Impact of Endorser Type on Advertising Effectiveness for High-tech Products

Abstract

As the importance of a role of endorsers became greater in advertisement for high-tech products, selecting an appropriate endorser is now considered one of the most critical capabilities of high-tech product companies. This paper contributes to this topic by examining the impact of endorser type on the advertising effectiveness for high-tech products. In general, endorser type can be categorized into two groups - celebrity and typical consumer endorser, and both endorsers nowadays appear commonly in advertisements for high-tech products. This study has found that consumers form different attitudes toward these two different types of endorsers. In detail, consumers tend to associate attractiveness and likeability with celebrity endorser while they link similarity, trustworthiness, and expertise with typical consumer endorsers. Among these five different attitudes toward the endorser, only likeability, similarity, and expertise of the endorser turned out to have positive influence on the advertising effectiveness, including attitudes toward the advertisement, brand, and even product category. Further, this study also took self-efficacy level of consumers into consideration in examining the relationship between the attitude toward the endorsers and advertising effectiveness, and it was revealed that self-efficacy level of consumers has moderating effects on the relationship not only between attitude toward endorsers and attitude toward advertisement but also between attitude toward endorsers and attitude toward brand. In detail, the higher self-efficacy level of consumers weakened the relationship between attitude toward endorsers and attitude toward advertisement and brand. However, self-efficacy level did not show moderating effects on the relationship between attitude toward the endorsers and attitude toward the product category. This study provided theoretical and practical guidelines in selecting most effective endorser in the advertisement especially in high-tech product industry. Moreover, this paper also suggests that measuring self-efficacy level of targeted customers will help selecting appropriate endorser for high-tech products in improving attitude toward the advertisement, brand, and product category.