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In keeping with recent body image social trends, consumer demand for the adoption of plus-size models is increasing, although the use of thin models remains prevalent. The current study explores how consumers process information about fashion products displayed on different sizes of models in advertisements, focusing on model and consumer body sizes and both genders. As an underlying mechanism explaining how the relationship between model and consumer body sizes shapes consumer purchase intention, this study explores the role of guilt, shame and mental imagery.

The current study uses a text analytics technique to identify female consumers' general opinions of thin models in advertising. Employing a 3 (consumer body size: normal, overweight, obese) × 2 (model body size: thin, plus-size) × 2 (gender: male, female) between-subjects online experiment (n = 718), the main study comparatively analyzes the influences of plus-size and thin models on consumer responses.

The results reveal that, despite body positivity movements, thin models still generate negative emotions among female consumers. For obese female consumers, advertisements featuring plus-size models produce fewer negative emotions but not more mental imagery than advertisements featuring thin models. Conversely, for obese male consumers, advertisements featuring plus-size models generate more mental imagery but not more negative emotions than advertisements featuring thin models. The results also reveal that the relationship between consumer body size and guilt is moderated by perceived model size, which is also moderated by gender in generating mental imagery. While guilt plays a mediating role in enhancing mental imagery, resulting in purchase intention, shame does not take on this role.

This study is the first to present an integrated model that elucidates how consumers with varying body sizes respond to different sizes of models in advertising and how these responses impact purchase intentions.

Our findings only apply to contexts where consumers purchase fashion clothing in response to advertisements featuring thin versus plus-size models.

Exposing normal-size consumers to plus-size models generates less mental imagery, and thus, practitioners should seek to match the body sizes of the models featured in advertising to the body sizes of their target audience or ad campaigns that include both plus-size and thin models may help improve message persuasiveness in fashion advertising. Moreover, guilt-appeal advertising campaigns using thin models would appeal more to thin consumers of both genders than shame-appeal advertising.

This paper aims to examine whether culture impacts the execution of financial services advertising (FSA). Specifically, this study investigates how cultural values are reflected in FSA by comparing magazine ads in the USA and Korea.

This study analyzed the content of a total of 1,889 (USA = 1,486; Korea = 403) FSA in print business/news magazines from 2005 to 2009.

The finding of this study showed significant cultural differences of FSA in terms of collectivism, high and low cultural contexts, human models/celebrity presence and time orientation between the USA and Korea. However, the difference in individualistic cues between the USA and Korea was not significant.

Using the integration of multiple cultural frameworks will better explain cultural differences reflected in marketing communication in the financial services (FS) sector. Future research is needed to generalize how such frameworks are reflected in different settings, such as different media or different countries.

The findings of this study suggest that FSA reflect cultural values, providing further implications for FS companies targeting the global market.

This study extends the understanding of impact of cultural values on advertising by exploring the FS industry.

This paper aims to examine the association between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and audit effort by focusing on audit hours. This paper also explores whether significant political uncertainty might amplify the positive association between EPU and audit effort by focusing on Korea.

This study uses 21,543 Korean firm-year observations from 2005 to 2018 in an audit hour determinant model, as well as EPU following Baker et al. (2016) and audit hour to proxy audit effort.

EPU is positively associated with audit hours, indicating that auditors work more audit hours in response to firms’ high EPU resulting from higher earnings manipulation risk. Further, whether this positive association between EPU and audit effort might be altered by significant political uncertainty is investigated using a presidential election dummy. The empirical results show that auditors work additional audit hours during fiscal years in which presidential elections occur, given high EPU.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper might be the first empirical attempt to use audit hour data with EPU to provide practical implications to academia or auditors.