Research On Effects Of The Spokes-characters On Customer Purchase Intention

In today’s keenly competitive market, for enterprise, how to effectively enhance the brand awareness and improve customer purchase intention is a very challenging task. Philip·Kotler & Kevin·Lane·Keller(2006)point out that brand equity can be created by leveraging secondary associations, such as the country of origin, endorsers and 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(such as stars, experts.etc) may bring about unexpected risks, a lot of enterprise have turned to animated spokes-characters for advertising promotions. Therefore, how to promote purchase intention 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, to explore the relationship between it and the dependent variable of consumer purchase intention. In order to explore the mechanism between spokes-characters and purchase intention, brand experience is introduced as a mediator. Brand experience is an inner emotion and personalized feeling caused by brand related stimulation, and we divide it into sense experience, feel experience, cognition experience and relate experience.The study adopts the method of empirical research, we finally receive 255 valid questionnaires, then test the conceptual model and assumptions. With SPSS17.0 software applications, we analysis the reliability, validity testing, correlation analysis, regression analysis on the data collected, and the empirical results reveal that: 1. The likability, expertise, and relevancy of spokes-characters affect brand experience significantly, respectively, and the strongest influence on brand experience is expertise, then relevancy, and the weakest is likability. 2. The sense experience, feel experience, cognition experience and relate experience of brand experience affect customer purchase intention significantly, respectively, and the strongest influence on purchase intention is feel experience, then relate experience, sense experience, and the weakest is cognition experience. 3. Brand experience exert the mediated effect on the relationship between spokes-characters and customer purchase intention: sense experience is a fully mediator between likability & relevancy of spokes-characters and customer purchase intention, but is none mediate between expertise of spokes-characters and purchase intention. Feel experience is a fully mediator between likability & relevancy of spokes-characters and purchase intention, but is a partial mediator between expertise of spokes-characters and purchase intention. Cognition experience & relate experience is a partial mediator between expertise & relevancy of spokes-characters and purchase intention, but is none mediate between likability of spokes-characters and purchase intention.Base on the conclusion of the study, we give some recommendations about enterprises should how to choice, design and manage spokes-characters. At the end of the study, we propose the research limitations and future research directions.