Impact of Celebrity Endorsement on Consumer Brand Preference for Soft Drinks

I. INTRODUCTION

Advertisements are a source of information. Every advertisement tries to create awareness among the minds of the consumers. When Celebrities also gets involved in these advertisements they may generate higher levels of attention. But it is not necessary that the attention it caught of the audience is for the brand. Their presence might lead to the audience’s attentions with the Celebrity alone and not towards the brand. A Consumer by his name, it can be extracted that he is the one who consumes, and actually he can be a person or a group of persons who purchase goods or services for personal consumption without any intention to resale it. Thus, he is the final users of a good or service. He generates demands for goods or services. In the absence of effective and sufficient demand from consumers, producers would lack one of the motivating factors to produce, and to sell. In terms of economics, Consumer contributes directly to the economy of a nation. Thus, Consumer is the one on who depends the survival of the company and the nation. Advertising is one such effort involving different and unique features and Celebrity Endorsement is one such feature of Advertising. The Celebrities are deemed to be referents by Consumers. Celebrity Endorsement has now become an obligation for each competing firm in order to prevail in the intensive competition. Consumer buying behaviour depends on need for buying, attitude, personality, motivation, culture, financial strength and many other factors. Advertisement plays a very important role in purchasing behaviour of the product or in the brand preference of the Consumer. Brand preference is generated from consumer satisfaction from a particular brand. And it is on this satisfaction lies the survival of the marketing firm. Marketers are spending huge amount and time to generate new ideas of marketing in order to gain Consumer preference for a Brand.

The activities that people obtaining, consuming or disposing any products & services can be defined as Consumer Behaviour (Atkin and Block, 1983).

develop their strategies according to understanding of why people shop & buy certain products. Thus, it has been rightly said by Kotler that Consumer is a King. Thus, Consumer is mighty enough to decide whether to make or break a product. Consumer behaviour has been studied by the researches through certain experiments using focus groups, conducting interviews or administering questionnaires (Blackwell, 2001). Consumer Behaviour have been researched with the traditional method based on the assumptions that were in a fixed sequence consisting first of the formation of beliefs (cognition) with respect from attitude object, then followed by some action of evaluation of that object (affect) and focused some action (Howard, 1979). The use of Celebrities for endorsing a product is not recent (Kaikati, 1987). The Concept of Celebrity Endorsement has been widely used across the global marketing world. It is all started in 1980s but come out as a revolutionary phenomenon in 1990s. In this era companies started using Celebrities extensively for better communicating their brand to the consumers. Celebrity Endorsement emerged out as one of the marketing communication (marcom) strategy. Companies are spending huge money for aligning their product or brand with the dynamic, attractive Celebrities (Kaikati, 1987) believing that these attributes of the Celebrities can be transferred to the product through Marketing Communication activities (Langmeyer, 1991). The involvement of Queen Victoria in Cadbury Cocoa depicts the use of Celebrities in the nineteenth century (Levy, 1959). The invention of cinema in the earlier period enhanced the usage and scope of Endorsement as an advertising strategy (Langmeyer and Walker, 1991). In early era, the use of stars was limited even though there was a growth in commercial radio in 1930s and in commercial television in 1950s (Motavalli, 1988). In the late 1970’s, the use of stars has increased in number due to the involvement of even those Celebrities who had no such commitment towards the endorsements prior (Mcdonough, 1995). In 1979, the use of Celebrity Endorser’s in commercials was estimated as one in every six advertisements and later in 1988 estimates were one in five (Sherman, 1985).

The author tries to explore the attitude of the consumers towards Celebrity Endorsement. Through this paper the author tries to study the Consumer buying behaviour. The objective of the study is to find out the perception of Consumers towards Celebrity Endorsement for Soft Drink. The author tries to find out the information on Purchase and Consumption pattern of the Consumer. structured questionnaire and the questionnaire is then distributed among various customers based in Aligarh city of Uttar Pradesh. The study helps to get the information regarding customer perception about Celebrity Endorsed Soft Drink Brands and expectations from various Soft Drink products. The researcher in this study tries to explore data mainly through primary data which is supported by secondary data. The primary data is collected from the customers through a structured questionnaire in order to evaluate the perception of consumers. The secondary data is collected from earlier records, facts and figures, reference books, soft drink industry records, journals, magazines and internet. Fifty Questionnaires were distributed among respondents of different age and gender.

The respondents’ attitudes towards celebrity endorsement were explored. It can be interpreted from the Table 1 that male respondents are more than female respondents. Table 2 depicts that around 50.8 % i.e. half of the population of respondents) encounter Celebrity Endorsement through Electronic media which is the most spread media today. Table 3 shows the liking of respondents towards the brand and it is cleared from the table being advertised. Whereas the remaining number of respondent’s attitude is almost equally distributed in other things namely Celebrity advertising the brand, idea behind the advertisement and both. Table 5 shows that majority of the respondents favours Bollywood Celebrity for the advertisement. Table 6 give findings which adds to the table 6 results that majority the respondents have liking for both male and female Celebrities .In Table 7, when the respondents have been inquired about the factor which influenced them for making purchase of the soft drink then most of them answered that they buy when the need arises no matter who endorses the Soft drink. In table 8 the respondents are further inquired in order to find out their attitude towards the Celebrity endorsement and so it is clearly depicted from their response that it is the taste which matters them most with a concern for the brand to some extent. When the respondent is asked about how often they get exposed to Celebrity Endorsement for Soft drinks them most of them respond with occasional encounter. In table 11 the respondents are asked about their opinion regarding the usage of Celebrity Endorsers by different Soft drinks Companies for endorsing their brand. Their opinion is shown in table 11 with most of them believe that due to competition companies adopt Celebrity Endorsement technique and through their usage companies are trying to compete with other brand in the market. use of celebrities in advertising affects their choice of cola product, 73.8 percent was of the opinion that it did not influence it, with the explanation that there is an extensive overload of celebrity endorsers and thus one becomes unaffected by them. Those who did feel that their consumption was affected commented it as following; as long as the employed celebrity is liked it gives the brand a more positive image - “There is something to associate the brand with and it makes it more interesting and makes you want to buy the brand”. Moreover, some responded that one wishes to be like their idol and thus take after the celebrity endorser.

Advertisements are back bone for the industry. It acts as a glue to retain the customers. It can be concluded that there are different attributes of a Celebrity Endorser which cast a positive image on the consumers. In India Soft Drinks always have a Celebrity name attached to their face. Coca Cola & Pepsi are the two major giants which have a Popular Celebrity name always attached to the two rivals. Thus, it is not wrong if we say that Celebrity Endorsement area part and parcel of the Soft Drink Industry. In India Cricket is considered as a religion and Cricketers are treated like Gods an in addition to this people used to worshipped Bollywood stars

companies are used to sign up Cricketing Legends on one hand and famous Bollywood stars on the other hand.

1. Atkin, C. and Block, M. (1983). Effectiveness of Celebrity Endorsers. Journal of Advertising Research, 23(1), pp. 57-61. 2. Blackwell, R. (2001). Consumer Behavior.9th ed. Orlando: Harcourt College Publishers, 570. 3. Howard, A. (1979). More than Just a Passing Fancy. Advertising Age, Celebrity Endorsement, 50, 2. 4. Kaikati, J. G. (1987). Celebrity Advertising: A Review and Synthesis. International Journal of Advertising, 6(2), pp. 93–105. 5. Langmeyer, L. (1991). Exploring Gender Influences of Meanings in Celebrity Endorsers. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 1, pp. 58–172. 6. Levy, S. J. (1959). Symbols for sale. Harvard business review, 37(4), pp. 117-124. 7. Langmeyer, L. and Walker, M. (1991). A First Step to Identify the Meaning in Celebrity Endorsers. Advances in Consumer Research, 18(1), pp. 364–371. 8. Motavalli, J. (1988). Advertising Blunder of the Rich and Famous. Ad week, 11, pp. 18-19. 9. Mcdonough, J. (1995). Bringing Brands to Life. Advertising Age, Special Collector’s Edition, spring, pp. 34-35. 10. Sherman, S. P. (1985). When You Wish Upon a Star. Fortune, 68(42). 11. Solomon, M., Bamossy, G. and Askegaard, S. (2002). Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective. Prentice Hall Financial Times, 2nd edition, NJ, USA. 12. Thompson, J. R. (1978). Celebrities Strike it Big as Endorsers. Industrial Marketing, .85. 13. Walker, Mary, Lynn L., and Langmeyer, D. (1992). Celebrity Endorsers: Do You Get What You Pay for? Journal of Consumer Marketing, 9(2), pp. 69-76.

Research Scholar, Department of Commerce, Aligarh Muslim University,