ABSTRACT
Celebrities are the personalities that are
well known in public either because of their credibility or of their
attractiveness or because of both of these. To leverage this, advertisers use
celebrities in their advertisement to increase the effectiveness and heighten
the believability of commercials.
Prior to this research, many researchers have
proven facts that celebrity endorsement does cast its impact. This research
actually moves on the same line and affirms the impact of celebrity endorsement
on customers’ buying intention. We presented the respondents with printed
advertisements comprising celebrities and analyzed their response. Overall,
phenomenon of celebrity endorsement was found to be influencing. The results
maintain that customers are motivated to purchase by celebrities that appear in
advertisements but also look for celebrity product association.
Keywords: Celebrity
Endorsement, Buying Behavior, Celebrity Endorsement in Pakistan.
Nowadays, many companies
spent billions of dollars per year on celebrity endorsement to create the good
or positive awareness their products and brands. Essential objective
of celebrity endorsement is to achieve a favourable impact on brand image.
Firms believing that the power of a brand lies in the mind of existing or
potential customers and what they have experienced directly or indirectly about
the brand, adopt strategic brand management approach, using celebrity
endorsement. Celebrity endorsement is a type of channel in brand
communication through which a celebrity acts as the brands
Spokesperson and
certifies the brand’s claim and position by extending their personality,
popularity and status in the society or expertise in the field to the brand. In
short it is a tool of marked distinct differentiation that creates a niche in
the market and among equals in the industry, and amongst the firms sponsoring
the brand endorser(s). Communication, including marketing communication that
employs celebrity endorsers, can be characterized as a process in
which the sender conveys stimuli to influence the behaviour of others classical
framework of persuasive communication differentiates the elements of the
communication process according to his well-known formula: “who says what in which
channel to whom.” the first element, who,
refers to the message source or sender. Message sources can be impersonal
(e.g., advertisements),interpersonal (e.g., friends, colleagues)
or experiential .In an endorsement context, the celebrity is an impersonal
message source, so his or her characteristics, including
perceived personal attributes like attractiveness or credibility, may
determine endorsement success in terms of the favourable brand image
outcome.
Literature Review
Marketing tends to take on new and
unique ways of advertising as advertisers are exploring different ways to make
the advertisements effective and influential as well. Celebrity endorsement is
one of these. The advertisers know it very well that the positive image that
the celebrities cast on the audience is can make the message in the
advertisement more persuasive. According to term ‘celebrity’ can be defined as,
Celebrities are people who enjoy public recognition by a large share of certain
Group of people.” And the term ‘Celebrity endorsement’ as defined
“Any individual who enjoys public
recognition and who uses this recognition on behalf of a consumer good by
appearing with it in an advertisement?”
Advertisers go for celebrity endorsement
because of its greater benefits and immense possible influence. There are
certain potential advantages of celebrity endorsement, celebrities endorsed
advertisements draw more attention as compared to those of non-celebrity ones,
helps the company in re-positioning its product/brand and finally empowers the
company when it’s new in the market or plans to go global. However celebrity
endorsement doesn’t hold sole key to success. It also presents the company with
potential hazards. These might include, overshadowing, overexposure, and controversy.
A number of models have been presented on celebrity endorsement explaining its
mode of application. Some of the renowned models include The Source Models (The
Source Attractiveness Model, The Source Credibility Model), The Product
Match-up Hypothesis and The Meaning Transfer Model and The Elaboration
Likelihood Model.