No abstract

Celebrity endorsement has been frequently used in advertising as consumers are attracted and tend to imitate the behavior of the star. In the past years, celebrities have been a frequent mean of attracting the attention of the consumer towards an advertising. In an era with an over-load of information and ads, the glamour of the celebrities has had the power to increase the visibility of the advertised product. Besides the positive effects which celebrities bring to an increase of attention of the consumers, their endorsement can also have negative consequences. One of these undesired effects is the overshadowing of the advertised product by the celebrity. Consumers will have the tendency to watch the celebrity for a longer time and their attention is distracted from the advertised product. In an eye-tracking experiment we analyze the fact that the celebrity might distract the attention of the consumer from the advertised product and its logo. The results have shown that the participants have the tendency to watch the logo of a product for a longer time in advertising without celebrities. In opposition to this, in advertising endorsing celebrities, the attention is caught by the celebrity.

AbstractCelebrity endorsement is a common instrument in marketing. Celebrities are also present in commercials, and this phenomenon is nowadays a trend. This kind of publicity has a high potential since customers are pulled into the VIPs. They are overpowered by their regular daily existence, so they need standards and good examples. This is the motivation for using superstar brand envoys in advertisings as an excellent promoting technique of brands and products. In the period of data and promotions, the tributes can get the consumers’ consideration in publicizing and to expand how the promoted item is being perceived. This is because of their fame, glamour, elegance and charisma. For this reason, the marketers are looking for popular, famous, beautiful, positive testimonials to drive a company’s image and its products. The celebrity brand ambassadors thus play a significant role in a brand’s advertisement and reputation, but also in the consumers’ lives. The stars’ everyday lives, their conduct, the products they use, affect the attitude of the customers of life and the decision to purchase. The purpose of this paper is to determine if celebrity endorsement works for all the consumers or the perception of this trend is different according to the gender of the people. Two groups of customers were asked about celebrity endorsement whether their appearance in ads affects their decision and the desire to purchase a product or not. Recent results have shown that there are still differences between the two categories of customers, men and women, in the perception of celebrity endorsement. All of them think advertising is important, and sometimes they change their choices according to a product’s advertisement. The difference is that women appear to believe more in the endorsements of celebrity brands and their impact effect on the product being marketed than men, who are more pragmatic and reticent about this trend.

The present consumer is surrounded every day by a huge amount of data and information and is confronted with the need to process the received information. Based on the existing content and the development of user generated content and fake news, consumers develop more and more a skeptical opinion regarding existing media information. In this paper we determine four clusters of consumers based on technology and artificial intelligence (AI) acceptance, skeptical opinion regarding media information, need for validation of received information and the influence of celebrity trend setters. For each of the clusters, we analyze the relationship between the skeptical opinion of consumers related to social media information and some present trends about the development of technologies and AI, the influence of celebrity trend setters and the need to check the received information. The results of the research show that the development of technologies and AI have an influence on the skeptical opinion related to media information for some consumer groups. The celebrity trend setter has a significant influence on the skeptical opinion only for one of the consumer groups. The need for information and news validation is related to the skeptical opinion regarding media information, but in different ways for the determined clusters.

In the last decade, the new means of communication have determined substantial changes in human behavior and in the way individuals interact with each other. Besides the numerous benefits and opportunities that have arisen throughout the digitalization process, both for individuals as well as for private companies and state institutions, the widespread use of the Internet has generated vulnerabilities and threats. One of the most consistent concerns related to the new means of communication, especially social media platforms, refers to fake news. In recent years, major events including the 2016 presidential election in the US, Brexit, and the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic have proven the negative effects of fake news on society. In this paper, we use an eye-tracking experiment to determine the unconscious reactions of consumers regarding the attraction potential of a fake news manner written article about a celebrity couple. The results of the experiment for this magazine’s article, with a fake title about the celebrity couple, show that the participants focus their attention on celebrities and fake titles mostly. The picture of the celebrities and the fake title of the article beats the other areas from the article and less on the information in the text. The research proves empirically that consumers are more attentive to celebrity pictures and fake breaking news titles and less to real information in the article. To sum up, testimonials and fake news play an important role in attracting publicity and influencing consumer behavior.