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Watermelons, Syringes, and Regulation: Instagram Marketing by Cosmetic Clinics in the UK and the Netherlands
BACKGROUND: Cosmetic clinics use social media to inform and market to prospective patients. Evidence from social media posts by the UK and Dutch cosmetic clinics illustrates the precarious balance between professionalism and commercialism, and raises important questions for the regulation of these m...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer US
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10581915/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37337055 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00266-023-03420-0 |
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author | Hermans, Anne-Mette |
author_facet | Hermans, Anne-Mette |
author_sort | Hermans, Anne-Mette |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Cosmetic clinics use social media to inform and market to prospective patients. Evidence from social media posts by the UK and Dutch cosmetic clinics illustrates the precarious balance between professionalism and commercialism, and raises important questions for the regulation of these marketing communication efforts. METHODS: A random selection of Instagram posts by Dutch and the UK clinics which offer (non-) invasive cosmetic procedures were selected for a qualitative content analysis. The corpus of data comprised 395 posts by six Dutch and four UK clinics, published between January 2018 and July 2019. The method of analysis was inspired by previous qualitative studies into the marketing of cosmetic procedures and can be described as a (discursive) thematic analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The tension between the medical-professional and commercial nature of cosmetic procedures was evident in the Instagram posts by Dutch and UK clinics. Despite calls for ‘ethical’ marketing on social media, this study illustrates that marketing materials are not always in line with current advertising guidelines. Whereas advertising standards authorities have warned against the trivialization of cosmetic procedures, posts by clinics backgrounded the medical nature of procedures in favor of more commercial advertising appeals. Furthermore, the posts demonstrated little diversity in terms of models’ gender, ethnicity and body type, which reinforces narrow contemporary beauty ideals. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE V: This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10581915 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105819152023-10-19 Watermelons, Syringes, and Regulation: Instagram Marketing by Cosmetic Clinics in the UK and the Netherlands Hermans, Anne-Mette Aesthetic Plast Surg Commentary & Discussion BACKGROUND: Cosmetic clinics use social media to inform and market to prospective patients. Evidence from social media posts by the UK and Dutch cosmetic clinics illustrates the precarious balance between professionalism and commercialism, and raises important questions for the regulation of these marketing communication efforts. METHODS: A random selection of Instagram posts by Dutch and the UK clinics which offer (non-) invasive cosmetic procedures were selected for a qualitative content analysis. The corpus of data comprised 395 posts by six Dutch and four UK clinics, published between January 2018 and July 2019. The method of analysis was inspired by previous qualitative studies into the marketing of cosmetic procedures and can be described as a (discursive) thematic analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The tension between the medical-professional and commercial nature of cosmetic procedures was evident in the Instagram posts by Dutch and UK clinics. Despite calls for ‘ethical’ marketing on social media, this study illustrates that marketing materials are not always in line with current advertising guidelines. Whereas advertising standards authorities have warned against the trivialization of cosmetic procedures, posts by clinics backgrounded the medical nature of procedures in favor of more commercial advertising appeals. Furthermore, the posts demonstrated little diversity in terms of models’ gender, ethnicity and body type, which reinforces narrow contemporary beauty ideals. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE V: This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266. Springer US 2023-06-19 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10581915/ /pubmed/37337055 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00266-023-03420-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Commentary & Discussion Hermans, Anne-Mette Watermelons, Syringes, and Regulation: Instagram Marketing by Cosmetic Clinics in the UK and the Netherlands |
title | Watermelons, Syringes, and Regulation: Instagram Marketing by Cosmetic Clinics in the UK and the Netherlands |
title_full | Watermelons, Syringes, and Regulation: Instagram Marketing by Cosmetic Clinics in the UK and the Netherlands |
title_fullStr | Watermelons, Syringes, and Regulation: Instagram Marketing by Cosmetic Clinics in the UK and the Netherlands |
title_full_unstemmed | Watermelons, Syringes, and Regulation: Instagram Marketing by Cosmetic Clinics in the UK and the Netherlands |
title_short | Watermelons, Syringes, and Regulation: Instagram Marketing by Cosmetic Clinics in the UK and the Netherlands |
title_sort | watermelons, syringes, and regulation: instagram marketing by cosmetic clinics in the uk and the netherlands |
topic | Commentary & Discussion |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10581915/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37337055 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00266-023-03420-0 |
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