Role of Celebrity Worship Motives in Evaluating Endorsed Brand: A Literature Review for Future Research Propositions

Abstract

The effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in evaluating endorsed brand is one of the timely needed research notions in Sri Lanka depending on its significance remarked in both knowledge and practice related perspectives. Sri Lankan consumers have been exposing to different celebrity endorsed brands including some of the over endorsement cases too. It is noticed that services sector brands intensively depend on celebrity endorsement strategies in a noticeable trend. The psychological bond exists between celebrities and the fans, whom were targeted as potential consumers for the endorsed brands, has been referred in the proposition of Celebrity Worship Motives. However, this notion has been less studied in Sri Lankan context to examine how it does affect the consumers to evaluate the brands endorsed by celebrities whom they prefer. Alongside, this concept paper attempts to build theoretical explanation to present research propositions on examining how the role of celebrity worship motives effect on the perceived effectiveness of celebrity endorsement which result in the perceived brand evaluation. It has followed the theoretical review method to template the content in building rationale on how celebrity worship motive shapes consumer evaluation towards the endorsed brand. As per the theoretical analysis, the study suggested Brand Love, Brand Trust and Brand Attitude as some of the prominent contexts of perceived brand evaluation. Finally, this paper presents research hypotheses to study the impact of celebrity worship motives on the relationship between the perceived effectiveness of the celebrity endorsement and the different contexts of perceived brand evaluation by highlighting the knowledge gaps and practice-related significance in Sri Lanka.