Celebrity Endorsement Essay

2.0 Literature Review
2.1 Celebrity Endorsement
2.1.1 Celebrity Endorsement and the Selection of Celebrity Endorser
Celebrity endorsement is a common and widely-used marketing strategy to promote brand awareness, brand recognition and product sales by using celebrities with well-known reputation and influence (McCracken, 1989). The use of celebrities in marketing promotion events already has a long history and is not a recent phenomenon (Kaikati, 1987). Celebrities endorsement can be traced back to the late nineteenth century. A typical example was the involvement of Queen Victoria with Cadbury's Cocoa (Sherman, 1985). In the past decade, the use of celebrities has rapidly increased (Runyan et al., 2009).

In previous literatures, the selection

Effective celebrity endorsement can attract consumers’ attention, buff brand image, expand brand awareness (Ding et al., 2011), and induct purchase intentions (Belch and Belch, 2004). Effective celebrity endorsement can also help to remove cultural roadblocks. Language, ideology, network, culture, power, popularity and custom vary markedly in different countries and regions, leaving multinational companies big problems for entering new markets. However, celebrity endorsement can be an efficient strategy to enter new markets and remove cultural roadblocks (Hofstede, 1984, Erdogan, 1999). Wall Street and financial managers pay more attention to the economic value of the celebrity endorsement. Companies launching celebrity endorsements do not get positive abnormal returns. The market, generally, anticipates the net discounted cash flow to be close to zero, demonstrating that benefits of the celebrity endorsement match up with their costs. (Ding et al.,

A common concern is putting the cart before the horse, which means that consumers will concentrate more on the celebrity rather than the brand being endorsed (Rossiter and Percy, 1987). The product must be the core of an advertising, rather than the celebrity (Cooper, 1984). Another issue is that one celebrity is involved in diverse advertising and endorsements for different kinds of brands. Tying in with plenty of brands will reduce the identity, persuasiveness, and credibility of this celebrity. And the relationship between the celebrity and the brand being endorsed will diminish (Mowen and Brown, 1981). Consumers may also recognize that celebrity endorsement depends less on the brand character or product quality, but more on the compensation of the celebrity and the marketing or sales benefit for the company (Tripp et al.,