Research On Influence Of Negative Publicity Of Celebrity Endorser On Consumers' Perceived Risk

Celebrity endorsements can bring many benefits to companies and brands,but it also carries risks.As public figures,each move of celebrities is exposed to the media,which makes it easy for them to get involved in negative publicity.According to the point of view of Meaning Transfer Model,the involvement of spokesmen in negative news will have negative impact on brands.Due to the different levels of market economy development,foreign scholars have paid attention to the influence of negative publicity of spokesmen for a long time,while there are few researches on this phenomenon in China.Based on the literature review,we can see that researchers mainly focus on the impact of negative news on consumer attitudes,brand attitudes and purchase intention.Since Bauer introduced the concept of perceived risk into the field of marketing and opened up a new perspective to understand consumer behaviors,perceived risk has been an important variable in consumer behavior researches.For most studies of perceived risk,perceived risk is used as an independent variable to explore its relationship with consumer's brand or product choice.In this study,the perceived risk is used as a dependent variable.The influence of endorser's different negative news on consumers' perceived risk is investigated by experiments.The conclusions of the study show that for virtual brands,endorser's credibility has a total mediating effect on the influence of negative news of spokesperson on consumer's perception of risk.But for the well-known brands,the intermediary role does not exist.This brings enlightenments to advertisers that for brands that are new or unfamiliar to consumers,it can never be too careful when choosing a spokesperson for brands.What is more,different types of negative news have different impact on endorser's credibility.Compared to the negative news on spokesperson's ability,moral hazard type negative news on spokesperson has a more serious influence on his credibility,which hints the importance of paying more attention to the stability of a celebrity's morality when selecting him or her as brand endorser.Based on the recognized product(or service)classification(utilitarian/hedonic products)and Associative Learning Theory,this study also explores the role of product type and the influence of congruence between endorser and product on consumer's perception of risk when endorser is involved in negative publicity.Because of different kinds of limitations,the study inevitably has some shortcomings,but the ideas of this study are believed to have made some implications for subsequent researches.The research on the negative news of endorser is relatively mature in western countries.In contrast,attention to this issue in China is far from enough.The social and cultural differences between the East and west provide us a broad space continuing the discussion on this issue.For researchers who have wide academic vision and willing to stand on the characteristics of China's social culture and advertising,I think they can enjoy a harvest in further in-depth researches.