Explain Cohen’s arguments and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Capturing the attention of people have changed for retailers. It seems like it is necessary to have a walking billboard, as Marshal Cohen puts it, advertising for a company. Keeping and garnering people’s attention is a lot more difficult because of competition from other brands. So this results into people getting discriminated against because companies are constantly trying to catch people’s attention by hiring only a certain group of people. Many people find it unmoral while retailers say it is a great marketing strategy. Although it is good for gaining profit, there are many negatives that overlap the positives.
Cohen argues that having a brand enhancer is really important for business. Creating an environment that attracts people , particularly the youth, is needed. Most consumers of the retail market are mainly of the younger generation so they need to appeal to them more. The store Abercrombie & Fitch has bags and posters covered with mostly either skinny attractive girls or strong guys, or even both; all of which are fairly young. With this advertising system, they attract many males and females. As Cohen says,” A guy wants to go hang out in a store where he can see good-looking gals.”
I think that having people who suit the stores’ image is good, in the business sense. When people see a person out in the street looking good wearing the stores’ products, they’ll want to check out the shop. “Brand Representatives are ambassadors to the brand,” Abercrombie’s community director Tom Lennox said. “We want to hire brand representatives that will represent the Abercrombie & Fitch brand.....,look great while exhibiting individuality, project the brand themselves with energy and enthusiasm, and make the store a warm, inviting place...”. I do not get what they mean by wanting the store to be a warm inviting place because what they’re doing is discriminating. Companies need to keep their people attracted to their brand so they need to have people who makes their clothes look appealing. This is a way of bringing in the money from the young fashionable market because that is where most of their profit lies. This kind of marketing strategy proves to be useful since stores like Abercrombie, Hollister, and Forever 21 are immensely popular.
But by hiring youthful and attractive all of the time causes many problems. And so because of this, i have to say that this marketing strategy is wrong especially on a moral level. Companies should and have the right to hire whoever they want to but at the same time, they shouldn’t hire only the same type of people. Because companies need to fit their store image of beauty, those who don’t fit the image are tossed aside or ignored. Abercrombie’s main look is the “classic American” style and so they generally hire people who emit that style. The company says it doesn't discriminate but many think otherwise. Abercrombie does hire people of different ethnicities but those who don’t fit their image are mainly in the back, not on the sales floor. Abercrombie even hires people on the spot if they look pretty enough for them. Workers are told to approach someone if they look like they could work at the store. It is discrimination because someone with a lot of work experience, but not that attractive, can be denied a job there. “Good looking people are treated better by others. Maybe companies have noticed that hiring them impacts their bottom line..”
“The problem with all this image stuff is it just reeks of marketing for this white-bread, Northern European, thin, wealthy, fashion-model look.” said Donna Harper. People just need to get used to the reality that we aren’t and can’t all be like this. With companies always displaying posters and having workers that mostly look “beautiful” everywhere, people can only feel bad for how they look. A lot of people truly believe that looking like a model and being thin is the definition of beauty, which it is obviously not. Being beautiful doesn’t have a specific look. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Discrimination of many different kinds are presented when hiring by appearances. “If you’re hiring by looks, then you can run into problems of race discrimination, national origin discrimination, gender discrimination, age discrimination, and even disability discrimination.” said Olophius Perry. Many clothing shops hire only young people. “Hiring only athletic-looking people could be viewed as discriminating against a person in a wheelchair.” As stated from the article, Going for the Look, but Risking Discrimination, a person in a wheelchair won’t get the job. “Hiring someone’s attractive isn’t illegal per se. But people’s views on what’s attractive may be influenced by their race, their religion, their age.” There was a case where a 47 year old waitress accused a restaurant she worked at for discrimination. The waitress had worked at the restaurant for 23 years, but after the place got renovated, she was denied a job there. The reason they told her for not rehiring her was that she no longer fit the young, trendy look the restaurant had adopted. I think that having a 47 year old in a trendy place is fine. She has a lot of work experience and she would definitely be a great employee at the new restaurant.
People should hire people based on their abilities. Stephen J. Roppolo, a lawyer who represents many hotels and restaurants, said”...I tell employers that their main focus needs to be hiring somebody who can get the job done. When they want to hire to project a certain image, that’s where things can get screwy.” I agree with this because when it come down to things, getting the job done is top priority. By having an incompetent person working for you, business is hindered and nothing will get done. No matter how a person looks, it should be all about their abilities.
