Print advertising: Celebrity presenters

John R. Rossiter and Ale Smidts

Journal of Business Research, 2012, vol. 65, issue 6, 874-879

Abstract: This study validates Rossiter and Percy's (1987) hook theory of presenter characteristics, for celebrity presenters. Firstly, by employing a product-alone control group, the study demonstrates that some celebrity-product pairings have a good fit and can persuade whereas others have no effect or represent such an obviously poor fit that they dissuade consumers from buying the product. Secondly, the study suggests that good fit, and thus persuasion, for celebrity presenters, depends on the audience immediately perceiving that the celebrity is an expert user of the product (for all products) and is a positive role model (for high-risk products). On the other hand, the study reveals that failure of any of four of the celebrity's characteristics causes dissuasion by celebrity presenters; these failures include lack of high visibility (i.e., not widely well-known), perceived inexpertness as a user of the product (a strong negative hook that is probably the reason for the poor fit perception), lack of trust (though this is a weak dissuasive factor for celebrities) and, paradoxically, the celebrity being too likable (for low-risk products). Thirdly, the hook(s) conceptualization of presenter characteristics is superior to the conventional linear conceptualization in that a hook-scored regression model accounted for the same amount of variance in persuasion–dissuasion as did the linear model (adjusted R2s of 41% vs. 43%) despite the hook model's handicap of at least one-third lower possible R2 due to trichotomization of 7-point ratings into positive, neutral, and negative hooks.

Keywords: Celebrity presenter characteristics; Hook versus linear conceptualization of characteristics; Persuasion and dissuasion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296311000129
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:65:y:2012:i:6:p:874-879

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.01.010

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().