| The practice of using athletes to endorse sport and non-sport products has increased drastically since Miller Lite's highly successful "Tastes Great, Less Filling" campaign in the 1970's. As a result of media coverage and increased social visibility, star athletes have embraced their celebrity status and benefited financially from endorsing products. Numerous studies have indicated that a star athlete's association with a brand may help to define and enhance the brand's image; however, negative characteristics of an endorser could also have a deleterious effect (Horrow, 2002; Pitts & Stotlar, 2002). To a great extent, the success of an endorsement depends on product-endorser congruency. The purpose of this study was to develop a model to examine the relationships among identification with an athlete and his/her sport (Robinson & Trail, 2005), product-endorser congruency (Match-Up = Expertise, Trustworthiness, and Image; Aaker, 1997; Braunstein & Zhang, 2005a, 2005b; Tenser, 2004), perceived value of the product (Emotion, Quality, Price, and Social; Sweeney & Soutar, 2001), and consumer purchase intentions. Participants ( N = 400) were college students, who responded to an online questionnaire that measured their perception of product-endorser congruency, identification with the athlete and/or her sport, perceived value of the product, and purchase intentions after viewing an advertisement with Maria Sharapova endorsing a Canon PowerShot digital camera. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed a lack of discriminant validity among the first-order latent variables for Match-Up; thus, an adjustment was made to allow all items to load directly on the general Match-Up factor. One Perceived Value subscale (Emotion) was eliminated from further analyses because of a lack of discriminant validity with the Quality subscale. The structural model showed adequate fit of the model, with the largest amount of variance being explained by the relationships of Match-Up to Perceived Value (38%) and of Perceived Value to Purchase Intention (52%). Identification (both Athlete and Sport) was found to have a small influence on Match-Up, with only 7% of the variance explained. The final model provides preliminary information on socio-psychological factors that influence the purchase intentions of endorsed products, and can be used as a reference by corporations when choosing athlete endorsers. |
