Literature Review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Literature Review - Essay Example . Consumers are attracted through advertising and promotions. The first impression that a consumer attains through advertising influences his purchasing decisions. To create a positive impression, companies try to create a distinctive brand image for their products. The strategy is to utilize celebrities as endorsers in marketing campaign and it is growing increasingly popular. Companies usually use talent – movie actors, models, athletes or famous people for endorsement (Bergestrà ¶m & Skà ¤rfstad, 2004). Not just the large firms, even smaller companies with limited budget use sports and athletes to promote their products. Companies all over the world spend millions ever year to acquire celebrities to endorse their product. It hence become important to determine why companies choose celebrities to endorse their products, on what basis they select the celebrities and whether they get the expected returns from such endorsement. This proposal will briefly discuss the background with definition of ‘celebrities’ and after research justification and outlining the questions, based on the literature available, it will form a framework for research. A celebrity is defined as "an individual who is known to the public (i.e., actor, sports figure, entertainer, etc.) for his or her achievements in areas other than that of the product class endorsed" (cf., Friedman and Friedman 1979 cited by Kamins, Brand, Hoeke & Moe, 1989). The use of celebrities for product endorsement was on the rise in the late 1970s. While it was estimated that 15 percent of prime time television commercials featured celebrities in 1975, by 1978 it was reported to be over 20 percent (Kamins, Brand, Hoeke & Moe, 1989). Kamins et al (1989) conducted a study to determine the impact on advertising effectiveness and credibility based one two-sided versus one-sided celebrity endorsements.