Briana Anderson - Cornell University

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Physical attractiveness has been a popular topic of research for social
psychology and marketing/advertising academicians for years, supporting the ‘what is
beautiful is good’ stereotype (Dion et al., 1972). Research in interpersonal relations
has demonstrated that attractive people are perceived more favorably than unattractive
people. In addition, research has been conducted regarding the use of attractive vs.
moderate or unattractive endorsers in commercial advertising and marketing. This
applied advertising and marketing research has demonstrated that physical
attractiveness can lead to greater perceptions of credibility of both the spokesperson
and sponsoring organization, but these findings often depend on the type of product
being marketed, e.g. every day products versus beauty enhancing products (see:
Lynch & Schuler, 1994; Kamins, 1990).
Furthermore, researchers have also studied endorser and organizational
credibility. Endorser credibility has been conceptualized by source expertise,
trustworthiness, and attractiveness (Ohanian, 1990). Organizational (or corporate
credibility) has been conceptualized in terms of perceived expertise of and trust in the
organization (Newell & Goldsmith, 2001). This research has focused on endorser and
corporate credibility as separate phenomena. The question that is left unanswered is
the effect of endorser credibility on organizational credibility. Typically in
marketing/advertising research, endorser credibility and organizational credibility are
studied separately in terms of their relative effects on advertising outcome variables
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