Choosing an Endorser for a Women’s Sporting Event: The Interaction of Attractiveness and Expertise

Abstract

The match-up hypothesis and associative learning theory was utilized to examine the effects of athlete attractiveness and expertise on attitudes towards an athletic event and purchase intentions.An experimental design was incorporated to test the study's hypotheses with participants (N = 184) from three universities. Results indicate that athlete attractiveness and expertise interact to produce the best endorser-event fit. In terms of athletes with high levels of expertise, there were no differences in athlete-event fit between the highly attractive and less attractive athlete.However, among the athletes with low expertise, the attractive athlete was perceived as a better fit than was the less attractive athlete. Further, attitudes toward the event partially mediated the relationship between fit and purchase intentions, but identification did not act as a moderator.These results held regardless of participant sex. Implications relative to theory and practice are presented.3

The face tells all: Testing the impact of physical attractiveness and social media information of spokesperson on message effectiveness during a crisis

“…These results indicate that practitioners can use social cues to boost persuasiveness and/or message credibility of less attractive spokespeople. In one study, attractive athlete spokespeople were perceived more positively, but only when they had lower expertise (Cunningham et al, ). Thus, it is logical to assume the reverse that a social cue communicates higher expertise to publics and is incongruent with high attractiveness in certain situations.…”

“…Perceived source expertise. Perceived expertise towards PR spokespeople used two items preceded by the phrase (Ahearne, Gruen, & Jarvis, , Cunningham, Fink, & Kenix, ), “the PR spokesperson in the news looks…” and utilized 7‐point semantic differential scales: “unprofessional–professional,” and “unqualified–qualified” ( r = 0.93, p < 0.001).…”

Sports press coverage of Polish female athletes during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro

“…It was traditionally assumed that men's sport should be advertised by means of their achievements in sport and in the case of women, by means of sexualised presentations. In the case of two experiments where the materials promoting a tennis and softball tournament manipulated with the attractiveness and abilities of female contestants, it turned out that the materials stressing achievements and abilities resulted in greater intentions to participate in the events (Fink, Cunningham & Kensicki 2004, Cunningham, Fink & Kenix 2008. Subsequent research which made use of focus group interviews with male and female sport fans also showed that the marketing strategy in women's sport used so far brought effects which were rather opposite of what was expected.…”

An Experimental Examination of Activist Type and Effort on Brand Image and Purchase Intentions

“…Simply put, the more favorable view of the endorser, the more favorable view of the product . Within sport, a large portion of this celebrity endorsement research has identified what qualities or characteristics lead to predicting effectiveness of celebrity endorsements (Cunningham & Bright, 2012;Cunningham & Regan, 2012;Cunningham, Fink, & Kenix, 2007;Fink, Cunningham, & Kensicki, 2004;Kamins, 1990;Kim & Na, 2007;Lohneiss & Hill, 2014;Ohanian, 1990) . Multiple characteristics that may impact effectiveness of a message include source attractiveness, match-up hypothesis (celebrity-product congruence), and source credibility (Kim & Na, 2007) .…”