A customer-focused approach to improve celebrity endorser effectiveness

The current study reveals that a customer-focused approach to choosing celebrity endorsers (based on consumer-endorser identification) is a more useful predictor of endorsement success than a product-focused approach (product-endorser fit) alone. Specifically, the findings suggest consumer-endorser identification offers a potentially more consistent criterion for predicting endorsement effectiveness than fit, which is contingent upon varying consumer perceptions of product-endorser match-up. Across two studies, one survey-based and one longitudinal experiment, increased identification with both male and female endorsers led to increases in endorsement success. Most importantly, the influence of identification is significant for both high and low fit pairings between an endorser and brand. Thus, consumers who identify strongly with an endorser are likely to respond favorably to the endorsement even when fit between the endorser and brand is poor. Moreover, identification with the endorser is found to be consistently linked to purchase intentions over multiple time points.