School of Business

Investigating the marketing impact of consumers’ connectedness to celebrity endorsers

Document Type

Article

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.

Publication Title

Psychology and Marketing

Publication Date

2019

Volume

36

Issue

10

First Page

923

Last Page

935

ISSN

0742-6046

DOI

10.1002/mar.21245

Keywords

attitude toward endorser, celebrity endorser, connectedness, parasocial relationships, purchase intentions, receptivity toward message, social connectedness

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