Understanding the relationship between celebrity endorsement on social media and consumer purchasing intention

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between the use of celebrity endorsement on social media advertising and consumer purchasing intention. The overflow of advertising on social media is making customers increasingly indifferent to the effects of advertising. There is a research interest to find out how to get consumers attention to social media advertising. Celebrity endorsement has been a strategy long used on traditional media advertising. There is currently, also a need to understand the effect of celebrity endorsement on social media advertising and on online purchasing intention. This paper studies the effect of celebrity endorsement on purchase intention online amongst university students. A conceptual model was constructed with celebrity attractiveness, gender, credibility, celebrity versus non-celebrity, single versus multiple endorsements as independent variables and purchase intention as the dependent variable. A sample of 200 university students was approached to complete a questionnaire designed from the literature as part of a descriptive, cross-sectional survey. Statistical reasoning was used to test for correlations and regression. The results supported the notion that celebrity endorsement is a useful method in stimulating consumers’ purchase intention on social media advertisements. However, in comparison with similar research in the field, the notions that the credibility and the attractiveness of the celebrities as being effective on online consumer purchasing intention were not supported. An explanation was offered based on the concept that online trust is mainly derived from peer’s reviews which allows consumer involvement in the effect of social media advertising on purchasing intent unlike like it was in the traditional media.