Pay attention, retailers.  For a fatter bottom line, you might want to have some hunks and hotties on hand.  That’s what Jennifer Argo and her colleagues say.  She teaches business at the University of Alberta.  The research team did a study to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.  The result: customers were more enthusiastic about clothing when they saw good-looking people handling the clothes.

The team studied responses of 300 shoppers who were sent to a store to try on a specific shirt. When the shoppers saw a planted average-looking person trying on the shirt they came for, they weren’t that interested in buying it.  But when a fetching model of the opposite sex was seen to sport the shirt, the shoppers said they were then actually willing to spend more for it.
 
Regular Joes and Janes, don’t take that as meaning you have no future on the sales floor.  Argo says that retailers can still get more appearance-connected sales mileage from their average-looking staff just by making sure the employees stay well-groomed to give a natty appearance.

—Steve Mirsky, with reporting by Harvey Black