The impact of death on consumer responses to celebrity endorser misbehavior

Benjamin Boeuf

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Abstract: A well-established stream of research on celebrity misbehavior suggests that negative information may have an adverse effect on an endorsed brand because of its association with a celebrity considered as blameworthy. However, the present research calls into question the generalizability of these results to fatal misbehaviors (i.e., misbehaviors that lead to the celebrity's death). Indeed, after death, a celebrity may gain spiritual meanings, and consumers may find it more difficult to blame a sacred individual. As such, the current article investigates the impact of a celebrity's death on blame attribution and consumer attitudes in the context of celebrity endorser misbehavior. The results of three experiments uncover that death favors a partial blame attribution transfer from the celebrity endorser to the brand, but only when the misbehavior implies a product related to the brand. In addition, the findings reveal a positive effect of death through celebrity sacredness on brand attitude.

Keywords: blame attribution; brand attitude; celebrity misbehavior; cognitive dissonance; death; endorsement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Published in Psychology and Marketing, 2017, 34 (10), pp.917-930. ⟨10.1002/mar.21032⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02000437

DOI: 10.1002/mar.21032

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