Investigating the marketing impact of consumers’ connectedness to celebrity endorsers

Abstract

Consumers enjoy following famous media personalities, discovering details about their habits, food preferences, or designer brands that they wear. Consumers model their consumption behaviors based on their favorite celebrities' preferences. Marketers are aware of such celebrity admiration and frequently use celebrities as part of marketing communication strategies. Grounded in parasocial relationship and social connectedness theories, this study tests a model of connectedness to the celebrity, attitude toward the celebrity, receptivity toward the celebrity-endorsed message, and purchase intentions of the celebrity-endorsed market offering. These relationships were investigated using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate an individual's level of connectedness to their favorite celebrity is positively linked with both their receptivity toward the celebrity-endorsed message and purchase intentions of the celebrity-endorsed market offering. On the theoretical side, the integration of parasocial relationship and social connectedness theories explain the processes through which celebrity endorsements impact consumers'attitudes and behaviors. On the practical side, the findings suggest marketers should carefully choose the best celebrity endorsers for advertisements after considering how constituents from within their key target markets are likely to connect with the chosen celebrity. However, beyond consumers' connectedness to the celebrity, the findings also suggest that receptivity toward the celebrity-endorsed message is an essential link to purchase intentions of the endorsed offering. K E Y W O R D S attitude toward endorser, celebrity endorser, connectedness, parasocial relationships, purchase intentions, receptivity toward message, social connectedness

"I Like Your Suggestion!" the role of humanlikeness and parasocial relationship on the website versus voice shopper's perception of recommendations

“…Existent literature provides robust evidence that parasocial relationships increase the persuasiveness of the counterpart. Consumers accepted the counterpart's (e.g., media figures and avatars) arguments and suggestions more readily when they have built parasocial relationships with them (Chung & Cho, 2017; Colliander & Dahlén, 2011; Tran et al, 2019). Chung and Cho (2017) studied parasocial relationships between a celebrity endorser and users on social media and found that parasocial relationships increased source trustworthiness and purchase intentions.…”

“…Verbal communication plays a key role in building relationships (Berger & Calabrese, 1975) and relationship building is a critical element of sales. Consumers can be easily persuaded by people they have close relationships with and feel connected to (e.g., Nass & Yen, 2010; Tran et al, 2019), including family members, friends, and sales associates. During shopping, the voice assistant performs the role of a sales associate by providing recommendations, product information, and payment assistance.…”

Effects of Social Media Influencers on Brand Attitude From The Perspective Of Brand-Influencer Compatibility And Perceived Homophily

“…The mentioned attractiveness does not only mean the attractiveness of physical properties but also elegance (Mills & Aronson, 1965), and sexuality (Steadman, 1969). Tran et al (2019) tried to explain how influencers lead consumers to positive attitudes and behavioral responses within the scope of parasocial relationship theory. Parasocial relationship refers to the one-sided interpersonal relationships individuals establish with celebrities in the media (Sakib et al, 2019).…”

El papel de las personalidades de radio como prescriptores de complementos alimenticios. Un análisis de las declaraciones de propiedades saludables (H-RCs) en las menciones de radio en España

“…Emplear celebridades, consumidores típicos, expertos profesionales, empleados de la empresa o voceros anónimos como prescriptores publicitarios es una estrategia recurrente entre los anunciantes (Perelló-Oliver et al, 2018;Schouten et al, 2020;Tran et al, 2019), ya que imbuyen de personalidad a las marcas y maximizan el impacto persuasivo del mensaje. El objetivo es crear una imagen de marca a través de la persona y no del producto en sí, con el fin de capitalizar la confianza percibida de los consumidores potenciales (Mospan & Alexander, 2018).…”

“…Los prescriptores se consideran una fuente de credibilidad. McCroskey y Young (1981) indicaron que la credibilidad es una actitud hacia la fuente de información, que modifica la aceptación del mensaje (Schouten et al, 2020;Tran et al, 2019) y el grado de acuerdo con el mismo. Por tanto, en la medida en que los mensajes no puedan recibirse fuera de su fuente, la credibilidad es un factor decisivo en la eficacia de la persuasión (Morimoto, 2020;Plasek & Temesi, 2019).…”