The Influence Of Spokes-characters On Brand Equity:The Mediation Of Brand Experience And The Moderation Of Characteristics Of The Consumers And Products

In today’s keenly competitive market, promoting brand equity is a challenging task. Kotler and Keller (2006) point out that brand equity can be created by leveraging secondary associations, such as the country of origin, endorsers and sporting/cultural events. Among these sources, the spokesperson has been used to enhance brand image frequently. An appropriate spokesperson could attract the attention of consumers and create value for business or brand with his or her popularity and expertise. However, a celebrity endorsement may bring about unexpected risks, many businesses have turned to animated spokes-characters for advertising promotions. Therefore, how to promote brand equity through spokes-characters has become a focus of academic and the business community.Based on previous studies, we take the qualities of spokes-characters as independent variable, such as likability, expertise, and relevancy. We measure brand equity through loyalty, perceived quality, and brand awareness/association. In order to explore the mechanism between spokes-characters and brand equity, brand experience is introduced as a mediator, and we divide it into sense experience, feel experience, think experience and relate experience. Partial Least Squares is adopted to check the the mediation of brand experience.The empirical results reveal that:(1) The likability, expertise, and relevancy of spokes-characters affect brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand awareness/association significantly, respectively.(2) The likability, expertise, and relevancy of spokes-characters affect sense experience, feel experience, think experience and relate experience significantly, respectively.(3) Sense experience, feel experience, think experience and relate experience affect brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand awareness/association significantly, respectively. That is to say, all brand experiences exert the mediated effect on the relationship between the likability, expertise, and relevancy of spokes-characters and brand equity.Consumers’perception of the qualities of spokes-characters is influenced by the characteristics of consumers and products. Therefore, we check the moderating effects of characteristics of consumers (such as gender, age and nostalgic proneness) and products (such as involvement, hedonic and utilitarian) on the relationships between the qualities of spokes-characters and brand equity. Through applying ANOVA, we confirmed that:(1) The relationships between the qualities of spokes-characters and brand equity is not moderated by consumer’s age.(2) Some of the relationships between the qualities of spokes-characters and brand equity is moderated by consumer’s gender and nostalgic proneness.(3) Some of the relationships between the qualities of spokes-characters and brand equity is moderated by the involvement, hedonic and utilitarian of product.Based on the conclusion of this study, author gives some recommendations about enterprises should how to choice, design and manage spokes-characters. At the last, the research limitations and future research directions was proposed.