EXPRESS: Does Featuring People with Disabilities Help or Hurt Fashion Marketing Effectiveness?

People with disabilities constitute 16% of the global population but seldom appear in fashion marketing communications. The limited campaigns featuring models with disabilities elicit mixed responses from consumers, and the extant literature also makes contradictory predictions about whether disability representation helps or hurts. Ten preregistered field and lab experiments (including four supplemental studies) examine the effect of disability representation on fashion marketing effectiveness. We find that featuring people with (vs. without) disabilities improves fashion marketing effectiveness (i.e., click-through rate of ads, brand attitudes, behavioral intent, brand choice) by boosting perceived brand warmth (i.e., worthy intentions) and coolness (i.e., appropriate deviation from norms). On top of mediation results, we provide process evidence by showing that the positive effect of featuring models with (vs. without) disabilities attenuates when disability representation is reactive (vs. proactive) or when the brand is a follower (vs. first mover) in adopting this practice. Additionally, we demonstrate that compared to plus-size representation, disability representation more effectively enhances marketing effectiveness, as well as brand warmth and coolness. This research offers theoretical and practical insights into disability representation and highlights the importance of nuanced investigations in understanding various diverse representations and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.