Research Rationale
Celebrity endorsements positively influence buying intentions, brand identification, memory, and purchase behavior. In addition, celebrity ratification surpasses a positive frame of mind toward an organization; however, there is little evidence on whether an international or national star has a similar influence on product standards in the local market. There is a link between brand equity and endorser credibility; nevertheless, the connection is yet to be experimentally proven and legitimized on non–durable goods (Aquinia and Soliha, 2020). Brand equity is the added merit a business devotes to a commodity. Communication via various mechanisms contributes to worthiness and endorser reliability in developing a trademark.
The trustworthiness of a spokesperson increases merchandise reliability and, as a result, influences equity. This research aimed to determine the effect of international and national benefactor dependability on brand equity. Celebrity proponents are said to increase fairness by forming secondary connections. Moreover, a celebrity proponent acts as a co-description for a particular trademark, resulting in all participants’ equity development. Science has demonstrated that celebrity ratification increases the memory merit of the advertised marque and the importance of a product. Furthermore, celebrity endorsement may influence how a product is speculated in distinctiveness and quality (Usman and Qonita, 2019). How a person feels about a celebrity endorsement has a significant indirect or direct influence on how the individual perceives a particular brand.
Research Problem
Endorser reputation significantly impacts brand credibility, and brand credibility has a beneficial effect on authorized brand equity. As to gain a fuller understanding of how endorser reputation influences brand credibility and the benefits of brand credibility on brand equity, in-depth qualitative research is required. Celebrity endorsement can expose a brand to a new market and build credibility. Organizations can use that celebrity influence power to boost their services and products. Credibility is significant as it affects individuals’ thoughts, behaviors, and patterns (Parmar and Mann, 2020). Hence, if an organization, the employees, or the brand are not credible, other people are likely less likely to believe what is taught or said.
Research question and aim
In research carried out, it was identified that celebrity image congruence (IC) has a positive impact on attitude toward advertisement (ATA) and a negative influence on attitude towards the brand (ATB). In contrast, advertising effectiveness (AE) influences both attitudes towards advertisements and brands (Parmar and Mann, 2020). Hence the question in research in this study is, does the endorser credibility have a remarkable influence on product parity? This research aims to understand better if there is a link between brand equity and endorser credibility. Qualitative methods will gain in-depth insight into the correlation between endorsers’ credibility and brand equity. This data will be contextualized with a review of recent literature on the effect of celebrity endorsement to brand equity and statistical analysis of the significant impact of stars on brand.
Research Objectives
This research has several objectives: examining the literature in terms of brand credibility, brand loyalty, endorser credibility, and involvement in the product category. Secondly is the creation of a conceptual prototype and presentation of empirical findings that will enable individuals to comprehend the relationship between brand trustworthiness, endorser credibility, and brand loyalty. Lastly is to discuss the contribution of academic literature and the implication of management.
Review of the Literature
Endorser credibility is how the source is speculated to have competence concerning communication issues and can be trusted to deliver an objective perspective. According to marketing research, brand equity applies to the increased merit added by a brand name on an item from a consumer’s point of view. This study indulged in the two often used notions for business equity. The above is outlined as the distinctive effect of product awareness on consumer reaction to the item’s marketing. It is operationalized as an association, perceived quality, understanding, and loyalty. Consumer-based equity has been reintroduced to refer to these four dimensions. It is defined as worth that the customers identify with a company. Brand awareness applies to the image or strength of a business present in the grey matter to the consumer. Brand recognition and recall are two facets of product attentiveness that allude to numerous definitions of the firm.
Perceived quality is linked to how customers rate a product. Purchaser-based equity is not the authentic behavior conducted by a consumer; instead, it is established based on customers’ views. The inclination to be loyal to a brand refers to the times a customer is willing to purchase from the same trademark. Building business acknowledgment depends heavily on the information outlined via numerous marketing methodologies. Celebrity endorsement is a marketing method for disseminating information to the target market, including a specific indication of the endorsed item. It perceives that endorsers’ dependability will be transferred to the ratified product (Kumar and Patra, 2017). Some of the advantages of a credible brand are lower perceived risks and lower information processing costs.
According to the associative network memory model, celebrity endorsement may increase brand recognition and recall. Conducting the explanations related to the trademark in retention is a significant segment in managing equity. When a star commends a brand, the customer associates the star with the product and feels a relationship between the fame and the advertised artefact, which results in an extensive network of associations. Celebrities serve as an extrinsic signal since they reduce the risk of ambiguity, assisting consumers in making decisions about their preferences and transferring information about product qualities.
Framework for Conceptualization
The conceptual study framework is based on two theories: the brand signaling theory from associative network memory prototype and information economics from cognitive psychology. The network model explains the link between brand equity and endorser credibility. In contrast, the above credibility’s mediating function in endorser credit is outlined using the brand signaling concept. On non-durable commodities, the moderating effect of celebrity type international vs. national will be explored.
Endorser Credibility Construct
Endorser credibility, product category, and customer based-equity are the independent variables in this study. The three are used to test the following hypotheses as self-regulating aspects. Firstly, the relationship between endorser credibility and brand loyalty is mediated by brand credibility. Secondly, celebrity engagement has an immediate constructive effect on endorser credibility, which is elucidated as positive characteristics of a source that impact the message’s acceptance by the receiver. The three dimensions of endorser credibility are expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. The source credibility model recognizes knowledge and dependability, while attractiveness acknowledges beauty.
Brand Credibility Construct
Brand credibility is a dependent variable in this study because it is influenced by endorser credibility. It also serves as a bridge between the credibility of endorsers and brand loyalty. Expertise and trustworthiness are two components of brand credibility. The former denotes the ability to deliver what has been promised, while the latter indicates willingness. Expertise and trustworthiness are two dimensions that have emerged from past and current marketing activities and strategies.
Celebrity
The endorsers in the print advertising were chosen via several stages of pre-testing through suitable sampling approaches, of which all participants were graduates. Pupils who took part in the first round of testing were given three to five minutes to write names of sports personalities they thought could be the best ambassadors for the Havoline motor oil organization. The test was conducted to ensure that celebrity credibility and authorized brands agreed. A pool of ninety celebrities was formed during the first step of pre-testing (Liu et al., 2020). Some of them were eliminated because of an established control variable that was thought to influence the efficiency of endorsements. All women sports personalities were excluded since consumers assess female and male luminaries differently (Parmar and Mann, 2020). For instance, consumers rated advertisements featuring female celebrities more than those featuring male stars, whereas, in previous research, men are more suitable for valuable items.
In the second round, individuals who supported other goods were excluded as they influenced customers’ perceptions of endorsers and endorsed organizations. When the same enthusiast is already associated with another product, developing a transitive link between the brand and the person is difficult. Personalities who received unfavorable exposure in the past were excluded at the last step since pessimistic information affects customers’ perception of a particular company.
Measure and Measurement
Brand interconnection; discern quality, constancy, and recognition were used to define customer-deployed product equity as a four-structural conceptualization. A scale was used to determine three aspects of commodity awareness. At the same time, five quizzes were employed to assess the second factor of brand association and equity. Discern quality, the third and fourth component of purchaser-based brand equity, was evaluated utilizing five items. Product loyalty was tested utilizing a five-item scale that other philosophers have used. Research has outlined that factors influence a spokesperson’s endorsement. This study considered covariates such as brand familiarity, celebrity item congruence, product expertise, and endorsers’ familiarity. Three questions on the semantic differential scale were used to assess celebrity-brand conformity, and the level of product expertise was evaluated.
Results and Data Analysis
Male respondents formed a more significant proportion of the entire sample of 208 respondents than females (93 percent Vs7 percent). Sixty-seven percent of those who responded were between 21 and 29. Scales employed in the research have a high level of reliability. Because known measures were utilized in this research, the scale’s reliabilities were determined using a traditional technique, namely, calculating Chronbach’s alpha to get merits for items associated with different parameters. Except for brand loyalty, the fourth proportion of purchaser-based brand equity, which has a Chronbach’s alpha of 0.61, all constructs surpassed the proposed cut-off values of 0.73 (Takaya, 2019). The statistical software for social science (SPSS) evaluated the hypothesis.
The first phase involved conducting a one-way test with international and national celebrities to determine endorsers’ dependability (independent parameters) on trademark equity (dependent parameter) and the deviant impact of endorsers’ credibility via brand equity (Takaya, 2019). As outlined in the study, the immediate influence of advocates’ trustworthiness on costumer-based equity shows considerable dissimilarity between direct effects and indirect impact models. The independent parameter endorser trustworthiness has a forty-eight percent correlation and a twenty-three percent proportion of variation in the immediate impact prototype. At the same time, the beta value outlines that a one-unit increment in endorser credibility significantly affects brand equity by forty-eight percent (Maleki et al., 2021). The similarity in these two aspects outlines that the research question is answered that it is true that endorser credibility has a positive influence on brand trustworthiness, implying that endorser trustworthiness significantly affects brand equity.
The indirect prototype scrutinizes endorser trustworthiness’s impact on brand equity via brand credibility. Brand trustworthiness insinuates that the independent variable endorser credibility has a sixty-four percent correlations and proportion of variation in the independent variable forty-one percent. The beta parameter states that a one-unit increment in endorser trustworthiness increases brand equity by fifty-eight percent (Singh and Banerjee, 2021). It indicates that brand trustworthiness mediates the correlation between brand equity and endorsers’ dependability. Thus, the research aims to prove that brand credibility mediates the relationship between brand equity and endorser credibility is satisfied (Wiedmann and von Mettenheim, 2020). Hence, brand credibility strengthens the link between brand equity and endorser trustworthiness (Muniz and Guzmán, 2021). Endorser credibility -brand trustworthiness is statistically and positively significant; supporting endorser credibility influences brand equity. The correlation between brand equity and brand dependability is statistically significant and positive, affirming the research problem that brand credibility significantly influences brand equity.
Conclusion
This research shows a significant and positive correlation between brand trustworthiness and endorser credibility, supporting the research problem. This type of connection is not well known among philosophers, and it has not been researched in developing economies yet. The research confirmed the interrelationship between consumer brand equity and brand trustworthiness, bolstering previous studies and upholding the research problem. The outcomes displayed that the correlation between endorser trustworthiness, brand equity, and brand credibility range by the category of celebrity used, for instance, international or national. This association and analysis were not traversed in trademark literature in the prior years, hence approving the research objective. The study offered empirical proof of endorsers’ credibility on brand equity concerning non-durable products. The research discovers that both international and national celebrities influence brand equity development. The analysis of these investigations is backed up by the research problem on the association between brand equity and the credibility of endorsers.
Reference List
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