The Effect of Endorser Credibility to Customer Relationship Commitment and Brand Equity on E-commerce in Indonesia

Abstract

One of the recent way in marketing promotion that is popular and frequently used by many companies is the use of celebrity endorsements. Celebrity endorsements is one of the strategy where a company's product is endorsed by a celebrity to support their marketing campaigns. With the increase in investment for celebrity endorsements in Indonesia's e-commerce industry, this research aims to analyse the effectiveness of Indonesia's e-commerce marketing strategy that uses celebrity endorsement on the e-commerce's brand trust and brand credibility. Furthermore, we also assess the effect of brand trust and brand credibility to consumer's relationship commitment that could also influence relationship continuity expectation and brand equity of the e-commerce. 421 respondents who are users of Indonesia's e-commerce are collected as data samples through online questionnaires. These samples are used as the main data for this research. Structural Equation Model (SEM) is used for data analysis tool and six hypotheses are tested in this research using AMOS software. The result of this research shows that the celebrity endorsements, valued by endorser credibility, directly impacts the brand trust and brand credibility of the e-commerce's brand in Indonesia. Three dimensions of endorser credibility, attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise are identified, with trustworthiness as the highest factor that contribute to the endorser credibility. Other than that, trust and credibility of the brand's e-commerce also directly impacts consumer's relationship commitment to an e-commerce that will influence the relationship continuity expectation and brand equity of an e-commerce in Indonesia. This research is expected to enrich the marketing literature and contribute to e-commerce companies in Indonesia for their marketing strategies using the right celebrity for their celebrity endorsements.