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Bachelorarbeit aus dem Jahr 2008 im Fachbereich Medien / Kommunikation - Medienökonomie, -management, Note: 1,3, Hochschule Fresenius; Köln, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: We gain knowledge about our society and our world through mass media. In many re-spects, this also leads to illusions. Extreme beauty standards which, particularly in cosmetic and fashion advertisements, look down on us from billboards. Silk and smooth skin, 1.80 m, 50 kilo lightweight, healthy long hair - in short: out-and-out per-fect. However, even the topmodels' natural beauty seldom satisfies the ad industry. Recently it has become common practice to digitally retouch photos; increasingly skinny, with spotless white teeth and a skin that is not just smooth, but rather as smooth as glass. Thus, the average recipient will never conform to these ideals - es-pecially not by using all the advertised products. We are surrounded by these idealised images and, at the same time, we tend to compare ourselves socially. So it seems to be obvious that models are also drawn on for such comparisons. But which effects re-sult from social comparisons with unreachable beauty standards? Does it actually make any sense at all to use such highly attractive models, even though the recipients are often aware of this illusion?
Processes which occur while regarding advertising models have already been ana-lysed very extensively and in diverse ways. However, in these cases, the effects on the recipients themselves were in the spotlight for the most part. For advertisers though, the effects on recipients are less interesting than the resulting effects on the advertising target values, because this is the only way an ideal marketing decision can be made regarding which type of advertising model, at which level of attractiveness is to be used. Therefore, research has begun to also examine possible effects on both eco-nomic and non-economic target values within recent years. Nevertheless, many further questions have to be answered in order to suggest to advertisers how attractive an advertising model should be.
This thesis predominantly deals with the theory of social comparisons, as well as the importance of models and their degree of attractiveness. Furthermore, research reports of recent years are introduced to give a review to the present state of knowledge. The last section of this analysis provides an empirical study which specifically addresses social comparisons and their effects on product evaluations and purchase intentions.
