Celebrity endorsement has been now recognized as an effective means of marketing. However, negative news of celebrities has been exposed to the public due to the development of media, which not only affects their own reputation but also brings a lot o...
Celebrity endorsement has been now recognized as an effective means of marketing. However, negative news of celebrities has been exposed to the public due to the development of media, which not only affects their own reputation but also brings a lot of pressure on their endorsements. An increasing number of scholars agree that the exposure of negative news of spokespersons will affect consumers' willingness to purchase products endorsed. Many scholars have already paid attention to the influence of negative information of advertising spokespersons, but there is little research on this phenomenon in China. From the literature review, researchers mainly pay attention to the influence of the negative information on consumer's advertising attitude, brand attitude and purchase intention. It is generally accepted that the negative news of a spokesperson will produce a negative influence on the products that he or she has endorsed. However, few scholars in China have done relevant research on the mechanism and logic of the negative news and there is little research on the strategy of dealing with the negative events from the consumer's perspectives. From the perspective of consumers, this study seeks to find out the strategies to mitigate the negative impact on consumers' willingness to purchase following the exposure of negative information of a spokesperson. So, how to handle the negative impact of a celebrity's negative news on products endorsed by him or her? The author studies if crisis management is a different way to mitigate the influence of negative information of the endorsement celebrity on consumers' purchase intentions.
In this study, consumers' purchase intentions, moral negative information, competent negative information,endorser's credibility and crisis management are studied in combination. Through experiments, the influence of both competence and moral negative information of a spokesperson on the consumer's purchase intentions will be tested. It is found that a negative impact on the endorser's credibility is produced whether moral or competent negative information of a spokesperson is. Moreover, when the product spokesmen's competent negative information is exposed, it is possible to mitigate the negative effect on endorser's credibility by increasing crisis management. In addition, it is also the same with that of moral negative information.
This study is composed of five parts: introduction, literature review, model framework, experimental exploration and research conclusion. Among them, the first chapter is the introduction, which mainly introduces the research background and the research questions, research significance, research content and the research method. The second chapter is the literature review, which mainly introduces the spokesperson, competent negative information, the moral negative information, consumers’ purchase intention and the literature advertisement related to investment at home and abroad. The third chapter is the model framework, which details the research model designed by the author according to the research content. The fourth chapter selects the Chinese population as the research object and uses the questionnaire method to do the experiment. Finally, the statistical software SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 22.0 are used to analyze the data of the effective questionnaires, so as to verify the influence of the two kinds of negative information on consumers' purchase intention and the moderating effects of the advertisement investment in the entire process. The fifth chapter is the general discussion, which discusses the conclusion and the management reflection of this research, alongside the research limitation and the future research prospects.
Keywords: spokesperson, incompetence,immorality, crisis management, endorser's credibility,purchase intentions.