that is also simply unacceptable. Same problem with those psychologists working on games rewards in order to make you spend more.

DISGUSTING.