CELEBRITY IMAGE AND PURCHASE INTENTION

What is it about?

We examine whether image congruence (IC) of celebrities havesigni fi cant effect on purchase intention (PI) and whether attitudetowards brand and attitude towards advertisement mediate therelationships in a developing country, based on sample data fromIndia. The data was collected using a Likert Scale of 1 to 7.Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to test therecursive model incorporating endorser-brand IC, advertisingeffectiveness (AE), attitude toward advertisement (ATA), attitudetowards brand (ATB), and purchase intention (PI). It was foundthat the celebrity image congruence (IC) has a negative signi fi canteffect on ATB and positive signi fi cant effect on ATA whereasadvertising effectiveness (AE) had signi fi cant effect on bothattitude towards brand and attitude towards advertisement.Finally AE and ATA both had signi fi cant positive effect on PI.Drawing on research on moral reasoning associated with celebrityendorsement, we provide strong theoretical as well as empiricalevidence that celebrity (endorser-brand) IC is not a strongpredictor of PI in a developing country. Spending huge resourceson endorsers for IC does not always provide the desired bene fi tsin countries like India. Findings would be useful for bothmultinational fi rms engaged in international marketing as well aslocal fi rms. KEYWORDS advertising; celebrityendorsement; imagecongruence; purchaseintention; structural equationmodeling Introduction Advertising effort is one of the most important factors of overall marketing work (Kirmani & Wright, 1989). The key objective of an advertisement is to change orin fl uence the consumers attitude toward the advertised product (Cox, 2010;Watkins et al., 2016). Advertisements are widely accepted as tools for organizationsto attract customers toward their products and services (Delpalmies, Ryan, & Velverde, 2016). It is the best method for organizations to communicate abouttheir new products, provide information about the product ’ s utility, price, and CONTACT Justin Paul justin.paul@upr.edu Graduate School of Business Administration, University of PuertoRico, San Juan, PR USA, PO Box 23332, ZIP code 00931.Color versions of one or more of the fi gures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/wjpm. © 2017 Taylor & Francis JOURNAL OF PROMOTION MANAGEMENT2017, VOL. 0, NO. 0, 1 – 25https://doi.org/10.1080/10496491.2017.1360826 D o w n l o a d e d b y [ 2 1 6 . 1 8 9 . 1 7 8 . 1 9 ] a t 1 6 : 0 7 1 8 O c t o b e r 2 0 1 7

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Why is it important?

Findings would be useful for bothmultinational fi rms engaged in international marketing as well aslocal fi rms. KEYWORDS advertising; celebrityendorsement; imagecongruence; purchaseintention; structural equationmodeling Introduction Advertising effort is one of the most important factors of overall marketing work (Kirmani & Wright, 1989). The key objective of an advertisement is to change orin fl uence the consumers attitude toward the advertised product (Cox, 2010;Watkins et al., 2016). Advertisements are widely accepted as tools for organizationsto attract customers toward their products and services (Delpalmies, Ryan, & Velverde, 2016). It is the best method for organizations to communicate abouttheir new products, provide information about the product ’ s utility, price, and CONTACT Justin Paul justin.paul@upr.edu Graduate School of Business Administration, University of PuertoRico, San Juan, PR USA, PO Box 23332, ZIP code 00931.Color versions of one or more of the fi gures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/wjpm. © 2017 Taylor & Francis JOURNAL OF PROMOTION MANAGEMENT2017, VOL. 0, NO. 0, 1 – 25https://doi.org/10.1080/10496491.2017.1360826 D o w n l o a d e d b y [ 2 1 6 . 1 8 9 . 1 7 8 . 1 9 ] a t 1 6 : 0 7 1 8 O c t o b e r 2 0 1 7

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