The Impact of Celebrity Endorsement in Chinese Fashion Market: in the Perspective of Source Credibility

【Abstract】Celebrity endorsement continues to receive interest from consumers and marketers in Chinese fashion market. This research aims to investigate the core factors influencing effective celebrity endorsements.

【Key words】Celebrity Endorsement; Chinese Fashion Market; Source Credibility

【作者簡介】杨子滢，北京师范大学珠海分校。

1. Introduction

In order to promote brands, endorsement is frequently used as an effective strategy. Nowadays, the most widely used types of endorsers are experts, typical customers, CEO and celebrities. Among them, celebrity endorsers are generally believed to have more positive and persuasive impact on brand selection, especially in a collectively cultural context like China.

2. Literature review

Fashion travels more widely and more quickly with the rapid development of globalization nowadays (Dickerson, 2003). Research and reflection about“Source credibility” consist of two generic types: Source attractive model and source credibility model. Attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness are defined as the three essential dimensions of source credibility (Ohanian, 1990).

3. Conceptual model and research hypotheses

As credibility endorsement has three dimensions, this research proposes three hypotheses as follows:

H1. The attractiveness of a celebrity endorser will positively and directly impact customers attitudes towards the endorsed brand.

H2. The expertise of a celebrity endorser will positively and directly impact customers attitudes towards the endorsed brand.

H3. The trustworthiness of a celebrity endorser will positively and directly impact customers attitudes towards the endorsed brand.

4. Methodology

An online self-administrated questionnaire survey is used for this research. All measurement scales follows relative literature reviews. Data collection lasts eighteen days and 370 questionnaires are collected finally. The characteristics of samples are stated as follows: 233 participants are male (63%) and 137 are female (37%). 59% of samples age is between 19 and 24 and 32% is between 25 and 34. 58% is college educated and 35% is postgraduate. IBM SPSS Statistics 22 (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) is used for coding and analyzing the collected data.

5. Discussion and result

A multiple regression is for exploring the correlations between the three independent variables, namely source credibility factors (attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness). The analysis results prove that attractiveness (β = -.012, p > .1) is not a strong predictor of the dependent variable. However, expertise (β = .194, p =.001) and trustworthiness (β = .182, p < .001) are strong predictors in this model. Among three variables, trustworthiness is found to have the largest beta coefficient ( β= .248), predicting that trustworthiness is making the strongest contribution to the source credibility. Hence, H1 is rejected but H2 and H3 are supported.

6. Conclusion and suggestion

This study aims to test three factors influencing the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements in Chinese fashion market. For source credibility, a finding is that compare to the perceived expertise of celebrity endorser, attractiveness and trustworthiness seem to have a minimal influence in the present source credibility study (Ohanian, 1991). A later research proves trustworthiness and expertise are more important than attractiveness.

This paper proves that these two findings are not absolutely same when applied in Chinese fashion market. In this market, Attractiveness is not as important contributions as perceived expertise and trustworthiness for stimulating consumers buying decision. To brand managers, the trustworthiness of celebrities should be given priority when selecting the brand endorsers.

References：

[1]Dickerson, K. G. Inside the Fashion Business. 7th ed[J]. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2003.