ABSTRACT
This paper aims to evaluate impact of celebrity endorsement on consumer purchasing behavior, Goldberg Premium Lager Beer.
companies are running in a complicated and competitive business environment where needs of customers are constantly changing. In today's era of strong business competition, many companies can accomplish success with understanding customer buying behavior to their products using celebrity endorsement. Consumers can distinguish the feature of products by gathering required information which they typically get through celebrity endorsements. It is basically important to assess and provide deep understandings to the role of celebrity endorsement in influencing the consumer purchasing behavior in the Nigerian market.
This study has contributed to knowledge by providing relevant information to managers of Goldberg Premium Lager Beer and other related organizations on how to maintain good consumer behavior and grow their brands. The study also contributes to literature on brand growth and validating the importance of awareness, perceived trust.
The study was delimited to the following scope of the study. The study is to be carried out among Goldberg Premium Lager Beer staff. Therefore, the respondents covered staff of Goldberg Premium Lager Beer.
In this study, data were collected from staff of Goldberg Premium Lager Beer by using questionnaires each respondent answered question according to his/her understanding towards the problem.
As a result of the inability of the researcher to effectively study the whole population strength, a representative number was chosen as the sample size population, 50 respondents was used as the sample size. Data was collected from primary and secondary sources. Primary data was obtained through questionnaire and personal interviews with the respondents. Tables and simple percentage was used as technique of analyzing the research questions.
Findings from the study revealed that there a significant relationship between endorsement and consumer buying behavior, that there is no significant relationship between celebrity attractiveness and consumer buying behavior.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
In today's world celebrities are considered to be good example particularly to the young people. People are moulding their way of life related to their favorite celebrities (Ahmed, Seedani, Ahuja, & Paryani, 2015). Celebrities are people who are commonly recognized to the general public due to their successes in areas such as sporting activities, entertainment, politics, broadcasting, corporate and others (Muda, Musa, Naina, & Borhan, 2014). Celebrity endorsements have an excellent effect on the purchasing behavior of individuals. It attracts clients and inevitably increases firm productivity. Celebrities are not constantly creating any kind of effect on a person's mind in regards to buying. Nevertheless, mainly it provides a great effect on the perception of choosing any product. One always believes that if their favorite celebrity is using a specific product then they ought to likewise use it to be like them (Ahmed et al., 2015).
With the conviction that celebrities are significant representative for their brands, advertisers devote the huge amount of money on celebrity endorsement agreements yearly. These days' many organisations are making use of celebrities in their advertisements with the hope that by using celebrities they can achieve a unique place in consumer's mind.
According to Oxford dictionary, celebrity implies "A well-known individual". An individual who is outshined in his/her area of expertise. It could be in the domain of sporting activities, cinema, theatre, social life national politics or science anything however with some unique outcome (Giridhar, 2012). People that well known by a huge cluster of individuals are called celebrities. Some illustrations of the qualities include attractiveness, impressive lifestyle or exceptional expertise. These celebrities typically differ from average community and relish high amount of recognition by people are likewise some usual attributes of them. The word celebrity states a person familiar by individuals (actor, sports figure, entertainer, and so on) as a result of their achievements in the fields besides the product they have endorsed (Friedman and Friedman, 1979).
Owusu-Mensah, Nimssah and Mensah (2013) insisted that an advertisement from celebrities is not just efficient as it catches the interest of the consumers to purchase the product being advertised however likewise create a lasting memory in the minds of consumers as this will affect the consumers to buy the product consistently. In the opinions of Amaoteng and Poku (2013), the information in a celebrity endorsed advert is viewed to be true because of the idea held by many consumers that celebrities would certainly not wish to destroy their integrity by getting involved with ‘fake products'.
Srivastava and Tiwari (2014) affirmed that companies are running in a complicated and competitive business environment where needs of customers are constantly changing. In today's era of strong business competition, many companies can accomplish success with understanding customer buying behavior to their products using celebrity endorsement. Consumers can distinguish the feature of products by gathering required information which they typically get through celebrity endorsements. It is basically important to assess and provide deep understandings to the role of celebrity endorsement in influencing the consumer purchasing behavior in the Nigerian market.
Research carried out by Verma and Kishore (2015) discovered that young people are extremely attracted to celebrity endorsement. They verified that young people have the tendency to buy items of products that they see in advertisements. In the same vein, Biswas, Hussain and O'Donnell (2015) emphasised that people between the ages of 18-25 have the best ability to remember brand names using celebrity endorsers compared to older age groups. It is against this background that understanding the understand the impact of celebrity endorsement on consumer purchasing behaviour is considered crucial.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Research shows that celebrity endorsement marketing techniques can, under the right situations intensify the selling power of a brand to inconceivable heights. Celebrity endorsements if used efficiently, make the brand stand out, galvanize brand remember and helps with immediate awareness. In Nigeria, some companies are using celebrities to market their products and reaping the enormous benefits however it is woefully insufficient (Baidoo, 2009).
Many companies in the nation are using this marketing communications tool, signing entertainment and sports stars to name a few, all in the bid to influence customer purchasing behavior, due to research works company and entertainment reasons, currently develop a huge part of customer base. For that reason, the impact of celebrity endorsement decision making is a subject worth exploring. Nevertheless, not all celebrity endorsements constantly have a favorable influence on businesses. A few of the endorsements turn out to negatively impact the image of the business and the product endorsed.
The issue currently, is how to effectively use celebrity endorsement to favorably influence the customer purchasing behaviors. It is this curiosity that has driven me as a researcher to explore the impact of celebrity endorsements on the purchase decision of consumer.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
The main objective of this study is to understand the impact of celebrity endorsement on consumer purchasing behaviour. The specific objectives include:
i) To determine the relationship between celebrity endorsement and consumer buying behaviour
ii) To examine the relationship between celebrity attractiveness and consumer buying behaviour
iii) To understand the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements in motivating consumers to purchase products.
1.4 Research Questions
The research questions for this study include:
i) Is there any relationship between celebrity endorsement and consumer buying behaviour?
ii) What is the relationship between celebrity attractiveness and consumer buying behaviour?
iii) What is the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements in motivating consumers to purchase products?
1.5 Research Hypotheses
The research hypotheses include the following:
i) There a significant relationship between endorsement and consumer buying behaviour
ii) There is no significant relationship between celebrity attractiveness and consumer buying behaviour
1.6 Significance of the Study
The study is significant in the sense that it will help Companies, institutions and agencies as well as celebrities and public figures to take advertising more seriously and so as to give them a better exposure in the fast-growing competitive markets.
Again, the study would be a reference material for students thus, adding up to knowledge, governance authorities, production companies and marketing practitioners and firms.
Furthermore, the study would serve as a guide in drawing up service improvement strategies to meet the customers’ demands.
1.7 Scope of the Study
The study is on the impact of celebrity endorsement on consumer purchasing behaviour and therefore, Goldberg Premium Lager Beer will be used as a case study in this research study.
1.8 Limitations of the Study
As it happens with the majority of studies, no honest research is complete without admitting the limitations that were faced during the study. The present study has, also, some constraints that need to be mentioned.
One of the limitations encountered was the fact that the majority of the participants were workers who were busy with their works. The great focus came from those aged between 20 and 45 years old and not from any other range of age, what thereby restricts the inflow of diverse opinions on the issue at hand. Although they represent a large part of the population, results cannot be conclusive for the whole population. Probably, if an older generation would have been taken into consideration, then a completely diverse perspective could have been assumed.
Another limitation is related with the fact that the degree of understanding of the issues in the questionnaire was uncontrollable. There are times when the respondents answer according to the needs of the researchers, not taking the questionnaire on a serious note. However, it was assumed that all subjects would answer the questionnaire honestly but this hinders the progress of the research to be conducted in an absolute authentic manner.
1.9 Definition of Terms
The following terms were used in this study:
Celebrity: is a person who enjoys public recognition and who often have distinctive attributes such as attractiveness, credibility, and trustworthiness” (McCracken 1989; Silvera and Austad 2004). The term celebrity “refers to an individual who is known to the public, such as actors, sport figures, entertainers’ and others for their achievements in their respective areas other than the product endorsed by them (Friedman and Friedman, 1979).
Consumer: is a person, or group of people, such as the household who are the final users of products or services. The consumer’s use is final in the sense that the product is not usually improved by the use
Consumer Buying Behaviour: This refers to the buying behaviour of the ultimate consumer. It is also the decision process and an act of people involved in buying and using products.
Credibility: refers to the objective and subjective components of the believability of a source or message.
Trustworthiness: is based more on subjective factors, but can include objective measurements such as established reliability.
Endorsement: is an act of giving public approval or support to someone or something.
