Abstract:
Celebrity brand endorsement has been considered as a modern marketing
communication tool which uses by the companies with an aim of getting customer
attraction and stimulates their buying behavior and purchase intension. Many
organizations are spending billions of money on celebrity brand endorsement to make
the brand awareness among the customers. This is because consumers in today’s’
glamorous world are willing to consume products, services and ideas which their
favorite celebrities recommend. Keells Super is one of the most dynamic supermarket
chains in Sri Lanka and is a subsidiary of John Keells Group. Keells Super has been in
operation for more than 20 years, and focuses on offering the freshest produce, wide
range of quality products, fabulous savings and a delightful shopping experience,
reaching out to a large cross section of Sri Lankan consumers. Sri Lanka’s iconic
cricketer, Kumar Sangakkara and his wife, Yehali, had joined hands with Keells Super,
to spread Keells Supers’ message of offering a total ‘Super Happy’ shopping
experience. Many research evidences proved that celebrity brand endorsements help
organizations to stimulate the consumer’s buying behavior and influences their
attitudes towards the brand. As such it is very rationale to understand whether the
celebrity endorsement used by Keells Super is effective relevant and congruent with
their brand. Therefore, this present study mainly makes attempts to analyses the
research problem; How celebrity brand endorsement of Keells Super influence the
consumer buying behavior? Main intention of this study is to understand the impact of
celebrity endorsement on consumer buying behavior towards Keells Super by
elaborating the existing theories and then collect primary data to test the validity of
these theories. Therefore; this study uses a deductive approach. A survey research
strategy has been used to collect data for the research because it allows researcher to
collect large number of standardized quantitative data from a sizable sample. A
quantitative method was applied where for data collection structured questionnaires
were used. 129 questionnaires were issued and collected data were analyzed using
SPSS v.19.0 Descriptive analysis was used for data analysis. As per the correlation
analysis all the four attributes of the celebrity positively and significantly correlated
with consumer buying behavior. Among them celebrity expertise, trustworthiness and
congruence recorded strongly positive correlation with consumer buying behavior
whereas physical attractiveness of the celebrity and consumer buying behavior reflect
a moderately positive relationship. As per the multiple regression results, it is found
that celebrity expertise, celebrity congruence and celebrity trustworthiness as the34
significant attributes that influence consumer buying behavior. Attractiveness found no
significant influence on consumer buying behavior. Among all the attributes celebrity
expertise has the greater association between consumer buying behavior. Thus, based
on the findings, it is recommended that Keells Super should give the priority for the
credibility (trustworthiness and expertise) followed by congruence of their brand
ambassador in designing the future advertisements and commercials and not much
bother about the physical appearance.
