Analysis of the impact of celebrity brand endorsement on consumer buying behavior: special reference to Keells Super

Abstract

Celebrity brand endorsement has been considered as a modern marketing communication tool which uses by the companies with an aim of getting customer attraction and stimulates their buying behavior and purchase intension. Many organizations are spending billions of money on celebrity brand endorsement to make the brand awareness among the customers. This is because consumers in today’s’ glamorous world are willing to consume products, services and ideas which their favorite celebrities recommend. Keells Super is one of the most dynamic supermarket chains in Sri Lanka and is a subsidiary of John Keells Group. Keells Super has been in operation for more than 20 years, and focuses on offering the freshest produce, wide range of quality products, fabulous savings and a delightful shopping experience, reaching out to a large cross section of Sri Lankan consumers. Sri Lanka’s iconic cricketer, Kumar Sangakkara and his wife, Yehali, had joined hands with Keells Super, to spread Keells Supers’ message of offering a total ‘Super Happy’ shopping experience. Many research evidences proved that celebrity brand endorsements help organizations to stimulate the consumer’s buying behavior and influences their attitudes towards the brand. As such it is very rationale to understand whether the celebrity endorsement used by Keells Super is effective relevant and congruent with their brand. Therefore, this present study mainly makes attempts to analyses the research problem; How celebrity brand endorsement of Keells Super influence the consumer buying behavior? Main intention of this study is to understand the impact of celebrity endorsement on consumer buying behavior towards Keells Super by elaborating the existing theories and then collect primary data to test the validity of these theories. Therefore; this study uses a deductive approach. A survey research strategy has been used to collect data for the research because it allows researcher to collect large number of standardized quantitative data from a sizable sample. A quantitative method was applied where for data collection structured questionnaires were used. 129 questionnaires were issued and collected data were analyzed using SPSS v.19.0 Descriptive analysis was used for data analysis. As per the correlation analysis all the four attributes of the celebrity positively and significantly correlated with consumer buying behavior. Among them celebrity expertise, trustworthiness and congruence recorded strongly positive correlation with consumer buying behavior whereas physical attractiveness of the celebrity and consumer buying behavior reflect a moderately positive relationship. As per the multiple regression results, it is found that celebrity expertise, celebrity congruence and celebrity trustworthiness as the34 significant attributes that influence consumer buying behavior. Attractiveness found no significant influence on consumer buying behavior. Among all the attributes celebrity expertise has the greater association between consumer buying behavior. Thus, based on the findings, it is recommended that Keells Super should give the priority for the credibility (trustworthiness and expertise) followed by congruence of their brand ambassador in designing the future advertisements and commercials and not much bother about the physical appearance.