The effects of celebrity endorsement in social media and attitudes towards celebrity on the customers' decision making pattern

Introduction: Celebrity endorsers in the customer purchase process are known as influencers who can create interest in people and affect their buying behavior. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of celebrity endorsers on social media on customers’ tendency to buy, brand loyalty and imitative behavior by considering the attitudes towards famous persons.
Methodology: The present cross-sectional study is applied in terms of purpose. Navigation method has also been used to collect the data. The statistical population of this study is the students of Shiraz University who bought a mobile phone in the past year. Using Cochran's (1957) equation and taking into account the 5% error, the sample size was 384 people, but the data were obtained from 340 people at the end. Due to the lack of access to all of these individuals and due to time constraints in the survey of all the selected individuals, the available non-probabilistic sampling method was used. A questionnaire was used to collect the data. It included four demographic questions and 32 specialized questions. The questionnaire uses a range of 5 Likert options. To evaluate the validity of the tool, content validity and construct validity tests were performed. The face validity of the questionnaire, which is a type of content validity, was approved by professors and faculty members of the university.
Results and discussion: Examination of the research results shows that celebrity endorsers create awareness among consumers, make them interested in products, and lead them to buy the product. For the consumer, remembering the ads done by celebrities is an easy task because of their characteristics (attractiveness, expertise, reliability, and fitness with the product). In fact, consumers' belief in products that are approved by celebrities means that these products are of a good quality and the brands are acceptable. But this belief does not lead to an increase in the consumer's tendency to buy for reasons such as the extent of consumer engagement or enthusiasm for the product or the belief that promotional products are not actually used by these people. Hypotheses 3 and 4 of the study show that the characteristics associated with celebrity endorsers, including attractiveness, expertise, reliability, and fitness with the product, affect consumers' perceptions of the quality of the product and increase brand loyalty. Also, the information conveyed to consumers by celebrity endorsers becomes more credible and leads to a higher understanding of the promotional product quality. Therefore, celebrity endorsers become one of the indicators of quality. This perception leads to the belief that quality is the distinguishing factor of promotional products, and they perform better than other products. In addition, the direct and indirect effects of celebrity endorsers on brand loyalty show that brand awareness created by endorsers is crucial in shaping consumer attitudes toward the brand. Finally, hypotheses 5 and 6, which are about the direct and indirect effects of celebrity endorsers on imitative customer behavior, were confirmed. They state that the characteristics of celebrities cause consumers to behave like them.
Conclusion: Since celebrity endorsers are able to create a tendency to buy and provide brand loyalty, it is recommended that managers choose celebrities who are perceived by the target market as attractive, professional and reliable people, fit the promotional product, and have the ability to promote incentive campaigns. Companies should also make decisions about the strategic goals and then learn how to fit the characteristics of the chosen celebrity with those goals. For example, if the unique feature of a mobile phone and its use is to be attractive, it should use verifiers that are popular with people. Or, if the mobile phone is distinguished by its smart feature, it should use verifiers. The celebrities to use are those who are known to be experts in the relevant fields.
In addition to using celebrity endorsers, companies need to improve the quality of their product in order to complement the effectiveness of reputable certifiers. Product quality should match the reliability of reputable certifiers. In fact, celebrities play an important role in attracting brand attention, but, if the product is not high-quality, the reputation of the celebrity and the brand that is advertised by him is endangered. Since consumers seek to imitate the behavior of celebrity endorsers, it is suggested that the values and salient features of celebrity endorsers be incorporated into products, and that their advertised use by celebrity endorsers in different environments be demonstrated so as to increase the use of products by consumers.