IMPACT OF CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS ON

BRAND IMAGE- A STUDY WITH REFERENCE TO

PEPSI AND COKE

SYNOPSIS
1. Introduction
2. Literature review
3. Objectives
4. Research methodology
5. Data analysis tools
6. Bibliography

Submitted to Submitted by
Prof Anchal gupta Sakshika pallavi
IB/01/21
 INTRODUCTION

A celebrity endorsement is a special type of advertisement which includes a famous person from
film fraternity, athletes, and sports, modeling world etc. It helps in promoting the product brand
and also increasing the sales of the product. Celebrity endorsement not only has developed in
recent years, it is being used from the past for promoting the product. McCracken's (1989)
definition of a celebrity endorser is, "any individual who enjoys public recognition and who uses
this recognition on behalf of a consumer good by appearing with it in an advertisement
(marcoms), is useful, because when celebrities are depicted in marcoms, they bring their own
culturally related meanings, thereto, irrespective of the required promotional role. This type of
marketing strategy is used to promote the product and has proved in it self a boon in advertising
world. It is mainly used to influence the consumer who comes across these advertisements as it is
accessed in the consumers mind for many days even after the advertisement. It is very expensive
to endorse a celebrity for a product but in the long run it has helped in increasing the sales of the
product. Celebrities are also interested in endorsing themselves in the product as they get
compensation for it and their image is been developed considerably. Businesses have long sought
to distract the attention of the potentials customers that live in a world of ever increasing
commercial bombardment. Everyday consumers are exposed to thousands of voices and images
in magazines, news paper, and on billboards, websites, radio and television. Every brand
attempts to steal a fraction of an unsuspecting person’s time to inform him or her of the amazing
and different attributes of the product at hand. Because of the constant media saturation that most
people experience daily, they eventually become numb to the standard marketing techniques.
The challenge of the marketer is to find a hook the subject’s attention. Also from the marketing
communications perspective, it is vital that firms design strategies that help to underpin
competitive differential advantage for the firm’s product or services. The term celebrity refers to
an individual who is known to the public (actor figure, entertainer, etc.) for his or her
achievements the areas other than that of the product class endorsed (Friedman and Friedman,
1979). This is true for the classic forms of celebrity, like actors (e.g. Amitabh Bachchan, Sharukh
Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Amair Khan and Ierce Brosnan. Models (e.g., Malaika Arora, Lisa Ray,
Aishwarya Rai, Naomi Gisele Buendchen etc). Sports Figures (e.g. Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra
Singh Dhoni, Virander Sehwag, rahul Dravid, Zaheer Khan, Steve Waugh, etc). Entainers (e.g.
Cyrus Broacha, Oparh winfrey, Conan O’Brien), and pop-stars (e.g., Madonna, Dravid Bowie)
but also for less obvious groups like businessmen (e.g., Donald Trump, Bill Gates) or politicians.
Celebrities appear in public in different ways. First, they appear in public when fulfilling their
profession, e.g., Viswanathan Anand, who plays chess in front of the audience. Further more,
celebrities appears in public by attending special celebrity events, e.g., award ceremonies,
Inauguration or world premieres of movies. In addition, they present in news, fashion,
magazines, and tabloids’, which provide second information on events and the ‘private life ‘of
celebrities through mass media channel.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Austad et al., (2004) stated in his article that the research examines whether consumers infer that
celebrity endorsers like the products they endorse, and presents a model using these inferences
and other characteristics of the endorser to predict attitudes toward the endorsed product.
Participants in two experiments examined written endorsement advertisements and were asked to
infer the extent to which the endorser truly liked the advertised product and to rate the endorser's
attractiveness, similarity to themselves, and knowledge of the product. Attitudes toward the
advertisement, the endorser and the product were also measured. The resulting model indicated
that product attitudes were predicted by inferences about the endorser's liking for the product and
by attitudes toward the endorser. In contrast to this article Breen et al., (2003) stated in his article
that this case study examines the use of celebrity endorsement in the formation of the retail
image of leading European grocery distribution group J. Sainsbury, in particular, the process of
transference of celebrity images to the product’s image. The incorporation of Jamie Oliver (well
known as television celebrity The Naked Chef) into the promotions of one of Britain’s leading
grocery chains involves a high profile campaign that has been adopted in order to imbue the
company’s products with an image of quality. The success of the campaign has been replicated
in New Zealand by another grocery retail “giant”, Foodstuffs, who have also adopted The Naked
Chef to endorse their products. The case draws on field research with consumers and key
informant interviews with advertising agency personnel who identified the criterion for the
choice of Jamie Oliver. The extent to which the market place recognizes and consumers
associate themselves with the image Jamie projects as a celebrity endorser for J. Sainsbury is
explored (2003).

Mc Donald et al., (2002) stated in his article that the Celebrity endorsement advertising is a
prevailing advertising technique. Some marketers choose to utilize multiple celebrities to
promote their products or brands. Nevertheless, it is surprising that so little research has focused
on this phenomenon. This research discussed advantages and potential concerns of multi-
celebrity endorsement advertising and documented the actual use of multiple celebrity endorsers
in the milk mustache campaign in the USA. They analyzed the content of the 50 milk mustache
ads appearing on the http://www.whymilk.com Web site on a list of celebrity- or product-related
dimensions. Overall, they found that these milk mustache ads have matched their celebrities’
gender, age and type of milk attributes in appealing to their female/male, teen/adult consumers.
The results support that fit between the endorsed product and various celebrities is a key factor
for using multiple celebrity endorsers in advertising. In contrast to this article Zyl K. et al.,
(2007) this research examines that Advertising and marketing managers spend a great deal of
money to have celebrities endorse their product. Some view it to be an effective form of
advertising as evidenced by the number of celebrity-endorsed advertisements that have
increased. Despite numerous amounts of research on celebrities endorsing a single product, little
research has been conducted regarding the use of multiple-celebrity endorsements in advertising.
This study is based on the research by Hsu and McDonald (2002), who documented the use of
multiple-celebrity endorsement advertising in talk moustache campaign in the USA. This study
investigated the tendency towards correspondence inference of 200 respondents and researched
their attitudes towards celebrities, the product being advertised, and the advertisement as a
whole. The main findings are that there is a significant correlation between correspondence
inference and attitudes towards the celebrity, but suggests that the levels of correspondence
inference between the paid and unpaid situations depend on the celebrity. Implications are that
marketers need to realise that correspondence inference might have an influence on people’s
attitudes towards the celebrity who endorses the product.

In contrast to this article Mukherjee (2009) stated in his article that Celebrity endorsement has
been established as one of the most popular tools of advertising in recent time. It has become a
trend and perceived as a winning formula for product marketing and brand building. It is easy to
choose a celebrity but it is tough to establish a strong association between the product and the
endorser. While the magnitude of the impact of celebrity endorsement remains under the purview
of gray spectacles, this paper is an effort to analyze the impact of celebrity endorsements on
brands. Objective of this article is to examine the relationship between celebrity endorsements
and brands, and the impact of celebrity endorsement on consumer's buying behavior as well as
how consumer makes brand preferences. This paper proposes a 20 point model which can be
used as blue-print criteria and can be used by brand managers for selecting celebrities and
capitalizing the celebrity resource through 360 degree brand communication which, according to
this paper, is the foundation of the impact of celebrity endorsement. Celebrity endorsement is
always a two-edged sword and it has a number of positives - if properly matched it can do
wonders for the company, and if not it may produce a bad image of the company and its brand.

Jaiprakash (2008) stated in his article that this paper presents the findings of an exploratory
conceptual research on celebrity endorsement. Literature survey of both theoretical and
empirical research on the subject clearly indicates that celebrity product endorsement is a form of
co-branding, which influences brand image through meaning transfer from the endorser to the
endorsed brand. Celebrity-product congruence has a positive impact on brand image, which in
turn has a positive impact on brand equity. While this paper draws up a model based on a
conceptual approach, scope for further research lies in validating the same through a primary
research.

McCracken (1989) has addressed the endorsement process from a cultural perspective. In this
“meaning transfer model” the symbolic properties of the celebrity endorser serve the
endorsement process by taking on the meanings that then carry from ad to ad, In the meaning
transfer model from McCracken (1986, 1989) cultural meanings - start as something inherent and
resident in the culturally constituted, psychical, and social world and then move through a
conventional path (advertising and fashion systems) to individual consumers where it is
transferred through the efforts of the consumer. In the meaning transfer model, the celebrity is a
persuasive communicator with a set of fictional roles and when consumers respond to celebrity
specific characteristics they are responding to the particular set of meanings of the celebrity. The
effectiveness of the celebrity depends upon the meanings the celebrity brings to the endorsement
process. In the initial stage of the model of McCracken, the meanings generated from political
campaigns, athletic achievements and performances and or distant movie performances, reside in
celebrities themselves. In the second stage, meanings are transferred to the product through
advertisement and the endorsement process. In the last stage, the meanings are transferred from
the product to the consumer where the properties of the product become the properties of the
consumer.

Carroll (2009), stated in her article that Brand have evolved to represent much more than the
traditional markers of quality, trust and reliability to consumers. Brands have become embedded
in the consumer psyche and offer consumers the opportunity for self-expression, self-realization
and self-identity. This effect is particularly strong in fashion categories. Barriers including
cynicism and increasing advertising literacy threaten traditional approaches to brand
communications, which have traditionally relied on verbal communications and storytelling. This
paper examines the use of celebrity endorsement in communications for fashion brands against
the backdrop of a turbulent branding environment. The paper is conceptual in approach, drawing
upon a range of literature in the area of branding, celebrity endorsement and fashion marketing.
The analysis concludes that a new approach to celebrity campaigns has been adopted in fashion
branding, reflecting the need to move away from traditional campaigns and to focus more on
visual signals rather than written cues. The need for an alternative approach to brand
communications using celebrity endorsement is highlighted. This also reflects limitations of
traditional theoretical models used to explain the endorsement process. The paper offers an
original and contemporary insight into celebrity endorsement and fashion marketing.

OBJECTIVES

To find out the impact of celebrity endorsements on brand image with Pepsi and Coke

Sub objectives:

1. To examine the relationship between celebrity endorsements and brands

2. The impact of celebrity endorsement on consumer's buying behavior as well as how
consumer makes brand preferences
 3. The effectiveness of celebrity endorsements in brand building
4. To study the risks associated with celebrity endorsement

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The word research is derived from the Latin word meaning to know.
• It is a systematic and a replicable process, which identifies and defines problems, within
specified boundaries.

• It employs well-designed method to collect the data and analyses the results.

RESEARCH APPROACH: Questionnaire development

RESEARCH DESIGN

Descriptive research: Descriptive research, also known as statistical research, describes data
and characteristics about the population or phenomenon being studied. Descriptive research
answers the questions who, what, where, when and how.

RESEARCH TOOLS

Questionnaire development process- Well-structured questionnaires will be prepared for the

respondents and follow a proper sequence flow. The questionnaires designed mainly are close
ended.

Sampling Units:

The customers will be convenient sampling which includes Teenagers and adults.

Sample size- 100

DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUES

DATA SOURCE

Market research requires two kinds of data, i.e., primary data and secondary data. In dealing
with any real life problem it is often found that data at hand are inadequate, and hence, it
becomes necessary to collect data that are appropriate.

a) Primary data: These are those data which are collected afresh and for the first time, and thus
happen to be original in character. I will be using the structured questioners.
b) Secondary data: These are those which have already been collected by someone else and
which have already been passed through the statistical process. I will collect it from the sources
like internet, published data etc.

Data Analysis: Statistical package for social science (SPSS) and Ms-Excel

BIBILOGRAPHY

JOURNAL ARTICLES

• McCracken, G. (1989), who is the Celebrity Endorser? Cultural Foundations of the

Endorsement Process. Journal of Consumer Research, December 1989.

• Blondé, Kristin and Irene Roozen (2007), An Explorative Study of Testing the
Effectiveness of Product Placement compared to 30-second TV-Commercials” for the 6th
International Marketing Trends Congress, Paris 26-27.

• Jaiprakash, T. (2008), A Conceptual Research on the Association between Celebrity

Endorsement, Brand Image and Brand Equity. Journal of Marketing Management, Vol.
7, No. 4, pp. 54-64.
 • Austad, Silvera.H David (2004), Factors predicting the effectiveness of celebrity
endorsements advertisements: European journal of marketing: Vol 38, pp. 1509-1526.

• Van Zyl K, N. E. A and D. L. R (2007), Paid versus unpaid celebrity endorsement in

advertising: an exploration: African Journal of Business Management Vol. 1 (7), 185-
191.

• Carroll, Angela (2008), Brand communications in fashion categories using celebrity

endorsement: Journal of Brand Management: 17, 146–158.

• Breen, Whitehead and Byrne (2003), The naked truth of celebrity endorsement: British
food of Journal, Vol 105, issue 4/5, p 288.

ONLINE LIBRARY SITES

• www.emraldinsight.com
• www.findarticles.com
• www.freearticles.com