engleski

Croatian Consumers’ Reactions And Attitudes To Celebrity Endorsements

Although many Western marketing scholars and practitioners have devoted much of their research and studies to the celebrity endorsement strategy and to the roles it has in developing brands and building brand equity, no research in Croatia has yet focused on this phenomenon. Authors investigate the use of celebrity endorsers in the Croatian marketing practice. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to find out whether Croatian consumers recognize brands endorsed by Croatian celebrities and to explore and understand their attitudes to the importance of the characteristics of celebrity endorsers as a marketing practice employed for the purposes of brand management. The first part of the paper is devoted to a brief celebrity endorsement literature review while the second one describes the research and summarizes its results. Research results reveal a high rate of consumer recognition and match for selected Croatian celebrities and the brands they endorse. The authors have found that Croatian consumers perceive celebrity credibility and the celebrity and audience match to be the most important individual celebrity characteristics for successful brand endorsements while a particular celebrity’ s physical attractiveness is considered as the least important in rank order. Also, results indicate that the importance of the criteria for a successful celebrity endorsement to some extent depends on gender and further research is needed.

celebrity endorsement; brand management; Croatia

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