CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT

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.