Effects of Celebrity Athlete Authenticity on Brand Authenticity and Sports Consumer Behaviors

Abstract

Consumer interest and attention are drawn to the brand through advertisements that feature the celebrity endorser, resulting in heightened brand awareness, increased sales, more favorable brand attachment, and increased consumer intention to purchase the endorsed brand. The effectiveness of a celebrity endorsement depends on the endorser’s inherent meaning, including the authentic lifestyle, personality, and social status that a particular celebrity brings to the brands they endorse. Authenticity provides a brand with a unique identity and a strong association for consumers. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between consumer perceptions of athlete authenticity, endorsed brand authenticity, brand attachment and purchase intention. Data were collected from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and a total of 372 were deemed usable data. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to examine the hypotheses. This study reveals that consumers’ perceptions of the athlete endorser’s authenticity positively influenced their perceptions of brand authenticity, which then led to attachment to the brand and a favorable intention to purchase it. Athlete endorser authenticity, however, does not have an influence on brand attachment but rather first needs to be inserted into the brand authenticity. The current study expands on the knowledge of brand attachment literature to show that authentic brands elicit strong attachments in consumers.