Background: As an effect of the growth of Instagram during the past few years, more brands have started to use this platform to communicate with their consumers, and a generation that has been shown to be particularly interesting for fast fashion brands, is Generation Y. During the past few years, a term called body-positivity has increased in popularity among social media platforms like Instagram, which purpose is to encourage exposure to different body types. There are several studies that have highlighted the issues regarding the use of exclusively thin models among fast fashion companies, and that this increase body dissatisfaction among women, especially in the Western culture where the ideal is unrealistically thin. This has resulted in criticism towards marketers which have led to some brands starting to use more larger models in their advertising. However, some brands still use exclusively thin models because they believe that this is what people wants to see. Evidently, there are different opinions regarding the subject. However, what has yet not been studied thoroughly is female consumers attitudes regarding the use of body diversity in advertising on Instagram and how this influence brand attitudes and further, their purchase intentions. Purpose: As the authors of this study found a research gap regarding consumers attitudes within the subject – the purpose of this study will be to explore female Generation Y consumer’s insights regarding body diversity in Instagram advertising, resulting in judgment, feelings, and attitudes towards the advertisement and the brand, and how these attitudes influence purchase intentions. The aim is also to explore to what extent the case companies include body diversity in their Instagram advertising. Method: The research purpose was fulfilled by doing an exploratory study, using an abductive research approach and qualitative method. The authors of this study did a semiotic analysis of the advertising content, and further on collected the empirical data by doing 12 semi-structured interviews. The data was further analyzed by incorporating a thematic analysis. Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that Nelly was the only case company including some body diversity in their Instagram advertising. NA-KD and Zalando evoked mostly positive feelings among the participants while Nelly evoked mostly negative ones. Further, the majority of the participants had favorable attitudes and positive purchase intentions towards NA-KD and Zalando. None of the participants had exclusively favorable attitudes towards Nelly’s advertisement, although half of the participants had positive purchase intentions towards the brand. Generally, the majority of all attitudes that were formed towards the case companies were not influenced by the body diversity (or no body diversity) that they were exposed to, but their attitudes were influenced by other things. The results also showed that including body diversity in Instagram advertising is important, for female Generation Y consumers. However, other factors might be more important and furthermore have a greater influence on their purchase intentions, like for example ethnic diversity.

This thesis is investigating how consumers’ attitudes on fashion advertisements are affected by the models featured in the advertisements, with the consumers’ own body size being taken into consideration. The topic for the thesis was formed when conducting a thorough literature search, which revealed a gap in research. My study considers consumer behavior in marketing, specifically in digital advertising, which in this case is Instagram. My study aims to identify which model body size is the most suitable and effective one when seeking to target plus-size versus skinny consumers, focusing on the female Generation Z of Finland. Ultimately, my thesis strives to help companies in attracting their desired customer base by creating positive attitudes within the consumers, which can consequently lead to increased purchase intentions. This thesis features the characteristics of a deductive, quantitative, explanatory and cross-sectional study. The data is gathered from 82 female respondents in Finland, within the age range of 18 to 27. A survey is designed to measure their attitudes towards advertisements that feature plus-size models, versus advertisements that feature skinny models. Respondents rate their attitudes towards various Instagram advertisements, and additionally choose whether they identify themselves more with a skinny or plus-size body. The results are analyzed through the Interaction term on Repeated measures ANOVA. With significance found, I proceeded to analyze it further with Post Hoc, which then revealed six new hypotheses to examine. The results of the analysis showed some significant changes between the attitudes of skinny respondents and plus-size respondents. Plus-size respondents showed more positive attitudes towards plus-size models than they did towards skinny models. Equivalently the skinny respondents had a more positive attitude towards skinny models than they did towards plus-size models. This is consistent with previous literature regarding perceived similarity and women wanting to see female portrayals in advertisements that they can personally relate to. Additionally, skinny models caused more negative attitudes in plus-size consumers, and plus-size models caused more negative attitudes in skinny consumers. Fashion industry has received a lot of criticism for their use of thin and highly attractive models, but these results give some evidence and understanding to the statement that skinny models are still effective in advertising. However, this seems to only be the case when marketing for skinny consumers. When considering the plus-size consumers, their attitude was more positive towards plus-size models. That being the case, my study suggests that fashion companies should firstly determine their main target group, and whether it is skinny consumers, or plus-size consumers. Secondly, their marketing strategies should be planned accordingly, by casting the models suitable for the target group.