Female Endorsers Research Articles

Gender Selection Dilemma in Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Advertising: Insights from Eye- Tracking Research.

Selecting the gender of a celebrity for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) advertising presents a strategic challenge. Previous research has predominantly concentrated on comparing celebrity spokespersons with non-celebrities, frequently neglecting the intricate distinctions in the effectiveness of male versus female endorsers. This study addresses this research gap by employing both traditional and neuromarketing methodologies. By integrating eye-tracking technology via RealEye and questionnaire-based surveys, the results indicate that female celebrities are more effective in capturing visual attention, whereas male celebrities are more effective in enhancing perceived trustworthiness. These findings are pivotal for both academic research and commercial strategy, as they elucidate the optimal selection of celebrity gender for maximizing FMCG advertising efficacy.

Endorsement and promoting sport and physical activity to young people: exploring gender and the career status of athlete endorsers

ABSTRACT Rationale/Purpose We investigated the role of gender (both endorser and audience) and career status on young people’s attitude, participation intention and perception of fit in the context of a social marketing campaign promoting sport and physical activity participation. Design/Methodology/Approach In a 2 × 2 × 2 experiment, the eight conditions were based on endorser gender (female and male), endorser career status (current and former) and participant gender (female and male). Participants were aged between 16 and 24 years. Findings Endorser’s gender, career status and participants’ gender had no significant effect on attitude and intention related to the social marketing campaign. However, endorser gender significantly influenced participants’ perceptions of gender fit, and perceptions of career status fit. Either a current or former female athlete was perceived as a better fit than a male athlete endorser. Furthermore, the career status of an endorser significantly impacted perception of career status fit, but only for participants who were highly involved in sport and physical activity. Practical Implications Using former athletes is a more-than-viable strategy, and both male and female endorsers are equally likely to facilitate behaviour change in young adults. Research Contribution Social marketing campaigns promoting promote sport and physical activity can leverage the celebrity capital of retired athletes.

The match-up hypotheses revisited: matching social judgments and advertising messaging in celebrity endorsements

PurposeAlthough endorsers are thought to be highly effective when they match-up with a product, the current understanding of endorser match-up offers little insight for distinctions between equally attractive and trustworthy endorsers who have equivalent expertise in the product category, yet still diverge in their performance. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to understand how a match between social judgments (i.e. warmth vs competence) of a celebrity endorser and specific advertising appeals (i.e. symbolic vs utilitarian) can improve consumer responses to an endorsement.Design/methodology/approachA preliminary study empirically distinguishes perceptions of warmth and competence from prevailing celebrity endorser evaluative criteria. Then, the authors conduct multiple 2 (warmth vs competence) × 2 (symbolic vs utilitarian) between-subjects experiments to demonstrate the effect of matching social judgments and advertising messaging, across celebrity genders (i.e. male and female), forms of marketing communications (i.e. print ads and interactive online ads) and types of brands (i.e. well-established and new/unknown).FindingsThe findings demonstrate that matching celebrity endorser social judgments with the appropriate type of advertising messaging positively influences consumer response to the brand for both male and female endorsers. Additionally, despite a commonly held belief that celebrity endorsements are more effective at changing attitudes than actual behaviors, for interactive online ads, the authors find that the match strategy can motivate consumer response through two different pathways. For well-established brands, the match improves overall brand response predominately through cognitive and behavioral mechanisms. Alternatively, for new or unknown brands, the match initially impacts affective responses, which are subsequently related to consumers shopping a brand’s product category, rating a brand higher in customer recommendations, choosing a brand’s products over top competitors and paying more for the brand’s offerings.Originality/valueThe main contribution of this research is the demonstrated support for an alternative and effective application of the match-up hypothesis, based on a fit between the endorser and the advertising messaging itself.

How Does Gender Stereotype Affect the Memory of Advertisements? A Behavioral and Electroencephalography Study

Previous studies have shown equivocal results about whether atypical or unusual events, compared with typical ones, facilitate or inhibit memory. We suspect that the indefinite findings could be partly due to the recall task used in these studies, as the participants might have used inference instead of recall in their responses. In the present study, we tested the recognition memory for real (Experiment 1) and fabricated (Experiment 2) advertisements, which could be congruent or incongruent with gender stereotypes. In congruent advertisements, a female endorser presented a traditionally considered feminine product or a male endorser presented a traditionally considered masculine product, whereas the gender-product type matching reversed in incongruent advertisements. The results of both behavioral experiments revealed that the participants’ memory performance for stereotype-incongruent advertisements was higher than for congruent ones. In the event-related potential (ERP) recordings in Experiment 3, larger positive amplitudes were found for stereotype-incongruent advertisements than for congruent advertisements on the left parietal sites, suggesting a deeper encoding process for stereotype-incongruent information than for stereotype-congruent information.

Warmth effect in advertising: the effect of male endorsers’ warmth on brand attitude

Prior literature in advertising tends to view warmth as an emotion arises from relationships between two or more characters in a commercial (e.g. lovers or family members), while little attention has been paid to endorsers as a potential source of warmth. In this article, we propose that the warmth of endorsers can serve as a way to elicit feelings of warmth in consumers and affect the effectiveness of the advertisement. Across three studies, we reveal a warmth effect in brand endorsement such that consumers perceive a greater psychological connection between the brand and the self when the brand is endorsed by a male endorser with high warmth, which, in turn, leads to a more favourable brand attitude. This warmth effect occurs only for male endorsers, but not for female endorsers. We further identify two boundary conditions and show that the effect is more prominent when consumers are of interdependent self-construal (vs. independent self-construal) and when the endorsed brand is a functional brand (vs. a prestigious brand). The findings contribute to the literature of brand endorsement, warmth and gender stereotype in advertising, and provide managerial insights for selecting brand endorsers.

A customer-focused approach to improve celebrity endorser effectiveness

The current study reveals that a customer-focused approach to choosing celebrity endorsers (based on consumer-endorser identification) is a more useful predictor of endorsement success than a product-focused approach (product-endorser fit) alone. Specifically, the findings suggest consumer-endorser identification offers a potentially more consistent criterion for predicting endorsement effectiveness than fit, which is contingent upon varying consumer perceptions of product-endorser match-up. Across two studies, one survey-based and one longitudinal experiment, increased identification with both male and female endorsers led to increases in endorsement success. Most importantly, the influence of identification is significant for both high and low fit pairings between an endorser and brand. Thus, consumers who identify strongly with an endorser are likely to respond favorably to the endorsement even when fit between the endorser and brand is poor. Moreover, identification with the endorser is found to be consistently linked to purchase intentions over multiple time points.

The effects of endorsers' facial expressions on status perceptions and purchase intentions

The facial expressions that endorsers convey in a print ad can influence consumers' reactions to the product being advertised. This effect, which is mediated by perceptions of the endorsers' social status, depends on whether the endorser is male or female. Consumers expect endorsers' facial expressions to conform to normative expectations for how men and women present themselves to others and they attribute high social status to those whose expressions deviate from these expectations. Thus, they perceive smiling male endorsers to have high status but smiling female endorsers to have low status. These perceptions, which are independent of warmth and competence, influence consumers' willingness to purchase products whose social prestige value is unknown a priori. Five experiments confirm these conclusions and demonstrate their implications for actual purchase behavior.

Sexy or smart? The impact of endorser ethnicity and portrayal on Chinese women’s attitudes toward luxury advertising

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction effect of endorser ethnicity (local Chinese vs Western) and portrayal (smart vs sexy) on Chinese women’s attitudes toward luxury advertisements and brands, as well as any moderating effect appearance self-esteem has on the above-mentioned interaction.Design/methodology/approachTwo online experiments were conducted. Study 1 was a 2×2 factorial design (with 280 participants), while Study 2 was a 2×2 ×2 factorial design (with 320 participants). Data were analyzed using a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) test and simple effect analysis.FindingsResults demonstrated that Chinese female consumers are more likely to have a positive attitude toward advertisements for luxury goods and brands when a local Chinese (vs Western) endorser is used and portrayed as smart (vs sexy), particularly if consumers have low appearance self-esteem.Research limitations/implicationsThe research focused only on female consumers and only one product type was used for the experiments. The use of controls for potential confounding effects was insufficient in this study design.Practical implicationsTo maximize profits, marketers should choose the most appropriate combination of endorser ethnicity and portrayal in the Chinese luxury goods market. Accordingly, if adopting a localization strategy and using a Chinese female endorser, the endorser should be portrayed as smart rather than sexy. In contrast, if a luxury brand adopts an internationalization strategy and uses the same Western female endorser as in other countries, it is more effective to portray her as sexy rather than smart. Furthermore, advertisers should pay particular attention to Chinese female consumers who have low appearance self-esteem when advertising their product and/or brand.Originality/valueCompared with past studies concerned with consumers’ perceptions of endorser image in advertisements through a focus on endorser ethnicity, this study linked endorser portrayal with his/her ethnicity and discussed the interaction effects between these two factors on consumers’ attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand portrayed in the advertisement. The findings herein contribute new insights to the body of work on luxury marketing and endorser advertising.

Consumer Psychographic and Demographic Characteristics Towards Female Endorsement in Advertising

Nowadays advertising has become a lifeline for business and endorsement of a females in advertising has become an unavoidable fact. Over a few decades, a wide range of researches have been carried out on female role portrayal in advertisements however, the role of demographic factors to moderate the relationship between consumer attitudes and responses towards female endorsement in print advertisement is yet to examine. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the role of demographic factors as a moderator to influence the response towards female endorsement in print advertisements. A survey was administered on 296 respondents from urban cities of Pakistan through questionnaires. The major findings of this study are that gender, income, education and geographic location do not moderate the relationship between attitude and response towards female endorsement in print advertisement. It was also found that male consumers as compared to females perceive that the presence of a female endorser in a billboard grabs their attention, increases their interest and desire, makes the commercial more memorable and keeps them aware of the brand name of the product. But female consumer’s perception is that the female endorser in a billboard increases their possibility of buying the endorsed product more as compared to male consumers.

Consumer Response to Advertising Endorsers' Sexual Information: Western Individualism vs. Eastern Confucian Conservatism

ABSTRACTFocusing on the cultural differences between the United States and South Korea, this study examines the moderating effects of advertising endorsers' gender (male vs. female) and intimate sexual information (i.e., premarital sexual behavior) on consumer responses to advertising. The results demonstrate that intimate sexual information of advertising endorsers was negatively perceived among Korean consumers but not among U.S. consumers. In addition, Korean consumers evaluated intimate sexual information of female endorsers more negatively than that of male endorsers, suggesting gender-biased processing. These findings provide several theoretical and practical implications.

The Impact of Negative Endorser Information and their Facial Appearance on Advertising Effectiveness for Profit and Not-for-Profit Organizations

ABSTRACTThis study compared consumer reactions to positive and negative information about endorsers. We analysed the effects of positive versus negative publicity about a fictitious male or female endorser with either a cold or warm facial appearance in two conditions: an ad for a profit organization and an ad for a nonprofit organization. The results show that consumers’ attitude toward the ad and the brand/charity organization is negatively affected by negative information about the endorser. Moreover, the impact of negative information of the same endorser is significantly greater for ads of profit organizations than for ads of not-for-profit organizations, especially for endorsers with a warm facial appearance. These results suggest that the risk of negative endorser information is much higher for profit organizations than for not-for-profit organizations.

The Impact of Negative Endorser Information and their Facial Appearance on Advertising Effectiveness for Profit and Not-for- profit Organizations

This study compared consumer reactions to positive and negative information about endorsers. We analysed the effects of positive versus negative publicity about a fictitious male or female endorser with either a cold or warm facial appearance in two conditions: an ad for a profit organization versus an ad for a non-profit organization. The results show that consumers’ attitude towards the ad and the brand/charity organization is negatively affected by negative information about the endorser. Moreover, the impact of negative information of the same endorser is significantly greater for ads of profit organizations than for ads of not-for-profit organizations especially for endorsers with a warm facial appearance. These results suggest that the risk of negative endorser information is much higher for profit organizations than for not-for-profit organizations.

Facial width-to-height ratio and celebrity endorsements

This study hypothesized that the facial WHR of celebrity endorsers is associated with their endorsement income. Our sample consisted of the top 100 male and female celebrity endorsers (male=50 and female=50) in Seoul. The average annual total endorsement income of celebrity endorsers in 2012 was $1,691,924 for male endorsers and $1,684,474 for female endorsers. A statistical analysis demonstrated a significant negative correlation between celebrity endorsers’ facial WHR and their endorsement income in 2012 among male (r=−.390, p=.007, n=47) but not among female (r=.166, p=. 248, n=50) endorsers. Our findings imply that males with narrower faces are more popular among the media as well as among advertisers. Our study is the first to explore the relationship between physical features, such as facial WHR and monetary income in the entertainment industry.

Exploring the challenges facing female athletes as endorsers

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate some of the potential reasons why female athletes, despite increases in female sport participation, are less commonly used as endorsers than male athletes. Using a combination of McCracken's meaning transfer model and three dimensions of source attractiveness, familiarity, likability and similarity, preliminary results indicate that female consumers find female athletes to be less effective endorsers due to low familiarity and because they are low in similarity and liking. The relative lack of effectiveness also appears to be attributed to a disconnection between stages 2 and 3 of the meaning transfer model because of the way athlete associations are transferred to the product during stage 2 as well as the transfer of meaning to the consumer in stage 3. This appears to be true, at least in part, due to the way advertisers assign and transfer meaning among the endorser, brand and consumer. An example of this is when ads result in lower liking of the endorser due to negative feelings generated from comparisons made by female consumers to the female endorser.

Selecting a female athlete endorser in China

PurposeThis study seeks to investigate the relationship among attractiveness of female athlete endorsers, product/service match‐up, and consumers' purchase intention within the context of China.Design/methodology/approachA 3×2×2 between‐subject experimental design enabled a 12‐scenario study depicting a purchase experience manipulated by endorser attractiveness levels (high/middle/low), endorser‐product match‐up (high/low), and two different product types (to prevent single‐product bias). Differences between female and male samples are also compared.FindingsIn terms of the generation of purchase intent, there is no difference between a middle attractive female athlete endorser and a low‐attractive one when both are in a low match‐up condition. While the use of middle attractive female athlete endorsers works only in a high match‐up condition with female consumers, it is certain that high attractiveness always works better than low attractiveness. In total, the results suggest that female athlete endorsers' attractiveness affects Chinese consumers' purchase intention more than match‐up.Originality/valueThe results not only compare the relationships between attractiveness and match‐up, but also push traditional endorser theories one step farther by examining the concept of middle level attractiveness and by probing the effect of a middle‐attractive female endorser. The cultural influence of Chinese traditional philosophy, The Doctrine of the Mean, on Chinese consumers is discussed and considered. The influence of middle attractiveness endorsers on study subjects of different genders is also discussed.

How Physical Attractiveness and Endorser–Product Match-up Guide Selection of a Female Athlete Endorser in China

ABSTRACT This research used an experimental method (with 12 different scenarios) to investigate the relationship among the physical attractiveness of female athlete endorsers, endorser–product match-up, and consumers' purchase intention in the context of China. It is certain that highly attractive endorsers work better than less-attractive endorsers. In terms of generation of purchase intention, there is no difference between a middle-attractive female athlete endorser and a low-attractive one under low match-up conditions. The normal attractive-level female athlete endorser works only in a high match-up condition. The results show that female athlete endorsers' attractiveness could affect consumers' purchase intentions more significantly than the match-up factor in China. The findings not only compare the strength between attractiveness and match-up, but also extend traditional endorser theories farther by examining a middle-level attractiveness measurement as this research digs into the effect of a middle-attractive female endorser. Besides theoretical implications, practical suggestions were given based on the discussion on research findings and traditional Chinese cultural influences.

Comparing Society’s Awareness of Women: Media-Portrayed Idealized Images and Physical Attractiveness

An advertiser develops visual associations of signs and symbols to create a product image that motivates consumers. Today is characterized by a solid consumer culture based on visual identity consumption that articulates and interacts with each consumer’s daily actions, words, and visual perceptions. The frequent use of female role portrayals and physical attractiveness in advertising contributes to an increase in society’s awareness of women. Some scholars have developed an ethical discussion out of the phenomenon of female role portrayals not matching the public expectations because the portrayals are too narrowly defined and women are unfavorably depicted. But another group has studied the product-type match-up hypothesis, which emphasizes effectively employing attractive female endorsers that closely match the product type. The shift in female social status in Taiwan contributes to the importation of foreign ideas such as feminine values, rituals, and esthetics. Women in Taiwan have been introduced to a new feminism, a modified perception of appropriate personal appearance and behavior. This current research utilizes content analysis and in-depth interviews to explore contemporary female role portrayals in advertising. In addition, this article examines the relationship between the formation of contemporary physical attractiveness and visual consumption in advertising. The results reveal that most endorsers were celebrities, with fit bodies and pleasant␣expressions, portrayed as product users who offer personal experiences to deliver product knowledge. Conservation classical beauty was the most common depiction, while sexual expression was the least common. Finally, this article recommends that different types of beauty, posture, and appeal should be carefully selected to match domestic and foreign magazines’ readers.

Sexual Issues: The Analysis of Female Role Portrayal Preferences in Taiwanese Print Ads

For a long time, female endorsers in advertising have been doing product information promotion in the market. However, with more and more highly educated women participating in the labor force, the conception of feminist depictions in advertising have become a perplexing issue. The traditional female role portrayals or stereotypes of the past are not able to totally reflect the expectations, behavior, attitudes, and beliefs of contemporary women. The author collected print ads as data from three types of the highest circulation magazines: foreign women’s magazines (Chinese edition), domestic women’s magazines, and domestic management magazines subscribed to in Taiwan to investigate what were the favorite feminine patterns and feminist depictions in a traditionally masculine society. The results showed classical beauty and girl-next-door images were “acceptable” gender-role behavior exposed highly in domestic magazines, which might contribute to conservative Confucian beliefs. On the other hand, being trendy was a significantly high preference for contemporary feminist depictions in foreign women's magazines; it might be considered as being due to the increased educational level of women and female labor participation rate in the work place as well as upgrading of social status.

Where's Tamika Catchings? A Content Analysis of Female Athlete Endorsers in Magazine Advertisements

Despite Title IX and increased levels of females' participation in sports, the use of female athletes as product endorsers has received limited attention. Some observers have suggested that there may be a media bias against female athletes and other problems related to how female athletes are portrayed to the public. The purpose of this study is to examine the frequency and nature of portrayals of female athletes when they appear as product endorsers in magazine advertisements. Results of a content analysis of a wide range of magazines indicate that females appear in just 12% of the ads featuring celebrity athlete endorsers. While female athlete endorsers are not commonly seen in any type of magazine, they are more prone to be found in women's magazines and are virtually absent from men's magazines and teen magazines. Findings also indicate that three-quarters of the female endorsers came from individual sports, as opposed to team sports. Another key result of the study is that female athletes were shown suggestively or partially clad 81% of the time.