The impact of celebrity endorsement in cause related marketing campaigns on audiences’ behavioral intentions: Egypt case

Abstract

This study tests the impact of celebrity endorsement in cause- related marketing (CrM) campaigns, specifically in the non-profit firms in Egypt. This study is based on examining the impact of the five main elements of celebrity endorsement: celebrity attractiveness, celebrity expertise, celebrity trustworthiness, celebrity familiarity and celebrity-cause fit on audience’s attitudes and their behavioral intentions to donate to the firms’ causes. This study relied on quantitative approach, which involves distributing, collecting, and analyzing a large-scale questionnaire survey. Questionnaires were electronically distributed. Data were collected from 390 respondents based on convenience sampling technique and were analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), AMOS 22. The findings showed that celebrity attractiveness has the most significant positive direct impact on audience’s attitudes towards CrM campaigns. Moreover, celebrity-cause fit and celebrity trustworthiness have an acceptable level of significant positive direct impact on audience’s attitudes towards CrM campaigns. However, celebrity expertise and celebrity familiarity do not have a significant impact on audience’s attitudes towards CrM campaigns. Findings further indicated that audience’s attitudes have a significant positive direct impact on their behavioral intentions to donate to the firms’ causes. This study contributes on the theoretical level in many ways: by adding to the area of celebrity endorsement in CrM campaigns, particularly in non-profit firms, the field in which there is a lack of research; by combining several social causes that use different types of celebrities in one study; by developing a conceptual framework that links between five main elements of celebrity endorsement, audience’s attitudes and their behavioral intentions to donate to the firms’ causes in Egypt, which recently has witnessed a growing trend of endorsing celebrities in numerous charitable firms. It also provides crucial directions to the marketing specialists about the required elements for an effective use of celebrity endorsement in CrM campaigns, which helps in building positive audience’s attitudes. This may lead to positive behavioral intentions to donate to the firms’ causes.