The effectiveness of celebrity endorsements: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Celebrities frequently endorse products, brands, political candidates, or health campaigns. We investigated the effectiveness of such endorsements by meta-analyzing 46 studies published until April 2016 involving 10,357 participants. Applying multilevel meta-analysis, we analyzed celebrity endorsements in the context of for-profit and non-profit marketing. Findings revealed strong positive and negative effects when theoretically relevant moderators were included in the analysis. The most positive attitudinal effect appeared for male actors who match well with an implicitly endorsed object (d = .90). The most negative effect was found for female models not matching well with an explicitly endorsed object (d = −.96). Furthermore, celebrity endorsements performed worse compared to endorsements of quality seals, awards, or endorser brands. No publication bias was detected. The study has theoretical and practical implications, and provides an agenda for future research.

Review articles: purpose, process, and structure

“…Third, we describe a process and structure for systematic (i.e., non-meta-analytic) review papers, referring to Grewal et al (2018) insights into parallel meta-analytic (effects estimation) review papers. (For some strong recent examples of marketing-related meta-analyses, see Knoll and Matthes 2017;Verma et al 2016). …”

The effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in aspiring new celebrities

“…This is another indication of the effectiveness of this type of endorsement. According to Knoll and Matthes (2017), the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement has been discussed in recent years in terms of positive and negative effects, and the influence of this effect is subject to several moderating variables, such as congruence, charisma (Silva et al, 2015) and endorser sex (Bergkvist and Zhou, 2016), which demonstrates the importance of studies that address different aspects and scenarios of this phenomenon.…”

“…A meta-analysis performed by Knoll and Matthes (2017) show that studies about the subject have found positive, negative and neutral effects, leaving in doubt the actual effectiveness of celebrity endorsement. The authors demonstrated that the differences found in the studies may have occurred due to moderating variables, such as the endorser type (Wei and Lu, 2013), congruence (Silva et al, 2015) or endorser sex (Bergkvist and Zhou, 2016).…”

“…The authors demonstrated that the differences found in the studies may have occurred due to moderating variables, such as the endorser type (Wei and Lu, 2013), congruence (Silva et al, 2015) or endorser sex (Bergkvist and Zhou, 2016). Knoll and Matthes (2017) suggest that future studies should focus precisely on the conditions under which the endorsement effect may change: for example, endorsement of non-conventional products (Myrick and Evans, 2014), endorsement of persons (Van Steenburg, 2015), non-profit endorsement (Wheeler, 2009) and endorsement in emerging countries (Chou, 2014) such as China, India or Brazil, all factors which will be addressed in this study.…”

“…In line with recent research propositions for this area (Knoll and Matthes, 2017), to analyze the effectiveness of the endorsement and verify the existence of the effect (Study 1), studies were conducted focusing on contextual variables with the potential to modify effect. Study 2 analyzes the brand and charisma effects (Kowalczyk and Royne, 2013;Louie et al, 2001); Study 3 analyzes the congruence between celebrities (Fleck et al, 2012); and Study 4 measures the exposure level of the endorsing celebrity (Carrillat et al, 2013).…”