Exploratory Study of the Measurement Scales for the Perceived Image and Advertising Effectiveness of Celebrity Endorsers in a Tourism Context

ABSTRACT

This article presents an exploratory study of the scales used to measure the perceived image and advertising effectiveness of celebrity endorsers in a tourism context. The respondents are tourists from mainland China who were exposed to manipulated tourism destination advertisements. The results indicate that the dimension of trustworthiness is not as distinct as has been proposed, and the framework was modified accordingly. The revised model achieved an acceptable fit and is deemed appropriate for follow-up studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Celebrity endorsement
• destination marketing
• principle components analysis
• confirmatory factor analysis

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Grant No. 1-BB61).