Essay

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Abstract ………………………………………………………………………….. 2

2. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………. 2

3. Aim ………………………………………………………………………………. 2

4. Objectives …………………………………………………………………………2

5. Theory ……………………………………………………………………………. 3

6. Context …………………………………………………………………………….4

7. References …………………………………………………………………………5

ABSTRACT

This study will be explaining how celebrity endorsement in the sports industry has an impact on the buying intentions of the customers. It explains how sport marketers use celebrity endorsement to their advantage to promote and create the brand image for the product/brand.

INTRODUCTION

What is Celebrity endorsement? It can be well-defined as a person who is famous among customers, used for the marketing strategy or an advertisement for bringing up the name or image of the brand (Mc Cracker, Grant,1989).

Globalization is one of the main aspects that have led to the evolution of the sports industry around the world, exclusively with the rising status of brand image, brand creation, brand identity, brand awareness and brand equity (Howard & Sandeep, 2010). Sports marketers and advertisers believe that celebrity endorsements are the best marketing and advertising strategy to attract their customers to their product/brand (Pitts, B., & Stotlar, D. 2009). Sports marketers are mostly forced themselves to become more entrepreneurial as this will help them to create a greater competitive benefit for their company/brand and give a good relationship value to their customers (Bush, A.J., Martin, C.A., & Bush, V.D., 2004). It is very evident in this world that customers that follow their favorite sports personality or any famous personality, will be following or moreover get attracted to the brands they appear in and have more tendency in buying the product or the brand. Considering this, the sports marketers around the world have taken this opportunity to get it to their advantage by applying marketing strategy ie, celebrity endorsement to set the brand image and the brand identity which will possibly attract the customers to their brand.

The rate at which celebrities getting involved in advertisements associated with a brand has increased rapidly over the years. Celebrity endorsement has tend to be an significant and inevitable component of advertising for a brand in general. Sports marketers believe that the use of famous personalities or sportsperson will increase the reliability, desirability and the credibility of their brand to the eyes of their customers (Erdogan, Z. B, J.M. Baker, 1999).

In today’s world, we can see almost all the companies in the sports industry have a famous sportsperson as their brand ambassador and many more famous personalities linked with their brand, which will help them to set the company’s brand identity and brand image, which helps them to attract more customers to their brand/ product (Bauer, H., Sauer, N., Exler, S., 2008). Celebrity endorsement is not always a hit, there are many cases where it is just unwanted, unsuitable and inappropriate (Erdogan, 1999).

AIM

The aim of this study will be mainly to recognize how celebrity endorsement is used in the sports industry and how it is seen by the customers. It will be also focusing on how the customers see the brand ie brand image and their intentions on purchasing the brand/product.

OBJECTIVES

· To compare the advantages and disadvantages and to understand how good and effective it will be using the marketing strategy, celebrity endorsements

· To understand how much the celebrity endorsements, affect the brand image of a company

· To understand the different kinds of attitudes of the consumers towards the company’s celebrity endorsement

THEORY

The theory for this study will having its focus on the impacts on customers due to celebrity endorsement. It also will focus on how celebrity endorsement works

The following two models of source, meaning transfer model and match up hypothesis will elucidate, how the companies choose their celebrity and how these influence the customer from buying the brand/product from the company: –

The first model is the level of attractiveness that is given away by the celebrity to the brand or the product. This has a major effect as this can increase the message conveyed by the celebrity about the brand/product to the customer. Attractiveness differs in each celebrity, some are classy, some are elegant (Ohanian, 1990). So, it depends on the marketers to choose which one is suitable for their brand/product which will allow the customers to get attracted and have the tendency to purchase the product. This model comes into action when the customer tries to be like the celebrities they adore. For example, let’s say the customer is a football player, the customer is a big fan of Lionel Messi, so the customer will buy Adidas thinking he would be like how Messi is. Attractiveness can be mainly seen in a much broader version in terms of likeability, similarity, and familiarity. What does likeability mean? It is when the customer has an affection to that celebrity, they begin to show high standards for that product/brand. For example, Cristiano Ronaldo comes in the ad of Nike’s new shoes, the customer who endorses him will have great opinions and standards for Nike’s shoes. Then comes similarity and familiarity, which is when the customer is familiar with the customer and he thinks he or she could be like them. For example, let’s say the customer is a tennis player and he or she is a big fan of Roger Federer, they will see that they are familiar with Federer and he uses Wilson and they feel the similarity between them and the player, so they would go for the brand Wilson.

The second model is the creditability of the celebrity. This model basically depends on the reliability of the celebrity who gives the message and the knowledge to the customer, which makes them believe and trust in purchasing the product/ brand. Trust is the main factor in this model. If the celebrity has a good background image and comes out as trustworthy, the customers tend to believe in them and leading to the purchasing of the product/brand by the customer (Friedman et al, 1978). Companies always hires a celebrity who has a good social image and with great credibility in society. This influences the customers into making their purchase decisions. This is basically internalization. It can be also defined in simple words as the process of influencing and trusting the views given by a celebrity (Erdogan, 1999). Credibility comes in action mainly when the customer has an adverse attitude towards the product/brand. This can change when celebrity endorsement, ie when the celebrity gives a strong message about the product the customers’ views towards the product/brand changes.

The next model is the meaning transfer model. This can be defined as the effect of the message conveyed by the celebrity to the customer and how effectively it has transferred from the celebrity to the customer. There are three stages to this model. Firstly, the personality is transferred from the celebrity to the brand/product he endorses. Secondly, how the customer has taken the message from the celebrity about the product/brand and lastly the decision or purchasing intentions made by the customer ie how the customer has transferred the product from the celebrity to themselves (McCraken, 1989). For instance, Cristiano Ronaldo is the brand ambassador of Head and shoulders, so his traits and personality is transferred towards the brand, then the customer sees the ad they feel the same as him, therefore the product is transferred to the customer.

The final one is the Match up hypothesis. It can be defined as the effectiveness of the fitting between the brand and the celebrity (Till and Busler 1998). The marketers and advertisers took up this step for effective marketing ie they choose celebrity according to their similarity with the brand/product. Researches have shown that if the celebrity isn’t fit or apt for the brand, customers tend to not buy the product/brand (Till and Shimp 1998). For example, Nike choose each celebrity for each sport, for basketball is Lebron James, for football is Neymar and so on. Sometimes when multiple celebrities are used for a product/brand, customers tend to forget the brand and just remember the celebrity, this is called the vampire effect (Tripp, Jensen, and Carlson,1994)

Nevertheless, celebrity endorsement is not effective to the customers who are familiar with this marketing strategy, they would choose their product/ brand according to their knowledge and awareness about the brand.

CONTEXT

Celebrity endorsement for this study will be mainly having its focus on the sports industry as celebrity endorsement has been having a huge growth in the sports industry over the years (Pitts, B., & Stotlar, D., 1997). The sports personalities in different sports have been idols of millions of people all over the world. Since sports are famous all over the world, celebrity endorsement has rapidly grown. Celebrity endorsement started in the sports industry in 1980 by Nike by sponsoring Micheal Jordan, who became the face of Nike for so many years. The topmost celebrity endorser in the world in the sports industry is Roger Federer (Tennis player) who earns $58 million just through endorsements. He is the face for more than 10 companies, which include famous reputed companies like Rolex, Benz, etc (Henry, 2019). A study on the hike of celebrity endorsements in the sports industry has hiked from 884 in 2006 to 1540 in 2014 (Dugalić, S., & Ivić, J., 2015). Sports is something that everyone in the world follows. Therefore, the fans and customers who see their idols in these advertisements as the face of the brand/product, they generally get the tendency for purchase of the product/brand (Schwarz, E. C., & Hunter, J. D., 2008). We can conclude this study by celebrity endorsement is one of the best marketing techniques used by marketers especially in the sports industry. Therefore, we can see many companies/brands choose celebrity endorsement as their marketing strategy to attract customers as it has more advantages than disadvantages for the brand image and purchasing intentions.

REFERENCES

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