Factors predicting the effectiveness of sports celebrity endorsement advertising: a partial replication and extension

Abstract

This research identifies key factors predicting the effectiveness of sports celebrity endorsement advertisements and examines correspondent inferences and endorser characteristics to predict factors that influence consumer attitudes toward the endorser, advertisement and brand. Purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of sports celebrities endorsing sports and non-sports brands. This study provides valuable implications to brand managers for sport celebrity endorsement and provides companies‟ with insight into the strategic use of their resources to gain advertising objectives and maximise return on investment with sports celebrity endorsement practices. The research is a partial replication and extension of Silvera and Austad (2004) study conducted in Norway. This study used a sports celebrity endorser and gained results from self-administered questionnaires with a total of 240 respondents. An important finding of the study revealed that there were no significant differences in consumer attitudes toward endorser, advertisement and brand when endorsing sports and non-sports brands. Although, the scope of research was extensive it was not without limitations including the use of convenience sampling, investigation of one endorser and examination of sports celebrity effectiveness in print advertisements only.