Celebrity Endorsement: Creating Cognitive Dissonance Among Consumers Essay Example

1979). They usually enjoy high public recognition, and often have a powerful influence upon endorsing products.

They appear on television as spokespersons on behalf of the advertised brand, or ordinary users of such brand. Celebrity endorsers are being used in about 25 percent of all television advertisements in order to promote brands (Erdogan et al, 2001). Every year crores of rupees are spent on endorsement contracts with high-profile celebrities since marketers believe that celebrities affect the process of selling their brands or products. The celebrity endorsement market in India is pegged at Rs 850 crores.

Celebrity endorsers are used by firms who want to support a product or service (Amos et al, 2008). Many people aspire to share the values and lifestyles of celebrities as models of success. Often, they seek to imitate, emulate, and even impersonate celebrities' behavior to enhance their self-esteem, through identification with certain desirable images. Such behavior includes imitating the way celebrities speak, dress, communicate, and most importantly, the brands they choose. This process says more about what people hope to become than it does about what they already are.

This simply reflects the power of celebrity endorsement, which is behind the main reason for employing celebrities to promote almost all kinds of products (Fraser and Brown, 2002). Using celebrities in advertisements could have many benefits and advantages including

• facilitating brand identification
• changing the negative attitude towards a brand
• repositioning an existing brand
• global marketing or positioning of a brand or product
• affecting the purchase intentions of consumers (Kaikati 1987).

Celebrity endorsers enhance awareness of a company's advertising, create positive feelings towards brands, and are perceived by consumers as more amusing (Solomon, 2002). In the

survey, one of the observations was that consumer feels that so many celebrities endorsing various brands is entertaining and feels good to their eye. Leon Festinger elaborated the theory of cognitive dissonance in 1957. The theory states that at a point in time, there exist several bits of relevant cognitions which may not be consistent with one another. Dissonance produces psychological discomfort.

This condition led people to change their thoughts, feelings, or actions in order to reach a state of consonance or harmony. Dissonance could arise from logical inconsistency, from cultural mores, because of past experiences, and because of one specific opinion, sometimes included by definition, in a more general opinion. Another facet of the theory is that a person, after a purchase decision, seems to be under pressure by the fact of his or her choice and looks for more information concerning the reserved option. When a consumer has made a commitment to buy the product, particularly an expensive one, Inconstancy or dissonance exists between the fact that the two brands are equally attractive and that on the brand chosen, the buyer loses out on the good qualities of the one not chosen.

Literature Review Research Objective

The objective of the research study was to get a sense of whether celebrity endorsement is creating a dissonance among consumers with celebrities endorsing multiple products. The Indian television advertising is crowded with almost all the brands having one or the other celebrities endorsing for them.

At present in India, the Indian cricket captain Mahindra Singh Dhoni is endorsing 25 brands, while Shahrukh Khan 16 and Sachin Tendulkar endorsing 15 brands (India Today Sept 2010). Consumer associates a celebrity with a

particular brand. The effects of celebrity endorsements can be explained using associative learning theory (ALT). Associative learning principles are based on a conception of memory as a network consisting of various nodes connected by associative links (Collins and Loftus 1975). At a conceptual level, celebrities and brands represent nodes in the memory, which become linked over time through the endorsement process.

Hence, feelings toward a celebrity and/or meanings associated with the celebrity are expected to transfer to the endorsed brand through their recurring association. The repeated exposure to these two stimuli would result in simultaneous activation of memory nodes, representing those stimuli, building an associative link between the two nodes. Source model theory (SMT) is a combination of source credibility theory and source attractiveness theory. According to SMT, endorsements are effective usually because of their source’s (celebrities) credibility and attractiveness.

Source attractiveness has been traditionally viewed as having three interrelated aspects—familiarity, similarity, and liking. Familiarity is defined as knowledge of the source through exposure; similarity is the supposed resemblance between the source and receiver of a message; likability is affection for the source as a result of the source’s physical attractiveness, behavior, or credentials. According to McGuire (1969), sources (celebrities) that are known to, liked by, and/or similar to the consumer are considered attractive and persuasive.

This study analyses the influence of Shahrukh Khan on consumers who use products that he endorses and the effect of Shahrukh switching brands is considered. The other objective was to identify whether the Celebrity endorsement or the product knowledge (features) is the influencing factor in customer buying behavior and is there a need for celebrity endorsement for them to recall, or consider

the brand while choosing a particular type of product. Consumer choice often involves a comparison among the available alternatives.

Recent research finds that features shared by alternatives are canceled and greater weight is placed on the unique features in choosing among the alternatives provided (Dhar; Sherman 1996). Consumer knowledge is defined as having two major components: familiarity and expertise. Familiarity has been defined as the number of product-related experiences that have been accumulated by the consumer. Expertise is defined as the ability to perform product-related tasks successfully. Therefore, rather than being generic in nature, consumer knowledge is specific to a particular product.

The highly knowledgeable consumer may exhibit a tendency to delve into the details of the message, especially for high technology-oriented products (Roehm and Sternthal 2001, Biswas and Das 2006). With this study, we tried to find out how the consumer behaves while buying a generic product that does not require very high involvement of the consumer.

Questionnaire Design

The questionnaire for this study contained items that asked participants to cite: their favorite celebrity and products endorsed by him which they use and also his influence in buying these products.

In addition, they were asked to list various factors other than celebrities that influence them while buying a generic product that does not require a high level of consumer involvement. They were also asked to rate the importance of various parameters like Quality, Brand Name, Brand experience, Price; Celebrity while buying a product. In order to test the Celebrity recall among the sample, they were asked to recall the Celebrity endorser for their Telecom service provider.

Also, they were asked whether the involvement of a celebrity endorser in a controversy

influenced their attitudes toward the brands endorsed, or whether other consumers responded unfavorably to a company or brand when a celebrity endorser linked to that company or brand was involved in a controversy. People were asked to cite cases of controversies regarding celebrities and their reactions to them. Examples of Shahrukh khan smoking in public and endorsing health products like Emami Sona Chandi Chavanprash were also taken to observe consumer behavior.

They were asked if they ever regretted buying or had second thoughts after buying any particular product influenced by a celebrity to know if there was dissonance among consumers caused by celebrity endorsement.

Sample Research methodology: Personal interview through questionnaire, random sampling done. Areas covered: shopping mall, market, and pan shops, colleges.

All participants indicated that they knew different Celebrities that endorse various products on Indian television and they recognized Shahrukh Khan amongst the leading Celebrity endorsers. Participants were asked to recall some brands that Shahrukh Khan endorses Pepsi being on top of mind of 19. 6% followed by Hyundai I10 at 16. 7% and Airtel at 14. 7%.

When the participants were inquired about the influence of Shahrukh Khan in buying any of the products endorsed by him that they use, a mere 22% of respondents were influenced by him. When probed about the possibility of switching to other brands if their favorite celebrity switches brand, 91% of respondents said they will not switch over along with the celebrity.

Respondents were asked to list a negative controversy their celebrity was involved in and its impact on their brand perception, 71% of respondents said that the negative controversies surrounding their favorite celebrity don’t affect their Brand perception.

When respondents were

asked to recall the celebrity endorser for their Telecom service provider, 49% people could recall their names while most respondents suggested that celebrity endorser plays the least important role in selecting their service provider.

When asked if they ever regretted buying or had double thoughts after buying any particular product influenced by a celebrity, only 28% said they regretted buying a product influenced by celebrity as the product could not match up to their expectations

While trying to assess the celebrity motivational factor in using products, we asked if respondents felt any sense of euphoria while using various products, a mere 22% responded that they feel like the celebrity or aspire to be like them while using the various products endorsed by the celebrity.

Discussions

Importance of Celebrity endorsements on Consumer Buying Behavior From table 6 we can see that 49% of respondents could recall the celebrity endorser for their Telecom service provider and that too after giving it much thought. Although eventually, 49% could recall their celebrity, the common response we got from them was celebrity played a very little part in their brand selection as their main focus is on the overall package which the Service provider offers.

There is no significant difference between the Importance of Celebrity, Price, Quality, Brand Experience, and Brand Name while buying a product. The consumers were asked to rate the importance of various parameters like Quality, Price, Brand name, etc which affect their brand choice. On the scale of 1- 5 with 5 being most important parameter, the observation was that the importance of Quality was maximum with a mean of 4. 36 and standard deviation of . 859 and it was

consistent with both set of people who preferred celebrity endorsement and those who don’t prefer celebrity endorsement with a mean of 4. 6 in both cases. The importance of Price in buying a product had a mean of 3. 88 and a standard deviation of 1. 174. The importance of price in selecting a brand changes according to their income level. Respondents with lower income groups gave more importance to price. Consumer buying decisions will in most cases be influenced by the prices, income, and availability of credit facilities, emotional attachment, need satisfaction, technical factors and advertisements. When products prices are low the more the consumer is influenced to buy the product, however the influence of price depends on the price elasticity.

Income also plays a major role in determining the consumer's decision on buying, the higher the disposable income the more the quantity of products a consumer will buy, however, depends on the income elasticity of the product, however, there need to distinguish the type of good because some goods are less demanded as income rises. The importance of Celebrity endorsers in consumer’s buying behavior was very low with a mean of 1. 77 and standard deviation of 1. 26 and it was also consistent with both sets of people who preferred celebrity endorsement and those who don’t prefer celebrity endorsement.

As discussed earlier, according to the Associative learning theory, feelings toward a celebrity and/or meanings associated with the celebrity are expected to transfer to the endorsed brand through their recurring association. As was the case with Shahrukh Khan’s association with Pepsi, he was the Brand Ambassador for several years and with constant exposure to consumers

the Brand Pepsi became the image of endorser (Shahrukh Khan) and Endorser became the brand. Pepsico with its new image of Youngistan is targeting a youth audience, Shahrukh being on the higher side of age structure, new teenage sensation Ranvir Kapoor was made their Brand ambassador.

Shahrukh Khan now endorses Sprite, a product of rival Coca-Cola Company. When the top-of-mind awareness for the Brand Shahrukh Khan endorses was carried out the Pepsi was on top of maximum respondents minds, the strong bonding of Shahrukh Khan’s image with Pepsi was a driving factor for people to still connect him to Pepsi. It is evident from the findings that Indian consumers were impressed by the visual attractiveness of advertising messages, which used celebrities to appeal to the target audience. They also showed an interest in the relationship between celebrities and endorsed products in advertising. They seemed to believe in the importance of the match-up between the two. Yet, the majority did not seem to view this kind of advertising as convincing enough, in principle, to affect their brand choice behavior.