Microblogging reactions to celebrity endorsement: effects of parasocial relationship and source factors

Abstract

Companies have begun to utilize celebrity microbloggers to promote their brands and products because the microblog has become an influential social media channel in people’s daily lives. This study explores the predictors of followers’ microblogging reactions to celebrity endorsement on microblogs, including the acceptance of posting celebrity endorsements as well as the intentions to retweet and continue following the celebrity microblogger. The results of an online survey (N = 862) indicated that parasocial relationships (PSR) and celebrity–product congruence were salient antecedents of the followers’ microblogging reactions to celebrity endorsements, while the celebrity microblogger’s attractiveness and credibility had no significant impact on the followers’ reactions to celebrity endorsement. The followers’ acceptance of posting celebrity endorsements on microblogs served as a mediator between the PSR and the followers’ intentions to retweet the endorsement messages and to continue following the celebrity microblogger. A conceptual model is developed to demonstrate the influential process of celebrity endorsements in the microblog context.

Keywords:

• celebrity endorsement
• parasocial relationship
• microblog
• social media
• source models

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is supported with grants from Department of Education of Guangdong Province (No. 2017WTSCX029) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71802058).