Match or Mismatch? The Influence of Brand-Celebrity Endorser Personality Congruity on Brand Evaluation: Fashion Brand as the Example

Aims: This study examined the Match-up Hypothesis [1] in celebrity endorsement from attractiveness and expertise to personality aspect and investigate the impact of brand personality and celebrity personality congruity on brand and endorsement evaluation.

Study Design: Quantitative and experimental design.

Place and Duration of Study: School of Management, University of Bath, between May 2008 and September 2009.

Methodology: This research included 195 university students (93 male, 102 female; age range 18-27 years) in School of Management, University of Bath. Two independent variables were manipulated, brand preference and personality congruity, only one of personality congruity or incongruity was manipulated in the main experiment. Two manipulated situations were designed separately into two online research questionnaires with the same fashion brand “Levi’s” as a stimuli. Moreover, real celebrities were also included into experiment as brand-congruent (Match) and brand –incongruent (Mismatch) celebrity-endorsements treatments. Two questionnaires were identical in both format and structure, except different celebrities endorsements were displayed to manipulate celebrity/brand personality congruity vs. incongruity situations. The entire experiment took around 10 minutes to complete.

Results: The experimental result indicated that personality congruity and incongruity were observed to have influence on evaluations toward the endorsement, while brand preference has direct impact on brand-related evaluations. Moreover, there was no interaction between brand preference and personality congruity. Attitude towards the brand (AB) and Purchase intention (PI) were measured as dependent variables.

Conclusion: This study used the real fashion brand and celebrities as experimental stimulus based personality salience. This study extended the product/endorser Match-up hypothesis from attractiveness and expertise aspects to a more intrinsic personality traits matching prospect.