Consumers Perceptions About Celebrity Endorsements - Research Paper Example

Customers and consumers get exposure to a wide variety of images and voices through the different media available including television, the Internet, billboards, newspapers as well as timely magazines. With a lot of products in the market, the array of brands tries their best to attract the attention of all potential customers to inform them about the unique attributes of the particular product at hand. For one to hold and Maintain the attention of the customers, marketers must think outside the box and come up with a strategy that would hook the consumers. The aspect of celebrity endorsement comes in, to improve marketing of products. With the evolving aspect of marketing people have overtime developed different perspectives about celebrity endorsement strategy. In recent times different audiences of media tend to ignore most of the adverts seen either in newspapers, magazines or television. Despite this drawback on advertisements, the glamor that comes with a celebrity rarely goes unnoticed.

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This reveals to some level the impact celebrity endorsement has on the certain brands, proving it more significant. Companies tend to invest in celebrities from particular fields through hiring them to feature in adverts.

Most of the companies tend to match up the promotional features alongside the images of a celebrity, as a means to persuade a potential customer to make up their mind by choosing the particular brand from a variety in the market. To some of the brands, it has worked for their benefits thus improving and increasing sales in return widening the profit margins compared to their competitors.

Before embarking on celebrity endorsement as a means of advertising, there are some of elements and aspects that need to be put under consideration. The design of such campaigns involving celebrities need an in-depth understanding of what is being put on sale, objectives of the brand, celebrity association with the brand, for instance, energy drinks is most often on association with sports celebrities. This also brings in the aspect of choice of celebrity, and finally, having a well-drawn up framework that is sufficient enough to measure the effectiveness of the advertisement.

RESEARCH AIM

To investigate the impact of celebrity endorsement on brand love and brand loyalty

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

Study consumers perceptions about celebrity endorsements

Identify the key factors that may influence consumers perception on brand image and awareness through celebrity endorsement

Examine the impact of celebrity endorsement on brand love and loyalty

Understand effectiveness of celebrity endorsement as a marketing communication tool

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

What is the perception of African consumers on celebrity endorsement?

What is the effect of celebrity endorsement on brand love and brand loyalty?

How do celebrities impact brand awareness and brand image?

RESEARCH DESIGN

This can be said to be a conceptual structure within which research is conducted; it constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement and analysis of data. Kothari (2008:31) states that research design is important because it facilitates the smooth sailing of the various research operations, thereby making research as efficient as possible, yielding maximum information with minimal expenditure of effort, time and money. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of celebrity endorsement on brand love and brand loyalty. It is a qualitative research study that seeks to analyze the respondents perception and attitude towards celebrity endorsed advertisements and marketing.

Brands That Do Celebrity Marketing

According to the Businessdictionary.com, 2016 celebrity endorsement is defined as a form of an advertising campaign that uses famous celebrities and personalities who command a high degree of recognition, respect, trust as well as awareness among people and audiences to promote the sale of a product or service. These celebrities tend to come from different groups and affiliations such as sports, music, and political background. Companies that tend to invest in celebrity marketing; use a lot of money to align their brands with the endorsers. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the celebrity marketing aspect is being embraced more by companies and corporations. For instance, energy drinks such as Red Bull and The Monster tend to use most often sports stars in the fields of swimming, cycling, and boxing to bring the element of instant energy. Sportswear such as Nike, under armour, tend to also use athletes more alongside superstars to advertise their merchandise, to appeal to the audiences. Nike, for example, uses Usain Bolt to market their products.

Adidas too follows suit in use of sports personalities to endorse their products. Soft drink companies such as the Coca-Cola Company uses this strategy to appeal to a certain age group. Coke Studio appeal to the younger generation through bringing together a number of musician celebrities all over Africa. Alcoholic brands too use certain musicians, pop stars in their marketing strategy, Malta, Tusker, and Guinness endorse international stars such as Pepe a football star as well as musicians to advertise for them. Most of the brands that use celebrity endorsement as a means of marketing tend to use dynamic personalities with most appealing, attractive as well as likable qualities with the aim of transferring these particular qualities onto the products and services on sale. Unilever also endorses celebrities when marketing their products such as Royco, bathing soaps and washing powders in different countries they operate in. Cooking condiments are mostly endorsed by well-known and respected chefs who enjoy certain celebrity status.

Perception about Celebrity Marketing

In respect to celebrity marketing, different companies tend to invest a huge amount of money in trying to reach their objectives as involves endorsers. The use of high qualities that are affiliated to the personalities by companies such as dynamism, likeability, attractiveness among others is what they use to transfer to the particular products and services at hand. The companies take advantage of the fact that these endorsed personalities command some attention from the audience and maintain it and thus in the process tend to achieve a high recall rate of the messages being put across in advertisements especially in todays world of a cluttered environment.

For customers and consumers, every product and service have an image, thus making them chose a brand that has a maximum fit for their personality. With the fore mentioned aspect of consumers, companies bring in an endorser so as to help the customer bring the image of a product near his or her expectations.

From the respondents, it is realized that some of the audiences perceive celebrity endorsement in Sub-Saharan Africa as very effective, effective and some share the view of slightly effective. People rather consumers tend to respond to different appeals associated with advertising. Most of the time brands compete each other with the use of endorsement strategy when dealing with some of the basic commodities. Those who share the perspective that celebrity endorsement as a means of marketing is highly effective tend to follow and adhere to what the celebrities say about a certain product. For instance, the use of Kiwi, a shoe polish that narrates how the celebrity has been using it since childhood would easily convince one to start using it, especially if the potential customer likes the celebrity.

Slightly effective perception applies to the luxuries and wants, for instance when advertising a Rolex watch that a person may only want but not a necessity. Some may term it not effective at all when such an advert of luxury aspect is shown to people of low income. People respond to adverts differently depending on the products on sell as well depending on their affiliation to the celebrity endorser and the image of the product being advertised. Most of the time as seen in the questionnaire the age group twenty-six to thirty view celebrity marketing strategy as most effective, because they tend to most often relate to these personalities.

Channels for Celebrity Marketing

Companies and organizations tend to employ an array of ways and channels in which they reach their target markets. These channels range from magazines, newspapers, television, radio, the internet as well as billboards. The marketers tend to do a thorough analysis of the market before embarking on a campaign. This gives them an overview of what the reaction of the target market would be and should the campaign be a success then the profit margins would be visible. Strategic placements of these adverts are essential for the audiences to have easy access and be able to read the vital information being put across. This is part of the reason as to why most companies look for the best channels in which most of the target audiences relate with. Good graphics accompanied with few attractive words and bright colors is the key to gaining the attention of the different audiences.

In reference to responses from the questionnaires, the channels most likely used to convey celebrity endorsed advertisements include TV adverts, magazines as well as billboards though the internet not much.

Most companies tend to use strategically placed billboards to reach their intended audiences. According to a large percentage of the respondents from Bo, they occasionally come across advertisements using celebrity endorsements. Unlike the rest of the regions that often come across advertisements using celebrity endorsement. Television advertisements with celebrity endorsement are often showcased during prime times when the audiences are keen on watching the television that is when the message is passed across. Magazines are often intended for particular markets.

For instance, in a motor magazine there is bound to be a celebrity endorsed advert about a certain model of car or motor bike with the aim of appeal to the audience that is more interested in the motor. Or the women magazines are bound to have celebrities trying to showcase the use of beauty products such as hair oils, body oils as well as perfumes with the intent of appealing to women in those industries. On the internet there are pop-up messages and adverts that come up when visiting certain sites, these do not involve the use of voice just an image of a personality accompanied with the product.

Kind of Advertisement That Attracts You More

People get appealed to different types of adverts depending on their needs in life; this is a clear indication that somehow an advert brings out the need or want in an audience thus prompting them to go ahead and make a purchase from...