The Different Response to Hotels' Endorsement Advertising by Taiwanese and American Tourists

Abstract

Past research on advertising endorsers has focused solely on a single country; additionally, types of endorsers have been manipulated by comparing two or three types at most, e.g., celebrity, employees, and consumers (or experts). Very little research has explored endorsers' advertising effectiveness in the context of the hotel industry and then, only employee endorsers were used as the independent variable. Thus, conducting comparative research of the responses to hotels' endorsement advertising by local Taiwanese and visiting American tourists can enrich the empirical basis of this field. This research adopted a 5 × 2 between-subjects factorial design. In total, 634 samples were valid. Specifically, 334 subjects were from American tourists-281 were from five experimental groups, and 53 were from the control group. In contrast, 300 subjects were from local Taiwanese tourists250 were five experimental groups; 50 were the control group. The results revealed that local Taiwanese tourists' responses to advertising appear stronger than those of American tourists when a hotel employee or expert is used in the endorsement advertisements. In contrast, American tourists' responses to the consumer endorser were stronger than those of local Taiwanese tourists.

Key Words:

• Endorser
• International tourist hotels
• national cultures