<p>Celebrity endorsement consists of a written or spoken statement from a publicly known person, proclaiming the benefits of some product or service. Previous research on celebrity endorsement has proved it very successful in promoting brands or companies. Even though many marketing strategies exist, it can be especially effective for newly started ventures to apply celebrity endorsement in their approach. While celebrity endorsement may be a good way to overcome weaknesses, such as liability of newness and lack of legitimacy, new ventures often cannot afford to implement this strategy. Therefore, an option to this might be <em>local</em> celebrity endorsement.</p><p>This thesis investigates the impact of local and well-known celebrity endorsement on communication effectiveness.</p><p>Through a quantitative study, the authors have concluded that local celebrity endorsers are perceived more trustworthy and emotionally involved in the endorsement process than well-known celebrity endorsers. Local celebrities and well-known celebrities are perceived equally expert, attractive and capable of transferring meaning to the endorsed product. Local celebrity endorsement is overall more effective than well-known celebrity endorsement in communicating the endorsement message. It can therefore be a suitable tool for newly started ventures that cannot afford to employ more expensive, well-known celebrity endorsement in their quest for gaining quick reputational capital.</p>

The growth of YouTube has resulted in the industrialization of a platform that redefines mainstream success. Success measures such as endorsements and viewership are serving as motivational factors for YouTubers. YouTubers and brands want more views, but are those motivations effecting perception? While much research has focused on the effects that YouTube has on the brand, this study focuses on the effects that the brand has on the YouTuber. It also determines whether viewership affects YouTuber perception and whether it‟s a success measure worth using. Using the constructs of the source credibility theory, this study assessed the main effect of brand endorsement and viewership on perceived expertise and trustworthiness of YouTubers. After conducting an online experiment, findings suggest that non-brand endorsed YouTubers possess higher-rated expertise and trustworthiness. While viewership did not make a difference in perceived expertise, it did result in higher-rated trustworthiness when a YouTuber possesses lower viewership.

Social endorsements are user-generated endorsements of products or services, such as “likes” and personal collections, in an online social platform. We examine the effect of prior social endorsements on subsequent users’ tendency to endorse or examine a product in a social shopping context, where a social platform connect consumers and enable a collaborative shopping experience. This research consists of two parts. In part I, we identify two ways prior social endorsements can affect subsequent user behavior: as a crowd endorsement, which is an aggregate number of endorsements a product receives for anyone who comes across the product, and as a friend endorsement, which is an endorsement with the endorser’s identity delivered only to the endorser’s friends or followers. Using a panel data of 1656 products on a leading social shopping platform, we quantify the relationship between crowd and friend endorsements and subsequent examination (“click”) and endorsement (“like”) of the products, noting that examination is a private behavior while endorsement is a public behavior. Our results are consistent with the identity signaling theory where identity-conscious consumers converge with the aspiration group (the followers) in their public behavior (e.g. endorsement) and diverge from the avoidance groups (the crowd). We also find differences between public and private behaviors. Moreover, the symbolic nature of social shopping platform trumps the traditional dichotomy of symbolic/functional product attributes. Part II of this study seeks to clarify the underlying mechanism through lab experiments. We hypothesize that consumers’ evaluative attitude, specifically the value-expressive type, moderates the relationship between crowd and friend endorsements and a focal user’s product choice. Our initial results of the second study show support for this idea in the cases when the product choice is not obvious.

Celebrities used in advertising has recently been something that consumers have come in contact with on a daily basis. Corporations use celebrities and their attributes as positive reinforcement and association towards the company or their marketed product. Through increased usage of media, the consumers to this advertising technique have been given an opportunity towards better insight into celebrities’ daily life. People are not only receivers of advertising, they are also media producers for the medias agenda. This makes everyone significant in the distribution of advertising. The area of research is called Celebrity Endorsement. All theories within the area presume that all receivers interpret the message in the same manner. In classic communication research there are theories like habitus, encoding and decoding that are the basis for a receiver perspective. These theories are aimed inter alia at people’s past experience influences how people act in a social structure and the receiver thus detects the communication in different ways. In this study, we have therefore created a deeper understanding of consumer’s perspective in celebrity endorsement for further find links to the theories of classical communication research. In this study we want to create a deeper understanding from the perspective of the receiver of celebrity endorsement. This study is also to find connections to theories within classical communications research. The study will also investigate deeper to understand how people within the same target audience are decoding celebrity and advertising activities. To reach a result we have used a qualitative reception analysis, where focus groups from different target audiences has been used. Within the focus groups discussions of current TV-commercials and fictitious cooperation between celebrities and corporations were used for the participants to express their opinion of celebrities in advertising. The study’s result is summarized in four different perspectives, which emerged from the empirical material. The first perspective has been analyzed from the participants’ earlier experiences. The second perspective deals with the participants’ self-knowledge and differences in their capability to objectively being able to analyze their own, as well as the others capability of decoding the messages. The studies third perspective affects the participants’ confessions. This includes further differences in the participants reasoning and confessing or not confessing to celebrity endorsements impact on them. In the last perspective it is described how participants used irony to make a difficult topic easier to talk about. The result of our study shows that advertising with celebrities are decoded in more ways than are described in the models within celebrity endorsement and that classical communication research should be implemented Keywords: Celebrity endorsement, celebrity, encoding, decoding, habitus, Stuart Hall, Pierre Bourdieu, trademarks, brand

Problem Formulation: Is the consumers perceived brand personality of a celebrity endorser affected by a marketing activity and its transferred personality? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explain the correlation and relation between the perceived brand personality of a celebrity endorser and a marketing activity he or she partakes in. Theoretical Framework: The frame of reference consists of existing theories regarding brand personality, celebrity endorsement, the Meaning of Transfer Model and Marketing Activities. Method: This study has chosen a deductive quantitative experimental research design. The collected primary data is consisting of 159 respondents divided into three groups who answered an group specific online survey which was distributed through private social media channels. Empirical Findings: The results in this study comprehends of 159 respondents attitude of a celebrity endorser, which has been analysed through statistical methods. Conclusion: The study’s results point out that there is no significant change on a celebrity endorsers perceived brand personality affected by the effect of a marketing activity, which can be statistically proven. The results showed a slight variance, however these are most likely a result of random.

xvi, 152 p. : col. ill. / Millions of dollars are spent on celebrity contracts each year by assuming that the benefits of using celebrities will exceed the costs. Accordingly, many researchers have studied the impact of celebrity endorsements on advertising effectiveness. One of the theories used frequently by these researchers is the match-up hypothesis. This theory suggests that there should be a good fit between the celebrity and the product; however, it is not clear what constitutes a good fit. Some researchers suggested that attractive celebrities will be more effective if they are used to promote attractiveness-related products. Other researchers claimed that when there is congruence between the product type and the celebrity profession, advertising effectiveness will be enhanced; however, these existing dimensions of the match-up hypothesis fall short of explaining some popular celebrity endorsement campaigns (e.g., Sharpie Pens and David Beckham). The current research contributes to the study of celebrity endorsements by adding another dimension, values, to the match-up hypothesis. Specifically, the congruence between celebrity values (as perceived by consumers) and values represented by products was considered as an alternative to the attractiveness and expertise dimensions. In a series of six experiments, support for the positive impact of celebrity-product value congruence on advertising effectiveness was found. College students exposed to the high value congruence ad spent less time in examining the ad, suggesting that participants were easily and quickly able to match up the celebrities and products. Moreover, participants who were exposed to the high value congruence ad had significantly more favorable attitudes toward ad and brand, had higher intentions to buy the product, and were more likely to recommend the product to other people than were participants who were exposed to the low value congruence ad. The results also suggested that value congruence with unfamiliar celebrities was more effective than value congruence with familiar celebrities for generating more favorable attitudes toward ad and brand and higher behavioral intentions, due probably to the minimized effect of pre-established thoughts or feelings about unfamiliar celebrities. Together these results suggest that the congruence between celebrity and product values plays an important role in advertising effectiveness. / Committee in charge: Lynn R. Kahle, Chairperson; Joan Giese, Member; David Boush, Member; Deborah Morrison, Outside Member

This paper aims to measure the economic impact of different NBA player achievements on the athletic apparel companies, Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour. It looks at players affiliated with the brands who participated in three different events in the NBA from from 2007 to 2017: the All-Star game, the All-NBA awards, and starting lineups in the Finals. Monthly stock returns for each company were calculated for the months the events took place: January, February, May, and June. The return of each company was then regressed on total number of players each company had in the events. Four total regressions were run for the months of January, February, May, and June. Understanding the economic implications of endorsed players participating in these events can help athletic apparel companies draft more cost efficient endorsement contracts.

O presente estudo buscou entender a influência da utilização da celebridade Gisele Bundchen em anúncios de propaganda no comportamento do consumidor por meio de uma das técnicas de Neuromarketing: o eye tracking. Sendo assim, esta pesquisa objetivou analisar se é realmente importante a presença da celebridade em propagandas de anúncio impresso analisada sob o ponto de vista do Neuromarketing por meio da análise da atenção visual ao estímulo \'celebridade\'. Para a verificação dos objetivos, das hipóteses e da proposição advindas destes objetivos, foi empregada uma metodologia em que se buscou avaliar a atenção visual dos consumidores acerca do estímulo \'celebridade\' em relação aos demais estímulos presentes nos anúncios impressos como a logomarca, nome ou símbolo que representa a marca; o produto; e outras pessoas não famosas. Essa avaliação foi realizada por meio da técnica de Neuromarketing que utiliza o equipamento de eye tracking. Assim, os participantes foram divididos em três grupos (um que avaliou os anúncios das seis marcas com a celebridade; o outro que avaliou os anúncios destas mesmas marcas com a presença de pessoas não famosas e um último grupo que avaliou os anúncios das marcas sem a presença de pessoas). No final do foi aplicado um questionário para confirmação de alguns dados e para análise em relação à lembrança da marca. Os resultados, no geral, demonstraram que, de alguma forma, os participantes prestaram atenção na celebridade considerada na pesquisa (o que foi evidenciado, principalmente, pelos mapas de calor apresentados). Quando as celebridades foram comparadas às pessoas não famosas, em alguns casos (com a confirmação de algumas hipóteses), foi evidenciada a importância da presença da celebridade; porém, em outros casos, houve mais destaque para a presença da pessoa não famosa. Na pesquisa ficou evidente, também, que a presença de pessoas (sendo elas celebridade ou não) pode atrapalhar no processo de atenção para a marca e o produto e que, quando não se utilizou pessoas, houve mais atenção dos participantes para estes outros estímulos. / This study intend to understand the influence of the use of celebrity Gisele Bundchen in advertising announcements on consumer behavior through one of Neuromarketing techniques: the eye tracking. Thus, this study aimed to analyze whether it is really important the presence of the celebrity in print ad advertisements analyzed from the point of view of Neuromarketing through analysis of visual attention to the stimulus \'celebrity\'. For the verification of goals, hypotheses and proposal arising from these, we used a methodology in which it sought to evaluate the visual attention of consumers about the stimulus \'celebrity\' in relation to other stimulis presents in print ads as the logo, name or symbol is the mark; the product; and non-famous people. This was accomplished by Neuromarketing technique which uses eye tracking device. The participants were divided into three groups (who evaluated the ads of six brands with celebrity, the other evaluating the ads these same brands with the presence of non-famous people and a last group that evaluated the announcements of the marks without the presence of people). At the end was applied a questionnaire to confirm some data and analysis regarding the brand recall. The results in general show, somehow, that the participants paid attencion to celebrity considered in the survey (which was evidenced mainly by heatmaps shown). When celebrities were compared to non-famous people, in some cases (with the confirmation of some hypotheses), the importance of the presence of celebrity was evident, however, in other cases, there was more emphasis on the presence of non-famous person. It was evident, too, that in the search, somehow, the presence of people (celebrity or not) can disrupt the process of attention to the brand and the product and that when not used people, there was more attention from participants to these stimuli.

Social media has become an attractive platform for companies to advertise their brands on and a common method is to pay internet celebrities to use their fame to promote the companies’ brands. One of these social media platforms is Youtube where “YouTubers” using their fame to promote brands on a daily basis in form of video logs (vlogs). Studies has indicated that the more credibility an endorser has, the more likely the purchase intention is, but also higher retention for the advertised brand. Therefor the purpose of this study is to describe the factors of endorser credibility, benefiting endorsers in how they can increase their credibility. The study also looked at the relation between endorsers’ credibility and attitude towards the advertisement, benefiting companies in choosing the most profitable endorser. A quantitative study was conducted to answer the research purpose, where a questionnaire was sent out to students on LUT (Luleå University of Technology). The results of this study suggested that endorsers credibility consists of all the five factors that was looked at in this study which was trustworthiness, attractiveness, expertise, homogeneous and tie strength. Findings of this study also suggested a direct and positive relation between some factors of endorser credibility with attitude towards advertisement

The graduation thesis deals with bills of exchange/promissory notes with the focus on their present possibilities of use. Thus, the thesis combines the legal point of view with the practical point of view. First part of the thesis provides basic information about bills of exchange/promissory notes and their specific qualities. Furthermore, this part concerns about declarations made on them such as acceptance, aval and endorsement. The second part focuses on economic importance of bills of exchange/promissory notes and reveals different functions bills of exchange/promissory notes can have. At the end there is an overview summing up both parts.