The Empirical Study Of The Impact Of Brand Spokes-characters On Advertising Effectiveness

The American Marketing scholars Larry Light think that, the competition of marketing will focus on the brands of enterprises, and the best place to occupy the market is to have a strong brand with a market- leading capabilities. To create a strong brand which makes consumers form a unified cognition, the enterprises not only need shape the image of brand, but also require close coordination between brand elements. With the advancement of technology and multi-culture, choosing a spokesperson for the brand endorsement becomes the most commonly brand marketing tools. However, celebrity spokesperson often give brands an unexpected risk in recent years. So the advantage of virtual spokes-characters which are tailored for the enterprises is gradually being recognized by many companies. Therefore, how to create good spokes-characters which achieve brand advertising goals become a focus of attention in the academic and business communities.On the basis of the existing literatures, this study selected three core characteristics of spokes-characters(likeability, professionalism and relevance) as independent variables, and introduced the advertising effectiveness level model which includes advertising attitude, brand attitude and purchase intention to explore the mechanism which brand spoke-characters features influencing on advertising effectiveness. Because of the public image of brand spokes-characters, the study also introduced the para-social interaction as a mediating variable and tested the intermediary role of the para-social interaction between brand spokes-characters and consumers in the process of spokes-characters impacting on brand advertising effectiveness. Considering that the consumer’s personality may affect the perception of the spokes-characters features, this study also verifies the regulatory role of the consumers’ tendency of adult playfulness though the relationship between spokescharacters features and para-social interaction.The empirical results show that: the likeability, professionalism and relevance of brand spokes-characters affect directly the dimension of advertising effectiveness at a different degree. And the para-social interaction relationship between consumers and brand spokes-characters plays a significant intermediary role in the impact mechanism. What’s more, the tendency of consumers’ adult playfulness only has an adjustment function in the process of the spokes-characters likeability affecting the para-social interaction. Based on the above findings, the study also put forward some marketing suggestions, such as companies how to choose, design and manage brand spokes-characters. Then it further illustrates some limitation and further research direction in this academic field.