An Analysis of Endorsement Effects in Affinity Marketing: The Case for Affinity Credit Cards

Abstract

In recent years, affinity-marketing strategy has been widely used by for-profit organizations, particularly financial institutions, to leverage the goodwill and endorsement of affinity groups to promote their service offerings to group members. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the underlying factors driving the effectiveness of endorsement as it affects the process by which members make choices. Applying affinity credit cards as the research context, this study examines whether the addition of endorsement effects (i.e., affect transfer effect, perceived quality effect, and cause-related effect) of a positively valued affinity group would have any impact on its members' choice processes as depicted in the traditional hierarchy-of-effects model. The results of this empirical study confirm all the hypotheses, with the exception of affect transfer.