Upon scanning the existing literature on celebrity endorsement, it is observed that present studies have explored the influence of select celebrity endorsement factors or consumer factors on shoppers' purchase intention. However, these studies have not explored the cumulative effect of these antecedents on shoppers' intention to buy. Thus, the present study examines the impact of two celebrity endorsement factors-celebrity-product congruence and celebrity attractiveness, and three consumer factors-attitude towards the brand, attitude towards advertisement and involvement, on purchase intention. In due course, the research has also validated the measurement scales of the select constructs in Indian perspective. The paper has developed and tested the model for predicting shoppers' purchase intention using hierarchal regression. The findings of the study indicate that celebrity attractiveness, consumers' attitude towards advertisement and attitude towards brand have a significant positive influence on consumers' purchase intention. Interestingly, the study contradicted some of the earlier papers and noted the insignificant impact of celebrity congruence and consumer involvement on purchase intention. The article closes with discussions and managerial implications.

Purpose Brand managers frequently use well-known celebrities to position their brands and capture consumers’ attention to improve the brand’s market share. The attachment of a celebrity with a brand creates a human image for a brand and helps in personifying its image. The consumer perceives the brand as an individual and relates his personality, as well as the personality of the celebrity with that of the brand. It becomes pertinent for marketers to understand how brand-celebrity personality congruence and brand-consumer personality congruence affect the brand reputation, uniqueness and purchase intentions. Thus, the purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between the two personality congruence aspects – brand & celebrity personalities and brand & consumer personalities, and their impact on the reputation of the brand and its uniqueness. Further, the paper aims to examine the impact of the brand reputation and brand uniqueness on purchase intentions. Design/methodology/approach The present study uses Aaker’s five-factor personality scale to study the personality congruence effects on brand reputation, brand uniqueness and purchase intentions. The literature review was carried out to categorize factors related to celebrity personality, brand personality and consumer personality. The data for this study was collected through questionnaires from 1,235 respondents. In the first step, congruencies between celebrity, brand and consumer personality were determined. This was followed by a two-stage structural equation modelling for assessing the model fit and testing the hypotheses. Findings From the study results, it is observed that brand-celebrity congruency influences brand reputation and brand uniqueness. However, brand-consumer congruency had an effect only on brand reputation and not on brand uniqueness. Both brand reputation and uniqueness have favourable impact on consumers purchase intentions. Originality/value This study contributes to the existing literature on celebrity endorsement by extending the discussion with personality-based congruence. The research deciphered two aspects of identification, i.e. consumer-brand personality congruence and brand-celebrity congruence. The paper hypothesized the favourable association between brand personality and consumer personality congruence and brand uniqueness. However, it was observed that brand personality-consumer personality identification had an insignificant influence on brand uniqueness. This is contrary to the findings of some studies in the literature. Further investigation of this relationship in the future may add a new dimension to the identification context.

Celebrity endorsement has been an important area of study from the perspectives of marketers as well as consumers. This research aims at developing and testing a model of celebrity endorsement with celebrity-product congruence and attractiveness as predictor variables, with consumer involvement affecting a consumer assessment of the brand and purchase intention. The research has been guided by current attention being given to the significance of celebrities for endorsing products. However, the same has not been duly explored in the context of celebrity endorsement, with consumer involvement as a mediating variable, and further its impact on consumers' evaluation. The present research discusses the relationship effect of celebrity endorsement on consumers' evaluation of the communication done through the celebrity endorsing the brand. The study highlights mediating role of consumer involvement for both high and low involvement products in formation of attitude towards advertisement and buying intention. Using mall intercept method, the data was collected from 246 respondents. Structural equation modelling was used for analysing the data using AMOS 22.0. The results indicate that consumer responses Nilesh Arora et al. 114 are maximised when endorser attractiveness and consumer involvement interact with each other. Also, it is observed that consumer involvement has maximum impact on attitude toward advertisement. The paper closes with theoretical and managerial implication.

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