Research On The Influence Of Virtual Spokespersons On Consumers' Brand Attitude

Under the background of increasingly serious product homogenization in the market,flood of product advertising information and the maturity of consumers,consumption today has gradually entered the era of brand consumption and experience consumption.In order to increase brand awareness,many companies choose to invite celebrities or well-known figures on the Internet to publicize their products and brand.They hope to use the "halo effect" of celebrities to enhance their brand awareness and produce social repercussions to a certain extent.This practice can shorten the distance between enterprises and customers and win consumers’ trust in the brand.Eventually,it can increase the customer stickiness.However,the celebrities often encounter some problems when they endorse enterprises,such as a celebrity endorses multiple brands at the same time,the celebrity image does not match the brand image,and the celebrities themselves will also encounter various negative news.These problems can not only affect the brand reputation,but also have a great negative impact on the rest of the company’s business in serious cases.In this situation,companies begin to experiment with a "newer" form of endorsement----virtual spokesperson.With the unique advantages of a stable and controllable persona,low risk of ’loss of popularity’ and ’collapse of house’,no ageing,no need for holidays and corporate exclusivity,virtual spokespersons will be gradually applied in the consumer market.Based on the integration and review of existing literature,and the author’s own experience,this paper constructs a four-dimensional relationship model of "virtual spokesperson characteristics-brand trust-product type-brand attitude" from the theoretical and empirical levels.Then we put forward theoretical hypothesis to examine the influence mechanism of virtual spokesperson traits on brand attitude and the mediating effect of brand trust and the moderating effect of product type.In this study,the data are collected through a questionnaire and the empirical analysis are conducted by SPSS22.0 and AMOS24.0 statistical analysis software.The results show that: the likability,professionalism and relevance of virtual spokesperson have a significant positive effect on brand attitude and brand trust,brand trust also has a significant positive effect on brand attitude.That is,brand trust plays a party mediating role between virtual spokesperson characteristics and consumer brand attitude.The hedonism and practicality of the product play a moderating role in part of the relationship between virtual spokespersons and consumer’s brand attitude.That is,hedonic products only have a positive moderating effect in the effect of virtual spokesperson’s professionalism on brand attitude,physical products only have a positive moderating effect in the effect of virtual spokesperson likability and relevance on brand attitude.Finally,based on the results of empirical analysis,some certain reference suggestions are provided for enterprises when they develop market strategies for brands in practice.Besides,some useful insights are involved in selecting,designing and managing virtual spokespersons.At the end of this paper,the research shortcomings and the future directions are pointed out.