A Study on the Influence of Celebrity Endorsement over the Perception and Purchase Intention of College Students

Abstract

Currentlyin India the use of celebrity advertising for companies has become a trend andalso become a winning formula of corporate image building and productmarketing. It can create linkages with the stars appeal, thereby addingrefreshing and new dimensions to the brand image. The celebrity endorsement businesshas become a multi-million industry. Companies spend lot of money in hiringcelebrities from film industry and sports for endorsing products. Competitionfor hiring high notched celebrity is increasing among the companies and so alsothe remuneration paid for the celebrities for endorsement .The economicbenefits and other benefits associated with the celebrity endorsements have tobe gauged. Sincethe attitude of the Indian college students towards celebrity endorsement isdifferent from that of those who belong to the developed countries, perceptionof college students about celebrity endorsement is a concern for the firmstargeting youth market. Hence this study’s objectives were to find theassociation between demographic attributes and buying behaviour of consumersand to analyze the consumers’ perception of cricket and film industry celebrityendorsement and to measure the influence of Cricket and film celebrities onpurchase intention of consumer. Thisresearch also focuses to study the influence of match-up factors of celebritieswith the products on purchase intention. This research was done in two stages.In the first stage the colleges in Coimbatore city were selected. There are 82colleges in Coimbatore city region out of which 36 are Arts & Sciences, 44are Engineering and 2 are Medical colleges. By Quota sampling method 20colleges were chosen for the data collection, which included 9 Arts &Science colleges, 9 Engineering colleges and 2 Medical colleges. In the secondstage, 60 students were chosen using random sampling method from each category.The sample size totaled to 1200 out of which hundred and twenty five sampleswere rejected because of data incompletion and errors.Inorder to analyze the data, analysis methods like Frequency distribution,Likert’s Scaling, Weighted Average, Chi-Square Test, ANOVA Test, MultipleRegression, Reliability Analysis, Rotated Factor Analysis, Pearson’scorrelation and Visual PLS (Structural Equations Model) were used. SPSS Version16 was used for data analysis.Inthe analysis of measuring the association between the demographic attributes ofthe college students and their purchase behavior, the study concludes thatthere exists a strong association between gender and price consciousness.Moreover, it was found that gender and age of the college students attributedto the quality consciousness behavior and age and current status of the collegestudents affected the importance given by them to the social values. But forthe status of the college student, all the other factors like age, gender,level of graduation and discipline of study seemed to affect their attitudetowards celebrity endorsement.Analysisof the Coimbatore college student’s perception of cricket celebrity and filmstar endorsement revealed that, they strongly believe that both the cricketersand the film stars use the product they endorse and it indicates their trustover them. Both film star and cricketer endorsement are proved to affect thecollege students purchase intention. In cricket celebrity matchup factoranalysis, factors like celebrity’s success, appearance and competence werefound to affect the college students’ perception which in turn affects theirpurchase behavior. In film star matchup factor analysis factors likereliability, expertise in the product, competence, performance over time,superiority, dependability, reconcilability and hard working affect the collegestudents’ purchase intention. This study concludes that both the cricket andfilm celebrity endorsement have only positive effect on the purchase intentionof the college students.