Keeping up one
Õ
s appearance: Its importance and the choice
of type of hair-grooming establishment
R. Keith Schwer *, Rennae Daneshvary
Center for Business and Economic Research, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, P.O. Box 456002, Las Vegas, NV 89154-6002, USA
Received 20 September 1998; accepted 10 September 1999
Abstract
This study investigated factors which in¯uence the importance one attributes to overall appearance and the choice of type of hair-grooming establishment. Data were collected from a sample of 245 respondents residing in a southwestern metropolitan area. Analyses reveal that respondents employed in professional/managerial, clerical/secretarial, sales, services, and military occupations, ones in which appearance could in¯uence job performance, identi®ed maintaining an overall good appearance as very important signi®cantly more often than re-spondents employed in other occupations. Employment in appearance-important occupations signi®cantly in¯uences the choice of hair-grooming establishment. Demographic variables have greater explanatory power than economic variables (appearance-important occupations and income) and establishment attribute variables (image, service experience, and conve-nience). Ó 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PsycINFO classi®cation:3920
JEL classi®cation:D12
Keywords:Physical attractiveness; Occupational success; Choice behavior
www.elsevier.com/locate/joep
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-702-895-3191; fax: +1-702-895-3606.
E-mail address:schwer@nevada.edu (R.K. Schwer).
1. Introduction
Americans are taking care of themselves by exercising, eating nutritious foods, taking care of their skin, and enhancing their appearance including their hair via color, transplants, and permanents. In a quest to enhance their appearance, both women and men are spending more time and money on physical appearance, including personal grooming at beauty salons, beauty shops, and barbershops.
Men, historically patrons of barbershops, are relatively new customers to beauty salons and beauty shops.1According toAmerican Demographics,one in six men patronized a beauty salon in 1989. As would be expected, men who frequent beauty salons differ from men who patronize barbershops. Men who did so were more likely to have a higher level of education, a higher level of income, and to be employed in an executive or a managerial position than men who frequented barber shops (Exter, 1990). These facts give rise to two questions: (a) Why is appearance important? and (b) What determines oneÕs choice of hair-grooming establishment?
Many early studies (1970s and 1980s) of appearance used a social psy-chological approach.2According to Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani and Longo (1991) these studies primarily addressed the perception (e.g., social, intelli-gent), treatment (e.g., selection as a dating partner), and characteristics (e.g., personality traits, behavioral tendencies) of attractive and unattractive in-dividuals.
The economic eects of physical attractiveness have been more recently investigated by Bosman, Pfann, Biddle and Hamermesh (1997), Collins and Zebrowitz (1995), Frieze, Ohlson and Russell (1991), Hamermesh and Biddle (1994), Kyle and Mahler (1996), Loh (1993) and Roszell, Kennedy and Grabb (1989). Generally, less attractive people earn less than better looking people (Frieze et al., 1991; Hamermesh & Biddle, 1994; Roszell et al., 1989). Roszell et al. (1989) found that attractiveness in¯uenced income attainment for men, older individuals, and those employed in predominantly male oc-cupations. Similarly, Frieze et al. (1991) showed that the starting salary of
1
Beauty salons usually oer full service including cutting, coloring and perming hair, selling retail products, and oering skin care such as facials. Beauty shops are more limited in their services usually omitting skin and nail care. Beauty salons are usually frequented by males and females, beauty shops by women, and barbershops by men.
men was signi®cantly in¯uenced by their attractiveness, but not so for women. However, both attractive women and men earned more over time. A principal ®nding is that appearance is important in occupations which rely on person-to-person contact and ones in which appearance may in¯uence eco-nomic productivity.
Height and weight have also been used in assessing the economic eects of physical attractiveness. Loh's (1993) results showed that height positively aected the wage levels for men and women; whereas, obesity slowed wage growth, particularly for men. Likewise, Collins and Zebrowitz (1995) found a signi®cant relationship between height and income ± taller men had higher incomes than did shorter men. Other appearance cues such as the color of hair and the use of cosmetics can also in¯uence income, as demonstrated in an experimental setting by Kyle and Mahler (1996).
Physical attractiveness not only pays o for the individual but also for ®rms which hire attractive employees. Bosman et al. (1997) demonstrated that Dutch advertising ®rms with more attractive executives experienced faster growth and higher revenues than did ®rms with less attractive execu-tives. Thus, there appears to be an economic incentive to appear attractive. Previous research, however, has not addressed whether or not people who are employed in some occupations, rate the maintenance of overall appear-ance more important than do people who are employed in other occupations. Moreover, research has not fully considered the behavioral consequences of individuals putting more or less emphasis on physical appearance (e.g., does it aect grooming habits or maintenance rituals?). Nor has it addressed if they patronize a beauty shop, barbershop, or a beauty salon in maintaining their appearance.
This paper uses a sample to investigate whether oneÕs (a) occupational status in¯uences the importance one attributes to maintaining overall ap-pearance, and (b) occupation in¯uences oneÕs choice of type of hair-grooming establishment. Speci®cally, we test two hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1. The importance respondents attribute to maintaining overall
appearance is signi®cantly related to their occupation, gender, racial/ethnic group, and age.
Hypothesis 2. RespondentsÕ choice of hair-grooming establishment is
The hypotheses are tested using logit analysis. We measure the importance of appearance with a binary assessment and the type of hair-grooming es-tablishment with a nominal-choice variable. A set of economic, demographic, and choice variables used separately and collectively oers empirical evidence as to the signi®cance of occupational status and other factors in¯uencing appearance assessment and the choice of hair-grooming establishment.
2. Physical appearance
The inferences that people make about others based on their physical appearance have been extensively studied by researchers. In general, the studies conclude that beauty is good, meaning that physically attractive people will be successful in a multitude of endeavors, including professional and social. 3 Another line of physical-appearance research investigates the concern for oneÕs appearance, also referred to as vanity, and its relationship to behavior.4 For example, in their study of vanity and consumer behavior Netemeyer, Burton and Lichtenstein (1995) found correlations between vanity scales and consumer-based constructs such as cosmetics-use behavior and clothing concern. Burton, Netemeyer, Lichtenstein (1995) studied the role of appearance concern in relation to health-related behaviors and concluded that women were more likely to engage in potentially harmful behaviors such as eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and intentional sun-bathing than men. The authors attribute the dierences in appearance concern to cultural socialization processes and attitudes which have existed for centuries. They suggest that perhaps with the increased number of women in the work force, concern for personal appearance would diminish
3
Brie¯y, the beauty is good theory suggests that beautiful people are perceived to have more favorable personal attributes than nonbeautiful people. Extensive reviews of research on physical attractiveness stereotypes using meta-analysis were conducted by Feingold (1992) and Eagly et al. (1991). Feingold's (1992) review showed that physically attractive people were viewed as more sociable, dominant, sexually warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, and socially skilled than physically unattractive people. Whereas, ``the correlation literature indicated generally trivial relationships between physical attractiveness and measures of ability'' (Feingold, 1992, p. 304). Eagly et al.'s (1991) ®ndings on the physical attractiveness stereotype traits were similar and concluded that ``. . . the average magnitude of this beauty-is-good eect was moderate, and the strength of the eect varied considerably from study to study''. To some extent, both studies debunked the good-is-beautiful stereotype.
as women succeed at work and gain social power ± although, further opportunities for success in the workplace may be achieved by enhanced appearance.
Research shows, however, that the importance of appearance may dier by occupation. Hamermesh and Biddle (1994) used a survey (Holzer, 1993) which assessed employersÕviews on the importance of appearance for hiring to determine if better-looking people sort into occupations where beauty is more productive. The survey asked employers ``How important or unim-portant is attractive physical appearance [for the job most recently ®lled]?'' Although the sample size was small, the summary statistics revealed some interesting ®ndings, for example, 90.9% of employers said that looks were important for retail sales occupations; whereas, only 16.6% considered looks important in precision production occupations. Thus, it appears that ap-pearance is important in occupations where employees have more contact with their customers.
In summary, the studies suggest that individualsÕ concern for their ap-pearance may aect grooming behavior. This supports our studyÕs premise that individuals employed in occupations where appearance is important will solicit services from an establishment that will enhance their appearance, making them more successful in the workplace.
3. Methods
followed by African-Americans (8.6%), Asians/Paci®c Islanders (6.7%), His-panics/Latinos (6.2%), and American Indians (1.4%).
3.1. Development of hair-grooming establishment attribute scale
In order to measure consumersÕ perceptions of important hair-grooming establishment attributes, a scale of attributes was developed by drawing on the limited hair-grooming establishment literature (Strischek & Du, 1989) and initial ®eld work. Respondents were asked to rate nine attributes in se-lecting a hair-grooming establishment as either very important, somewhat important, or not at all important.
To identify dimensions underlying the original nine important attribute variables, an unrestricted factor analysis was performed. A three-factor so-lution emerged which explained 61.6% of the total variance of the nine items. The alphas for the factors ranged from 0.58 to 0.76. The items had loadings from 0.61 to 0.88.
Factor 1, Image, was composed of three items: reputation, atmosphere, and attire of employees; Factor 2, Service Experience, consisted of quality service, cleanliness, and courtesy; and Factor 3, Convenience, consisted of location, price, and convenient hours. The scores from the factors were used in subsequent regression analyses.
3.2. Modeling
This section describes our model of (1) the importance of maintaining overall appearance and (2) choice of type of hair-grooming establishment.
3.3. Modeling the importance of appearance
Given previous ®ndings suggesting the linkage of one's economic liveli-hood and appearance, we might, therefore, expect that the importance of appearance should depend on one's occupational status. We test this hy-pothesis using a binary dependent variable of the importance of maintaining
overall appearance RATE APPEARANCE (1very important, 0 not
de®ned as 1 if respondent was employed in appearance-important occupa-tions and 0, if not employed. A positive relation between occupation and the importance of appearance is anticipated.
Research has established that women spend more time managing their appearance than men (Daly, Hogg, Sacks, Smith & Zimring, 1983; Aune & Aune, 1994) and that among African Americans, Caucasian Americans, and Asian Americans, Caucasian Americans spend the most time on appearance management and Asian Americans the least (Aune & Aune, 1994). On the other hand, African Americans spend more money on personal care and clothing than other groups which indicates they are concerned about their appearance (Fisher, 1996). Given seemingly contradictory conclusions, we forgo a directional hypothesis for race and appearance. Females, however, are more likely to consider appearance maintenance to be more important than males. The independent variables WHITE (white1, minority0) and FEMALE (female1, male0) were included in the model. Pliner, Chaiken, and FlettÕs (1990) study con®rmed that females were not only more concerned with their physical appearance than males; but that the impor-tance females place on appearance decreased with age. The continuous variable AGE is included and we expect it will be negatively related to the appearance variable. Our estimating equation in functional form is as fol-lows:
RATE APPEARANCEf Appearance Occupation; White;
Age; Female: 1
3.4. Modeling the choice of type of hair-grooming establishment
CHOICEf Appearance Occupation; Female; White; Age;
Income; Image;Service Experience; Convenience: 2
APPEARANCE OCCUPATION in the choice equation was rede®ned to exclude the military since an appearance standard valued by the military may be dierent from what is valued by civilians. In particular, with respect to haircuts, the crewcut available at any barbershop may be considered ideal in the military; whereas, a fashionable haircut that would help one get ahead in an advertising ®rm, might be seen as inappropriate in the military. Accord-ingly, we would expect that persons employed in appearance-important oc-cupations (professional/managerial, clerical/secretarial, sales, and services,
operationally de®ned as APPEARANCE OCCUPATION1) would seek
beauty-enhancing services, since an economic incentive exists for looking oneÕs best. The greater variety of appearance-enhancement services, we posit, would be received from a beauty salon. Additionally, higher-income indi-viduals, other things equal, may select a beauty salon since they are more expensive than beauty shops or barber shops.
Barbershops are more likely to operate on a ®rst-come ®rst-serve basis; and, beauty shops and salons are more likely to accept appointments. As such it may be inconvenient for auent males to wait around in the tradi-tional barbershop. Thus, appearance-important occupation and income should decrease the probability of choosing a barbershop or a beauty shop relative to a beauty salon. We use two income classes in (2).
Lastly, three demographic variables are added to the model: FEMALE, AGE, and WHITE. We would expect that patronage of the types of estab-lishments to dier along gender lines for historical reasons. Historically, men frequent barbershops and women use beauty shops. With the advent of the beauty salon, de®ned as a full-service establishment, the traditional gender segmentation became less prevalent. As noted earlier, males are fairly new customers to beauty salons. As such, we expect males to choose barbershops over beauty salons, other things equal.
Age might also come into play because younger people may be less averse to crossing boundaries that were traditionally de®ned along gender lines. Previous empirical research shows that younger persons are more concerned with their appearance than are older persons (Pliner, Chaikner & Flett, 1990). Therefore, we would expect younger individuals to be attracted to the amenities that beauty salons oer ± facials and nail care, tanning booths, sale of beauty products, and at some salons, trendy music and furnishings.
Since all ethnic/racial groups may be employed in appearance-important occupations, no directional hypothesis is formulated for race.5
4. Results
Binary logit regression was used to test Hypothesis 1 and a multinomial logit was used for Hypothesis 2. The variables are described in Table 1. We used 220 observations for which there were no missing values.
4.1. Importance of maintaining appearance
Table 2 presents the results of the binary logit regression of maintaining appearance. Overall, the model exhibited good explanatory power, the hy-pothesis of all slopes equaling zero was rejected and the model correctly predicted the importance ratings for 74.5% of the respondents. Individually, the model estimated statistically signi®cant coecients for two variables ± APPEARANCE OCCUPATION and WHITE. APPEARANCE OCCU-PATION (de®ned as 1 for occupations readily identi®ed as likely to pay a premium for appearance, otherwise zero) yielded the expected statistically signi®cant positive coecient (statistically greater than zero at less than the
Table 2
Binary logit regression of the importance of maintaining overall appearancea
Variable Coecient andzvalue Marginal eects on probabilityb (overall appearancevery important)
absolutezvalue in parenthesis; ***P< 0.01.
bPartial derivative of probabilities with respect to the vector of characteristics evaluated at means. cLog likelihood with n explanatory variables.
dLog likelihood with allb
0 except for the intercept term. Table 1
Description of variables
Variable Description
Rate appearance 1if rate overall appearance important Choice 1if choose barbershop
2if choose beauty shop 3if choose beauty salon
Appearance occupation 1if employed in the military, professional/managerial, secretarial/ clerical, service, or sales occupations
Female 1if female
Income 1 1if household income is $75,000 or more Income 2 1if household income is $35,000±$74,999
Age Age of respondent
White 1if respondent is white
Factor 1 Image
Factor 2 Service experience
0.01 level using a one-tail test). Thus, respondents employed in professional/ managerial, sales, clerical/secretarial, services, and the armed forces, identi-®ed maintaining an overall good appearance as very important signi®cantly more often than respondents employed in occupations where appearance is considered less important. Whites were less likely to rate maintenance of appearance important than minorities. This result stands in contrast to Aune and Aune (1994), but in agreement with Fisher (1996). Moreover, the mar-ginal eects, also shown in Table 2, support the signi®cance of the occupation and white variables. Contrary to the literature (and in some cases, popular opinion), there was no dierence in the perception of appearance mainte-nance by gender.
4.2. Choice of type of hair-grooming establishment
Table 3 contains the multinomial logit regression results of the choice of type of hair-grooming establishment. The estimated parameters for each equation in the table measure the eect of changes in explanatory variables on the logarithm of the ratio of the probability of a ``beauty shop'' or a ``barbershop'' choice relative to the probability of ``beauty salon'' choice.
The explanatory variables were grouped into three separate sets shown in columns 2±4 in Table 3, and one joint set, identi®ed in the column heading All. Using the likelihood ratio test distributed according to the chi-square distribution with the degrees of freedom equal to the number of explanatory variables in the set, we tested for the contribution of the set of economic, demographic, and establishment-attributes variables. The null hypothesis that the slope coecients for all variables in each set equals zero was rejected decisively as shown by the signi®cance levels of 0.000, 0.000, and 0.001, re-spectively.
For the economic variable set, being employed in an appearance-impor-tant occupation decreased the probability of using a barbershop and a beauty shop relative to a beauty salon, statistically signi®cant at 1% and 5%, re-spectively. INCOME1 was also negative and statistically signi®cant for the beauty-shop-choice group, indicating a reduced probability of using a beauty shop relative to a beauty salon.
Table 3
Multinomial logit regression for choice of type of hair-grooming establishmenta
Variable Explanatory variable set
Economic Demographic Establishment attributes All Choice group: Barber shop
Constant )1.247 )1.923 )2.704 0.067
(3.645) (3.023) (14.217) (0.080)
Service experience )0.500 )0.499
Age )3.791 0.022
(5.854) (1.861)
Female 1.484 1.469
(2.751) (2.665)
White )0.615 )0.596
(1.860) (1.618)
Image 0.154 )0.087
(1.056) (0.532)
Service experience 0.224 0.231
(0.883) (0.784)
Convenience 0.475 0.377
(2.751) (2.206)
LL nb )284.106 )250.479 )289.303 )226.097
LL 0c )301.163 )301.163 )301.163 )301.163
v2 34.115 101.369 23.721 150.132
d.f. 6 6 6 18
Signi®cance level 0.000 0.000 0.001 0.000
Likelihood ratio index 0.057 0.168 0.039 0.249
Percent correct 73.9 74.6 73.4 77.1
aCoecients show relative to excluded category, beauty salon (absolutesvalues are in parentheses); ***P< 0.01; **P< 0.05; *P< 0.10. bLog likelihood withnexplanatory variables.
cLog likelihood with allb
0 except for the intercept term.
R.K.
Schwer,
R.
Daneshvary
/
Journal
of
Economic
Psychology
21
(2000)
207±222
The stronger contribution of the demographic variables relative to the eco-nomic and establishment attribute variables is supported using the likelihood ratio index. The index is 0.168 for the demographic set, and 0.039 and 0.057 and for the establishment-attributes and economic sets, respectively.
The establishment-attributes pattern revealed two interesting points: (a) a statistically signi®cant negative sign on quality for the barbershop group, and (b) a signi®cant positive sign with convenience for the beauty shop group.
Considering the explanatory factors jointly (shown in column 5 of Table 3), the pattern of signi®cant coecients for the barbershop group remained essentially unchanged from consideration of each explanatory set separately. The signs and the signi®cance of the economic and demographic factors re-mained unchanged. On the other hand, a slight decrease in signi®cance oc-curred for SERVICE EXPERIENCE and a marked increase in signi®cance occurred for CONVENIENCE. CONVENIENCE when considered sepa-rately with the establishment attributes had been insigni®cant. Whereas, considering all variables resulted in the CONVENIENCE variable gaining statistical signi®cance, although the sign of the coecients did not change. A positive sign suggests that the importance of convenience favors a barber-shop relative to a beauty salon.
The pattern of the signi®cant coecients for the beauty salon group also remained essentially unchanged. When considering the explanatory factors jointly, a decrease in signi®cance occurred for AGE. WHITE when consid-ered separately had been signi®cant, albeit at the 10% level; whereas, con-sidered jointly with all variables, it lost its statistical signi®cance.
All in all, demographic and establishment attributes factors accounted for greater in¯uence on the probability ratio between barbershops and beauty salons than the economic factors. Our survey responses suggest that the demographic dimension, in particular, age and gender, plays the signi®cant role.
5. Conclusion
Using a set of economic variables which includes appearance-important occupation and income variables, we compared the relative contribution to the likelihood ratio index with a set of demographic variables (age, gender, and race) and establishment attributes (image, service experience, and con-venience). The demographic set contributes more explanatory power than the economic and establishment attributes.
Considering all explanatory-variable sets jointly, the probability of choosing a barbershop relative to a beauty salon is signi®cantly associated with older, nonwhite males not employed in appearance-important occupa-tions, preferring convenience and accepting less quality in hair grooming. On the other hand, the probability of choosing a beauty shop relative to a beauty salon signi®cantly re¯ects older women with lower incomes, who are not employed in appearance-important occupations. Similar to barbershop ®ndings, convenience is a signi®cant factor in choosing a beauty shop relative to a beauty salon.
Our ®ndings point to a signi®cant dimension in the importance people attribute to maintaining appearance; but, people choose a hair-grooming establishment based on a mix of economic and noneconomic factors. As such, one may maintain oneÕs appearance using the services of either a beauty shop, a barbershop, or a beauty salon. Thus, the quality of the product, that is the haircut or style, is but one of a number of amenities oered by some high-end beauty salons. ``Keeping up appearances'', on the other hand, using a barbershop or a beauty shop, may result in quality hair care and few, if any, accompanying amenities in a less-than-fashionable salon.
The diculties encountered in operationally de®ning ``appearance occu-pation'' is an indication of some of the complexities involved in making self-image relevant consumer decisions. Appearance importance seems like a straightforward construct, but upon further examination, issues about what kind of appearance one wishes to project add complexity to the issue. Ad-ditional research on this issue is warranted.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Shana Black and Bill Kuhn for their help on the questionnaire and preliminary data collection, and Harvey Mann and Edward Rivera for data collection.
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