Celebrity influences on consumer decision making: new insights and research directions

ABSTRACT

Throughout human history, people have expressed admiration for heroes who possessed extraordinary abilities and achieved superhuman goals. For many, modern-day celebrities fulfil this role and are prominent in various marketing communications activities. This paper addresses the literature review gaps and provides an in-depth review of the psychological and social psychological perspectives which are relevant to the celebrity endorsement literature. The contributions of this paper consist of a detailed analysis of important types of consumer-celebrity relationships, key emotional drivers (e.g. envy and admiration) of celebrity influence and the development of an original conceptual model. The conceptual model pulls together the past research and identifies new research gaps, which synthesises different research perspectives and provides a sound theoretical basis guiding future researchers and marketing managers.

KEYWORDS:

• Celebrity marketing
• human brands
• human brand attachments
• celebrity influence
• celebrity endorsements

Acknowledgment

Marcela Moraes would like to acknowledge the receipt of the Murdoch International Postgraduate scholarship during her doctoral studies which made possible for this project to be initiated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marcela Moraes

Marcela Moraes completed her PhD in February of 2017 at Murdoch University and is now a Lecturer at Curtin University, Perth. Prior to starting a PhD degree, Marcela gained industry experience and completed two Master degrees. Marcela’s core research interests are in influencers, branding, celebrity endorsements, cross-cultural consumer perspectives and the application of social psychology perspectives to marketing and public relations problems.

John Gountas

John Gountas earned a PhD from the University of Reading in the UK and completed two masters’ degrees of science in Psychological Assessments and Tourism Marketing. John has extensive industry experience with major companies in the tourism and hospitality industry. Some of the major research projects that John has been involved, in Australia and the UK, are with major airlines, the real estate industry, the tourism and hospitality industry and the Department of Primary Industries. Currently two major Neuromarketing projects have been completed, which investigated how consumers react to advertising messages and how consumers use different thinking styles to make decisions.

Sandra Gountas

Sandra Gountas received her PhD from Monash University, Victoria, Australia. Sandra has a special interest in the psychological aspects of service interaction-emotions, perceived sincerity, materialism, aspirations, goals and quality of life and has published extensively in those areas. Recently, Sandra has collaborated in Neuromarketing experiments concerned with exploring extrinsic aspirations and personality differences, and is currently involved with two major projects examining the effects of charity and cause marketing using both qualitative and neurological research methods. Sandra has several years’ industrial experience in service industries, in particular as a product manager-negotiator in tour operations and in customer relations.

Piyush Sharma

Piyush Sharma is a Professor in the School of Marketing at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. His research interests include services and international marketing, cross-cultural consumer behaviour, counterfeit purchase behaviour, self-regulation and self-regulatory failure. His work appears in the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing Management, and Journal of Advertising among others.