Headless mannequins – good for business (or not)?

Mannequins in shop windows – should they have heads, or shouldn’t they? And what about mannequins displayed online? From a retailer’s point of view, the question of whether to use headed or headless mannequins is a complex one – or rather, the answers are complex. And now, for the first time, such answers can be examined in one of the only scientific studies to have investigated the effects of a mannequin’s head, or lack of a head, on shopping behavior.

‘Does the presence of a mannequin head change shopping behavior?’  is awaiting publication in the print version of the Journal of Business Research.

[note: Our photo, not from the paper, shows headed and headless dummies for comparison]