Context
“Your are what you wear”, “You are what you eat”: these catchy titles both suggest that clothes and food may expressions of one’s self. Therefore, Wang, Wang, Lei and Chao investigate a potential connection between clothing style and food choices – through self-perceptions – in an article published in 2020 in the Journal of Business Research.
Research questions
Wang, Wang, Lei and Chao’s intuition about the potential impact of clothing style on food choices lies in the combination of enclothed cognition theory and self-congruity theory. Enclothed cognition theory is the fact that wearing certain clothes can trigger an associated symbolic meaning that affects the wearer’s psychological processes and behavior. Moreover, according to self-congruity theory, consumers tend to compare their self-perceptions with the product’s perceived image. Self-congruity theory notably applies to one’s situational self-perceptions, which can be affected by clothing style. For instance, when wearing jeans and a sweater, one’s self-perception is usually different than when wearing a coat and tie.
Since clothing style could affect one’s perceived image and one’s behavior, the authors wonder if this process applies to food choices. Therefore, they ask the following research question: what is the impact of clothing style on food choices?
Method
To answer this research question, the authors conducted 3 studies:
– Study 1 analyzes the effects of clothing style (informal/formal) on food choice (healthy/unhealthy). 79 Chinese students were asked to wear either business suits or casual clothes to the lab. They were told to wait for the experiment to start with a magazine and were free to eat from a plate of potato chips and a plate of cherry tomatoes while waiting. Then, they were sent to complete a questionnaire. The type of eaten food and the number of eaten calories were used as a measure of unhealthy and healthy foods consumed.
– Study 2 consists of 2 sub-studies that investigate the effect of clothing style on food choice in a different cultural context. In Study 2a, 277 MTurk participants were presented with a picture of a man or a woman (according to the participant’s gender) dressed in formal or informal clothing standing aside a shelf in a convenience store. Participants were asked to imagine being the person from the picture, having to choose to buy a snack pack of almonds or a snack pack of chips. Study 2b followed the same procedure, except 288 MTurk participants had to choose between cherry tomatoes and potato chips.
– Study 3 tests whether a clothes-image association affects food choice. It was conducted on 304 MTurk participants, using potato chips as the unhealthy snack and multigrain granola bars as the healthy snack.
Results
– The formality of one’s clothing style influences one’s self-perceptions which affect one’s food choices.
– The more informal the clothing style, the higher the likelihood to consumer or purchase unhealthy snacks. For instance, in Study 1, when participants wore formal clothes, only 2,6% ate potato chips; whereas when participants wore informal clothes, 22% ate potato chips. Moreover, the more formal clothes the individual wore, the fewer calories for potato chips he/she consumed.
– When people wear formal clothes, they perceive themselves as restrained, cultivated, civilized, orderly, organized and accurate. In turn, they look for foods with an image that is likely to match their own self-perception, which leads them to consume healthy foods. Indeed, healthy eating is believed to be more moral and requires more self-control than unhealthy eating. Put differently, since healthy food images are congruent with personality traits activated by formal clothing, people wearing formal clothes are more likely to choose healthy over unhealthy foods.
– When people are dressed in an informal manner, they see themselves as emotional, playful, sloppy, laid back, easygoing and tolerant. As they are looking for foods that have an image matching their own self-perceptions and since unhealthy eating is associated with spontaneity and low self-control, they turn to unhealthy foods. In other words, unhealthy food images are congruent with personality traits activated by informal clothing, which leads people dressed in an informal manner to pick unhealthy over healthy foods.
Why is this article relevant for researchers?
This article builds on enclothed cognition theory and on self-cognition theory. It enriches both theories by showing they can be bridged. Indeed, this paper shows that clothing style generates self-perceptions, which is consistent with enclothed cognition theory. In turn, these self-perceptions affect food choices, which is consistent with self-congruity theory.
Moreover, this research adds to the literature about healthy vs unhealthy food choices. It is quite innovative because it singles out clothing style as one of the determinants of healthy vs unhealthy food choice. Therefore, future papers could further analyze the impact of clothing style on food choice. First, by investigating other reasons why formal/informal clothing affects eating behavior. The present results propose that self-perceptions mediate the relationship between clothing style and eating behavior. However, clothing style may also affect other determinants of consumer behavior, such as pressure to fit into the clothes or normative behavior: for example, when students wear uniforms, their clothes put them in a mindset where they are more likely to abide by the rules. Second, future research could also consider other segmentations for clothing styles or food choices. For instance, clothing styles are not solely described by their formality: the clothes’ brand, expensiveness or trendiness may also affect food choices. Reciprocally, food choices go beyond food healthiness: they may also include trendiness, fanciness or expensiveness which could be affected by clothing style.
Why is this article relevant for professionals?
This paper is useful for policy makers and professionals in the food industry.
First, since obesity and other potentially life-threatening diseases have been linked with unhealthy eating habits, policy makers strive to raise awareness of the benefits of healthy eating. This article provides clear guidance on how healthy food choices may be favored: it suggests that healthy eating campaigns be promoted by endorsers with a formal attire to enhance the congruence between perceptions of the endorser and the proposed food choice.
In the same vein, this article suggests that all professionals in the food industry think carefully about the congruence between their products and their customers’ clothing style. In the same manner as for policy makers, endorsers should be clothed in a style that is congruent with the firm’s products. Put differently, endorsers promoting healthy (resp. unhealthy) foods should wear formal (resp. informal) attire. For instance, in this KFC ad, Colonel Sanders’s formal clothing is offset by the hip customers’ casualwear and the rap music adding up to create an informal ambiance. Moreover, professionals may also want to segment their market according to clothing style. In other words, healthy restaurants or food corners may benefit from locating near offices where employees tend to dress formally, while establishments selling unhealthy foods should favor locations in shopping malls or near any leasure places where people usually are casually dressed. The results propose that French Wagy’s food trucks that are sometimes established in the Issy Val de Seine (France) working district may be more successful in other areas.
More broadly, this article prompts restaurants and food producers to adapt their marketing mix according to the congruency between their customers’ clothing style and their products. In terms of communication, Mc Donald’s, which is associated with junk food, launched its “Come as you are” (original slogan: “venez comme vous êtes”) campaign in France, thus suggesting that informal attire is tolerated – maybe even encouraged – at Mc Donald’s. Similarly, the present findings can either support or question the “dress code” trend in restaurants. For instance, fancy restaurants selling unhealthy foods may not necessarily benefit from imposing a formal dress code upon their customers. Likewise, the appeal of business lunch offers may be reinforced by featuring healthy rather than unhealthy dishes.