Attitudes towards attractive and credible celebrities in advertisements

Abstract

The saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is relevant in the use of attractive and crediblecelebrities in advertisements. A celebrity endorser is seen as a model who enjoys recognition fromthe public and who can be seen as an ubiquitous feature of marketing today. The use of celebrityendorsers is a fairly common practice in many organisations in supporting their corporate orbrand image.This article focuses on both the attractiveness and also the credibility of celebrities in advertisements.It is anticipated that attractive celebrities and credible celebrities could influence attitudes positively,and that this will eventually lead to the purchasing of the advertised products and services.O’Mahony and Meenaghan’s (1997/1998) Perceptions of Celebrity Endorsements Scale was usedto measure the overall attitudes of students on celebrity endorsements. Separate sets of itemswere developed to measure attractive and credible celebrities separately. The internal consistencyreliability of these measurement scales reflected high scores (α > 0.70) on all items.In general, the respondents positively perceived celebrity endorsements. However, the overallrating of respondents in respect of an attractive celebrity in an advertisement was decidedly moreunfavourable. Results also showed attitudes towards credible celebrity endorsements to be neitherpositive nor negative