From the article:

the scientists looked at the ratio between ring and index finger, which is correlated with one’s level of testosterone.

I wasn't aware of this. Wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio

That a greater proportion of men have shorter index fingers than ring fingers than do women was noted in the scientific literature several times through the late 1800s,[16][17] with the statistically significant sex difference in a sample of 201 men and 109 women established by 1930,[18] after which time the sex difference appears to have been largely forgotten or ignored.

The article doesn’t go as far as to make any explanations so I’ll drop what I think is happening: the tall masculine figure is making the targeted men insecure (the shorter, lower test level men) about their masculinity and they make up for it by buying luxury goods, which is an alternative expression of masculinity (think expensive whiskies and fine taste).

It of course doesn’t affect women because they aren’t threatened, and it doesn’t affect men who are already physically masculine because they’re secure there.

And now I wonder if you can run variations:

1. Have some well dressed guy in a suit lead underdressed buff guys buy clothing because they’re insecure about their appearance

2. Have skinny women lead more overweight women to buy health products that promote weight loss

In the case of female shoppers, the measured purchase patterns were exactly same, regardless of the amount of muscle at the entrance. On the other hand, male shoppers were clearly influenced.“

“This alone provides a valuable marketing insight. Women clearly don’t care that much about the employees’ physical appearance – from a shopping point of view, that is. Men are much more easily swayed.”

To back that assertion, I would want to see the experiment repeated with female sales employees. In that situation, would women shoppers respond in a similar way to attractive and confident female employees as the men did to dominant male employees?

Anyone got a link to the “research” cited in here? From the article it doesn’t seem like the most rigourous methodology, and I don’t see any p or n values listed.

Honestly if this was actually true every male shop assistant working on commission would already be ripped because they would be selling double that of the scrawny ones, who would have been fired months ago.

For the next Apple keynote, Tim Cook is gonna be shirtless and ripped.

Abercrombie and Fitch share price is at a 17 year low and they have put themselves up for sale. I don't think their strategy is working out too well for them in a market where foreign competitors like Zara and H&M entered with much more effective marketing messages.

Abercrombie and Fitch "failed to keep up with changing preferences among customers, and has suffered as a result, plagued with a number of periods of declining sales."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/05/10/wh...

From the couple of pictures, the "dominant" men were a little taller than average, and fairly well muscled.

I wonder what would happen if you went even more extreme, such as staffing the store with men who look like, both physically and in dress, as if they just stepped out of a "Tom of Finland" drawing?

My guess is that if the gap between the salesman and the customer is much more than what the customer believes they realistically can achieve, the salesman will not be as effective as one who is more similar to the customer.