The Effects Of Advertising On Consumer Behaviour

The Effects Of Advertising On Consumer Behaviour

1.0. Introduction

A consistent theme emerging in advertising models is that both cognitive and behavioral responses under low-involvement situations can be facilitated by source cues that the consumer identifies with. Celebrity endorsement has become one of the communication strategies employed by marketers in an attempt to build a congruent image between the brand and the consumer. The purpose of this report is to provide both a theoretical and practical analysis with regard to Pepsi Max and its celebrity endorsement. The findings of the analysis conducted will then be adapted to form recommendations in order to assist the vice president of marketing in Pepsi Max's advertising and promotional campaign.

This report is divided into two major focuses. First focus should provide theoretical analysis for the use of celebrity in the promotional campaign, which, will include: The characteristics a celebrity must have to be used in a promotional campaign, the advantage and disadvantages of using a celebrity and the reference group factor of significance to the use of celebrity in promotional campaign. Second focus of the report is to recommend a suitable celebrity for Pepsi Max's marketing campaign according to the target audience, competition and the implication for Pepsi Max's positioning.

Literature Review

Advertisers must match the product or company's image, the characteristics of the target market, and the personality of the celebrity, in order to establish effective messages and the determinant of the match between celebrity and brand depends on the degree of perceived "fit" between brand (brand name, attributes) and celebrity image (Misra, 1990). Messages conveyed by celebrity image and the product message should be congruent for effective communication (Forkan, 1980; Kamins, 1990, 12). Special attention should also be paid to employ celebrities who have a direct connection with their endorsed product and who are perceived to be experts by the target audiences (Till and Busler, 1998, 23). If there is no congruency, then the audiences remember the celebrity and not the product. This has been termed the "vampire" effect, where the celebrity has sucked the life-blood of the product dry (Evans, 1988, 10).

Nevertheless the research on celebrity endorsement, which is labeled the "match-up hypothesis," has examined the fit or "match" between a celebrity and the product being endorsed, and maintains that celebrity endorsement is more effective when the images or characteristics of the celebrity are well matched with the endorsed product (Kahle and Homer 1985; Kamins 1990; Kamins and Gupta 1994; Till and Busier 2000, 100). In a similar vein, McCracken suggests that a "celebrity who best represents the appropriate symbolic properties" of the product should be selected, thus highlighting the importance of the cultural meanings of celebrities in the endorsement process. Celebrities embody a collection of culturally relevant images, symbols, and values. As images of the celebrities become associated with products through endorsement, the meanings they attach to the products are transferred to consumers through purchase and consumption (McCracken 1989, p. 316). Therefore, the practice of celebrity endorsement should ...