Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1002/mar.70179

Publication Title

Psychology & Marketing

Volume

Advance online publication

Pages

1-15

Abstract

This research examines how a consumer's committed romantic relationship influences their decision to approach an attractive salesperson in a retail environment. To date, the majority of research espouses the benefits of salesperson attractiveness in enhancing consumers' perceptions of the salesperson and the represented retailer. This is problematic because it creates a managerial bias toward attractive salespeople and, as we propose, provides an incomplete view of the effect of salesperson attractiveness on consumers' behavior. Drawing on the interpersonal relationship literature on commitment, we propose that consumers in committed relationships activate relationship-maintenance motives that override the beauty bias when a salesperson's attractiveness signals mate threat. We find that this effect is gendered, occurring only for female consumers. Our findings suggest that beauty is not always better, providing implications for both theory and practice.

Rights

© 2026 The Authors.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Data Availability

Article states: "The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request."

ORCID

0000-0001-8832-703X (Thomas)

Original Publication Citation

Thomas, V. L., Mangus, S. M., & Bock, D. E. (2026). Beauty isn't always better: How salesperson attractiveness affects consumers' approach behaviors. Psychology & Marketing. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.70179

Download

Share

COinS