Impact of celebrity endorsements on youth purchase decisions: A study on Indian youth

Abstract

The youth of a country are conscious of self and the products and services they consume. They do everything to stay in the limelight. Originality may come packed with some risks and thus take an easy tested route as already tried out by their favorite celebrities. The youth of today are influenced by a lot of factors and specially the fancy world around them. Celebrities from films and sports specially play a role in the life of these youth. The youth look upto these celebrities as their role models and closely follow them. Whether it is following their dressing style or their look or whether it is emulating their hairstyle or repeating their statements, the celebrities globally have been able to attract the attention of the youth. The celebrities are the part of the so called popular culture of a country and India is no exception. The marketers are trying to capitalize this and hence are using celebrity endorsements to attract the attention of customers towards their offerings.Attraction, attention, interest and a lot more these celebrities have the power to induce this and much more in the product they endorse. Celebrities when endorse a product or a brand tend to give that value cushion to the overall perception of the product/brand in the mind of the customer. Does the image of the celebrity have any impact on the image of the product? Do Multiple product endorsements lead to confusions in the mind of the customers are some questions the This paper tries to study if celebrity endorsements have any impact on Youth purchase decisions. This also aims to study if characteristics of the product/services and the characteristics of the endorsing celebrity should have any connection.