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Abstract
Celebrity endorsement is one of the most popular promotions of marketing communication. The purpose of this study is to understand the transfer effectiveness between celebrity and brand. Experiment 1 indicates that audiences perceive both images of a celebrity and a brand as being consistent/ inconsistent, and the positive/negative transfer effect did not occur. Experiment 2 shows a positive endorser image can benefit a negative brand image and a positive brand image can weaken a negative endorser image. Experiment 3 shows that when the same celebrity endorsement changed from high to low, brand awareness has a positive transfer effect; conversely, when the same celebrity endorsement changed from low to high, brand awareness has a negative transfer. The results show interesting transfer effects between celebrity and brand, and support most of the hypothesized relationships. These findings advance our understanding of the pervasive influence of celebrity in today's society.
Keywords: Celebrity, brand image, meaning transfer, match-up hypothesis, cognition dissonance
Introduction
The phenomenon that one popular celebrity endorses multiple brands with different product categories is increasing in occurrence. In Taiwan, for example, Jay Chou endorsed 8-10 different brands with product types during one year. Celebrity endorsement strategies have been competitive power in nature and saturated to differentiated product and brand from competitors. Since there is heavy advertising clutter, there is almost no room for actual product differentiation in markets, as long as the right celebrity is found (Erdogan, 1999; Keller, 2008). However, whether one celebrity has effective transfer effects to match up multiple characteristics of different brands is questionable. In this study, transfer refers to the phenomenon in which endorser (positive/ high awareness) influence brand (negative/ low awareness) that is not directly addressed in a communication. The right celebrity endorsement is critical decision to a successful advertising strategy through the transfer of characteristic, image, and awareness.
The situation where a celebrity is involved in a negative information or event that damages his/her reputation or image can hurt the brand/product evaluations is often happens. The examples of Britney Spears and Tiger Woods are well known. Conversely, when the brand is involved in negative information or event that damages its reputation or image can hurt the evaluations of celebrity is also happens. The examples of McDonald's and Coca-Cola are...