The Analysis On The Effect Of Sports Celebrity’s Endorsement On Enterprise’s Brand Image

The endorsement of sports celebrity has been considered as an important marketing strategy for more and more companies. Nowadays, more and more the sporting events held in many big cities in China, and watching sports games on TV or the in live are becoming an important part of people’s daily life, meanwhile the broadcasting and commercializing of sports industry help building a broader platform for it. As a consequence, athletes have better opportunities to show themselves. And the numerous increasing fans draw attentions of lots companies to operate their marketing strategy by endorsing sports celebrities, in order to have a larger market share and to build a better distinct brand image.However, lack of theoretical support causing the blind choosing on the sports celebrity is the current situation of enterprise sponsoring behavior. Most of the Chinese enterprises choose their endorsers just according to popularity and attractiveness, without thinking of the factor of matching. So it might cause the inefficiency in the market, and may have a futile result.1Topic choosingThere are not many researches referring to the interactions between sports celebrity (star) and the brand image. For example, scholars used to discuss the sports star’s effect on brand equity, and the image transmission process between sporting events and brand image. But the angle of this research is a little bit different, is try to find out the effect given by sports celebrity to brand image on the basic of former research. In this research two questions will be answered below:1) In the sports marketing sponsorship, will the sports celebrity’s endorsement affect the brand images?2) If it does, how it works and in what aspects?2MethodologiesLiterature:Relevant researches have been reading and analyzing in order to summarize and refine the related concept and theories to support this research. Investigation:The questionnaire is designed to get the first hand information and useful data can be collected during the investigation.And the software SPSS6.0is used to deal with the data and the quantitative analysis is used to explain them.3Conclusions and SuggestionsIn this research, five characteristics of sports celebrity and three aspects of brand image are conclude and refined, and after the investigation and analysis, the reciprocal effect among them summarized below:-analysis on the effect of quality awareness, brand personality and organization image on brand imageIn those three factors, quality awareness is the most affective factor to brand image, and the brand personality is after that.-analysis on the effect of sports celebrity endorsement on quality awarenessThe result shows that the attractiveness, professional, reliability and match-up have positive effect on quality awareness. And the affecting degree ordered below:professional, match-up, reliability and attractiveness. And the popularity of sports celebrity does not have an obvious effect on brand quality awareness.-analysis on the effect of sports celebrity endorsement on brand personalityThe result shows that the popularity, attractiveness, professional and match-up has positive effect on brand personality. And the affecting degree ordered below:attractiveness, match-up, professional and popularity. The reliability of sports celebrity does not have an obvious effect on the brand personality.-analysis on the effect of sports celebrity endorsement on organization imageThe result shows that the popularity, attractiveness, professional, reliability and the match-up all have the positive effect on organization image, and the affecting degree ordered below:match-up, professional, popularity, reliability and the attractiveness.-analysis on the effect of sports celebrity endorsement on brand imageThe result shows that the popularity, attractiveness, professional, reliability and match-up have positive effect on brand image, and the affecting degree ordered below:match-up, professional, reliability, attractiveness and popularity. -suggestion for enterprise on sports marketing sponsorshipAfter the investigation and quantitative analysis on the effect of sports celebrity endorsement on brand image and its three aspects, conclusion and suggestion are made below for enterprise on sports marketing sponsorship:Firstly, the match-up factor should be attention-paid during the sports celebrity endorser selecting. Secondly, each aspect of brand image should be considered during the sports celebrity endorser selecting. Last but not the least, the risk control should be attention paid during the process of sports celebrity endorsement.4Innovation and LimitsThe innovation of this research is the first time to discuss the interaction between sports celebrity endorsement and brand image, using the quantitative analysis after an investigation. After literature researching about sports celebrity endorsement and brand image, the potential relationship between them was considered. And after further deeper researching on relevant theories and research, the supportive theories were found, and the theoretical factors of sports celebrity endorsement and aspects of brand image were refined to construct a theoretical model about the effect of sports celebrity could have on brand image and its three aspects. And after investigation and quantitative analysis on the collected data, the finally conclusion was made out to answer the original hypothesis about the effect and the how it works. The result offered suggestions for enterprise on sports marketing sponsorship, to help them act more efficient in the market.However, because of the limits on time and expenditure, the investigation subjects were collected among author’s friends mostly, though the diversity was considered, the sample was still not diversify enough. It would be more convincing if the sample is more diversify, even though the research analyzes through the psychology aspect which means the external elements does not matter too much. Meanwhile, because lack of experience and relevant profession knowledge, the questionnaire and measuring tablet of this research was selected from former relevant research, not developed and discussed in this research, so the pertinence is not enough for this research.