The Study On Congruence Between Endorser And Advertising Claim Strength

To use endorser is a common policy with long history for enterprise in marketing communication and many researchers have explored this phenomenon. Early endorser advertisements try to find the ideal spokesperson, so the related researches focus on measuring and selecting effective spokespersons. But later researches find that an endorser is effective for a product while is ineffective for another product. Researchers begin to realize that an endorser is effective only under certain conditions and for special product. Then, to look for the proper conditions for a specific endorser advertisement, i.e. the matching-up relationship between elements of a specific advertisement, becomes important direction in research of endorser advertisements. The earliest and the most centralized studies of congruence in endorser advertising embody as endorser matching up with advertising products, and its inherent basis is the gongruence between the endorser and the product or brand. And the gongruence can be further divided into image correlation and profession association. The matching relationship between endorser and target audience in literatures of matching advertisement is also a large proportion. But the existing researches also have obvious limitations, mainly in three areas:First, the researches only concern the issues of matching between spokespersons and product brand or the target audience of matching. But it ignores the important factor of advertising information. The issue about matching between advertising information and endorser is rarely involved.Second, the complementary mechanism of credibility in celebrity advertisement is rarely mentioned in researches of advertisement matching. There are a lot of researches talk about the relation between spokespersons'reliability (and known as honesty) and the credibility of advertising and the relation between advertising claims strength and the credibility of advertising. But the effect of different combinations of endorsers with different honesty and advertising claim with different strength on advertising credibility has not been studied. So this study proposes that endorser's reliability and advertising claim have complementary effect on advertising credibility. Third, the existed researches only emphasize on meaning consistency among spokespersons, brands, target consumers, such as consistency of image and symbol, or correlation between endorsers'experience knowledge and the consumption situation. They ignore the coordination in the mechanism and process of audience's processing information. Besides the meaning consistency, more attention should be concerned on the coordination in audience's processing different ad elements of advertisement, such as the endorser, advertising information, and so on.Lakoff (1975) found that women use words with low assurance such as "maybe," "probobely," more frequently than men, and proposed that this is the persuasion tactics of women to overcome the lack of authority and disadvantaged position in society. This shows that it is necessary for the communicators to adjust their tones and strength according to their features in the pocess of persuading. In the advertisement, the endorser with different features should use different commending language. For example, advocates with low reliability may need to use ad claim with low strongth. Therefore, it is of importance in practice and in theory to explore the best match-up model from the relationship between the advertising information and endorser, to be specific, the match-up model is congruence relation between different type of endorsers (charming star, experts, credible celebrities, common consumer) and advertising claim strength (single/two-sided information structure, high/low claim extremity) the best match between the model, in theory and in practice have important significance.Based on the above understanding, this study explore the matching issue of endorsers and advertising claim from the respective of complementary effect in credibility and coordination in the process of audience processing information. This study reviews related literatures at first. Based on reading and analyzing of a large number of literatures this study draws the framework of this thesis. Main research work includes the following three aspects:(1) The advertising effect and its influencing factors. Endorsers can affect the consumer's attention to the advertisement and information processing, and then to influence advertising attitude and brand attitude. The influencing factors of advertisement effect:endorser features, consumer features, products, brand features and the way of endorsement). Researches about matching issue in endorser advertisement mainly concentrated in match relationships between the endorser and product brand, matching relationship between the endorser and consumers. This study mainly analyzes the characteristics of an effective endorser and its effect on advertising credibility and information-processing depth.(2) The strength of advertising claims. This section analyzes concepts related to advertising claim strength (ACS); propose the definition and dimensions of ACS. This study reviews the effects of two-sided claim and low extremity claim on advertising information processing depth and the credibility of advertising. Low intensity claims can play a positive role in promoting advertisement attitude, brand attitude, product evaluation, and purchase intention. but there are several particular premises that need to meet:the source's credibility and communication motivation; the recipient's initial attitude, knowledge, experience and education background; product characteristics, price level and risk types; characteristics of advertising information. And advertising claim with low strength may reduce the attractiveness of the product because it stresses the shortcomings.(3) A model of optimal matching in endorser advertisement is developed based on the above literature reviews. This study constructs a model including two basic dimensions of the credibility complement (based primarily on attribution theory) and the coordination in information processing (based primarily on ELM model).The two-dimensional model integrates many factors that influence effect of advertising through the core moderator of advertisement information involvement.According to the theoretical models and hypotheses, the research designs a multiple factors experiment. After selecting celebrities and advertising claims, this research designs an endorser advertisement about MP3. The items of variables are designed based on the related researches, and the questionnaire is revised after pre-survey. A formal sample survey is conducted sampling College students in Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Kaifeng. The total number of questionnaire delivered is 800, and 568 valid questionnaires are received. In date processing, many methods are adopted to test the hypothesis, such as Cronbach'a reliability analysis, factor analysis, independent samples t-test, ANOVA, correlation analysis, and regression analysis and structural equation modeling.The valuable conclusions of this study mainly reflecte in the following five areas:(1) Reconstruct the dimensions of characteristics of effective endorser.In the existing research, endorser's of honesty, expertise and even attraction are classified as the credibility of spokespersons. Through the second-order factor analysis, this study found that endorser's honesty belong to the attitude category of credibility, separate categorized as a class; while expertise, attraction, and likeness, can be classified as category of the ability of credibility.(2) Endorser's reliability and advertising claim strength are complementary in credibility of advertising. When the Endorser is less honest, low-intensity advertising claim can significantly improve the credibility, i.e. the advertisement credibility from advertising claim with low strength can make up for the shortcomings of the endorser's insufficient reliability; While when the Endorser is very honest, the advertising claim with low strength can not significantly increase the credibility of advertising.(3) Advertising claim and endorser's reliability have interaction on product attitude. For the endorsers with less honesty, product attitudes of advertisements with different strength of advertising claim vary little. For the endorsers with high honesty, product attitudes in groups with high extremity in advertising claim (1) score higher than these in groups with low extremity in advertising claim (2). And the difference is significant.(4) The strength of advertising claim and endorser's reliability has interaction on purchase intentions. For the endorsers with less honesty, advertising claim with low strength can bring higher purchase intentions than advertising claim with high strength. For the endorsers with high honesty, advertising claim with high strength can bring higher purchase intentions than advertising claim with low strength.(5) The match-up effect between the strength of advertising claim and endorser's reliability is more significant in the female subjects than in male subjects.The relevant conclusions of this study have implications on Enterprise' selecting endorser, designing endorser advertisement, management image of spokesperson and the supervision and management of endorser advertisement, relevant conclusions can be applied to the field of corporate image transmission.