The Effect of Celebrity Conformity on the Purchase Intention of Celebrity Sponsorship Brand: The Moderating Effects of Symbolic Consumption and Face-Saving

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국마케팅과학회
· 수록지 정보 : Journal of Global Fashion Marketing / 1권 / 4호 / 215 ~ 229페이지
· 저자명 : Seong-Yeon Park, Young Yang

초록

As media is becoming more influential in the era of newmedia, the impact and the power of celebrities of stage andscreen have become greater than ever. Gradually, consumerstend to make their purchase decisions based on the symbolicand imagery aspects rather than substantial use of a product.
Thus, popularity, affinity, and image of celebrities have a greatimpact on consumers so that wide range of consumers can beeffectively led to mass purchase (The Korea Economic Daily,2006). Accordingly, media is fully utilized not only as a directcommercial medium, but also as a vehicle for the spread offashion trend via celebrities. Thus, a ‘star marketing’ strategyis fully activated and many celebrities not only promote brandawareness, but also stimulate consumer desires with sponsorshipbrands. In addition, face-saving Korean culture encouragesthe growth of public interests towards celebrity sponsorshipbrands.
However, researches that examined the social and psychologicalfactors of conforming and imitating behavior of celebrityproducts are limited. This research considered celebrityconformity as a variable that explains consumer imitating behaviorin the luxury-fashion industry and examined whetherconsumer’s celebrity conformity level affects the purchase intentionof celebrity sponsorship brand. Furthermore, this researchalso attempted to analyze the moderating effects ofsymbolic consumption and face-saving, which are regarded asinfluential consumer characteristics in luxury-fashion productconsumption behavior.
The test results showed that celebrity conformity had a positiveeffect on the purchase intention of celebrity sponsorshipbrand, thus, hypothesis 1 was supported. In addition, this researchfurther analyzed the impact of the three sub-dimensionsof celebrity conformity on the purchase intention of celebritysponsorship brand. The results demonstrated that self-conformityand style-conformity positively (+) influenced the purchaseintention of celebrity sponsorship brand. However, interest-conformity did not have any significant effect. This researchalso examined the difference between teen agers andadults. Both groups showed positive impact of conformity onpurchase intentions. However, there was a difference in the effectsof the three sub-dimensions of conformity. First, in teenagers’responses, only interest-conformity did not have an effecton the purchase intention of celebrity sponsorship brandsbut self and style-conformity had a significant influence on thepurchase intention (p<0.01). On the other hand, for adult respondents,both interest and self-conformity did not have animpact on the purchase intention and only style-conformity hada significant influence (p<0.01).
In case of moderating effect, there was no significant interactionbetween celebrity conformity and symbolic consumption,thereby hypothesis 2 was rejected. This result indicates that theeffect of the celebrity conformity on the purchase behavior isnot influenced by symbolic consumption. However, symbolicconsumption showed a significant effect on purchase intentionof celebrity sponsorship brand. This indicates that even thoughsymbolic consumption does not interact with celebrity conformity,symbolic consumption increases purchase of celebritysponsorship brand.
On the other hand, there was a significant interaction betweencelebrity conformity and face-saving, thus hypothesis 3was supported. Face-saving also had a significant impact onpurchase intention of sponsorship brand. The interaction of celebrityconformity and face-saving demonstrated a negative direction,which may have an interesting indication. Short interviewsin the pretest showed that many of the respondents likecelebrities and have experience in imitating what they did andwore. However, they feel a strong sense of embarrassment andresistance once their conforming behaviors are recognized byothers. This indicates that people may have another dimensionof face-saving (conscious of others/social surroundings) that isnot wanting to be known as a ‘celebrity imitator’ by purchasingcelebrity sponsorship brands.
An additional analysis was conducted to examine the differencesbetween the teenager and adult respondents. It wasfound that the relationship between celebrity conformity andsymbolic consumption did not show a significant interaction inboth groups. However, in case of adults, while interaction betweencelebrity conformity and symbolic consumption was notsignificant, there was a significant main effect of symbolicconsumption on the purchase intention of celebrity sponsorshipbrand. This shows a stronger tendency of adults to displaytheir ability, status, and taste by celebrity sponsorship brands.
This research has the following theoretical contributions. First, the present research identified sub-dimensions of celebrityconformity, which was thought to be a single behavioral constructin the previous researches. In addition, even though mostof preexisting studies explained the influence of celebrities onindividual consumption behavior with mere celebrity endorsementconcept, this research expanded the scope of academicinquiry by introducing the concept of celebrity conformity.
Furthermore, the findings of the present research particularlyhave many practical implications for the luxury and fashion/luxury brands. TV commercials are not the primary sourcefor the marketing of fashion industry, and therefore, using celebritiesas a marketing tool will be beneficial in terms of fitand visibility since a well-chosen celebrity may enhance brandawareness, may promote brand status and may effectively reinforceas well as create an image for a product/brand.
Moreover, such indirect advertisements and promotions can bemore powerful than direct and hard sell advertising for theluxury and fashion/luxury brands.
The limitations of the present research are as follows: First,the age of the sample was not evenly distributed. Therefore,the future research should include a sample of wider agedistribution. Second, this research examined the moderatingroles of symbolic consumption and face-saving under the assumptionof no interaction between them. However, the futureresearch needs to explore the relationship between them. Third,the generalizability of this study is limited because it used asample of single country. The future research may include andcompare samples from diverse countries.

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