Investigating the extent of negative celebrity endorsement or image perception on consumers’ purchase intention

Abstract

The modern world of marketing communication is replete with advertisements, and therefore, it is hard to differentiate one’s advertisement from its competitors. The glamour of a celebrity seldom goes unnoticed, and it has thus become an integral part of modern advertisements. Celebrity endorsement attracts consumers’ attention to ad contents, increases brand recall and awareness and shapes the brand’s image by extending the endorsers’ identities and personalities onto the advertised products. However, associating a brand with a celebrity endorser comes with its own risks. Negative publicity or information about celebrity endorsers is particularly problematic because not only does it tarnish the celebrity’s own reputation, but it also generates adverse consumer perceptions of endorsed brands and companies. Previous researchers have studied how different consumers’ purchase intentions are impacted based on the celebrity and brand perception and the severity of the transgression conducted by them. However how a transgression being a personal (not affecting general consumers) or community (affecting general consumers as well) type affects purchase intention has not been studied in depth. Moreover, this evaluation of a celebrity’s transgression also depends on consumers’ own moral compass which in turn affects their purchase intentions differently. These are still unexplored areas of research which our study attempts to answer.