Impact Of Celebrities And Body Image In Advertising

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

M.U.B.S

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-The impact of Celebrities and Body Image in Advertising-

-Research Method-

Prepared by:

Ramy Ghaida

Directed to:

Miss Latifa Attieh

Fall semester 2013

Chapter one - Introduction

The life of human has turned to be business where people are used as products in order to increase the sale of a company. Therefore, Attractive women were selected to be a part of advertisement’s campaigns. The marketers have used the body images to attract customers and to advertise for several kinds of products. Moreover, women who are introducing to the media industry are selected to be attractive and sexy in order to persuade girls to look after their bodies and do plastic surgery. Women Plastic surgery can be done with various body parts such as breasts, eyelids, eye brows, face, chin, hair, hips, and belly. "Some women reported that their partners had encouraged them to lose weight and that they had been sufficiently upset, when their partners commented negatively on their weight or shape, to lead them to change their eating habits" (Grogan, 2007). Plastic surgery has witnessed an acceptable demanding by people who wants to share in showing their bodies on advertisements other than celebrities.

Businesses develop an advertising strategy that sends messages about the products and services in order to persuade the customers to purchase them. The advertising strategy reflects other business objectives such as the market share growth since it determines the character of the company’s public image. Developing a highly effective advertising campaign is also possible for small business as well as for the large businesses (Kolter, 2007).

Advertising can be a very expensive promotional tool if the marketer failed in indicating the objectives and goals of the advertisement. The advertising process is necessary for the business because it create awareness about the product which build a brand loyalty and maintain its reputation at the existing level. This advertising aims at changing the customer attitudes by reminding them about the product benefits which lead to a convenience market share by gaining competitive advantages. Moreover, the advertising increases the activities of the distribution channel. Advertising can make the job more effective by gaining the attention from potential customers and motivate them to purchase the product.

Celebrity advertising is the use of a popular person (Singer, Actor, Athletic…) admired by a lot of fans for the purpose of selling a product or service. Celebrity advertising can be accomplished through celebrity endorsements. Celebrity advertising without the celebrity’s consent results in products that are referred to as merchandise which feature the celebrity’s photo on a product (Boorstin, 2004). The advertiser selects the celebrity who is known for something like fitness, hair, etc. in order to advertise for a specific product since the celebrity endorsements imply that the celebrity uses the product or service preferring it above others of its kind.

The celebrity’s role is the most clear in convincing the user surrounding environments, however, people nowadays realize that celebrities are being paid a lot of money for endorsements and this knowledge makes them pessimistic about celebrity endorsements (Melanson, 2010).

1.1 Purpose of the study

This study aims at discussing the role that body image and celebrities play in advertising and its effect on customer awareness and purchase decision. More specifically, the project will examine the importance of selecting celebrities for advertising the products. Thus, the research question is as follows:

RQ: How to select the right celebrity and body image in advertising to match the awareness of consumers?

1.2 Methodology

This study is divided into five chapters; the first chapter provides an overview about the topic, in addition to the organization structure of the study and the research question. The second chapter talks Celebrity endorsement, advantages of a celebrity endorsing a brand, and disadvantages of a celebrity endorsing a brand. The third chapter is a methodology through a well developed questionnaire distributed over a selected sample from the Lebanese market. The objective of the study is to examine the impact of celebrities on the advertised product. The forth chapter is a data analysis based on the previous data investigation, while the fifth chapter is a conclusion and recommendation.

Chapter Two – Literature Review

The business should be aware about the most attractive character who acts the advertising role in order to deliver the right message. For an example, if the target consumers are children, the character must be familiar to them such as a cartoon character, where as if the product is for health care and fitness, the character must a pretty woman or a healthy man since people are attracted to body image.

2.1 Advertising methods:

The advertising campaign consists of five stages (Armstrong, 2009). Stage one starts by setting advertising objectives which is a specific communication task to be achieved with a specific target audience during a specified period of time. it is used to inform about a new product, to persuade customers to switch to a different brand, and to remind buyers where to find a product. Stage two is the set of the advertising budget; this means that marketers should take in consideration the potential sales impact while setting the budget of the advertisement campaign. For the sake of advertising new products, large advertising budget required to help build awareness and to encourage consumers to trial the product, as well as products that is highly differentiated due to the emphasizing in the points of difference. It is not an easy work for the business to predict the advertising budget since they can’t indicate the strength and weakness of the advertisement and its impact on the customers.

Stage three is the determination of key advertising messages since the clarity of the advertising message is often more important than the amount spent since it impact on the audience. A successful advertising message should have the following characteristics: meaningful, distinctive: and believable.

Stage four is the decision which advertising media to use because the advertising campaign may use one or more of the advertising media. The key factors in choosing the right media include: Reach, it indicates the target customers who will be exposed to the advertising. Frequency, it is about the times that the target customer will be exposed to the advertising message. Media Impact, indicate the media that most have impact based on the target customers. The advertising media is also related to the timing of the campaign since some products are particularly suited to seasonal campaigns on television whereas for other products, a regular advertising campaign throughout the year in media such as newspapers and specialist magazines is more appropriate.

Stage five is the evaluation of the results of the advertising campaign which should focus on two key areas: the communication effects to examine if the intended message being communicated effectively and to the intended audience. The Sales Effects which is the measurement if the advertising campaign has generated the intended sales growth.

There are two opposite philosophies for advertising; therefore the marketer can chose one of them when preparing the advertising strategy. The first is called the push method, it means that the advertiser targets retail establishments in order to establish a market presence, while the second option is called the pull method that targets consumers, who are expected to ask retailers for the product and pull it through the channel of distribution.

Push method: The aim of it this method is to convince retailers, salespersons, or dealers to carry and promote the advertiser's product. This relationship is achieved by offering facilitations to help the retailer sell the product, and developing trade promotions.

Pull method: The aim of this method is to convince the target consumer to try, purchase, and ultimately repurchase the product.

The determination of the advertising budget is related to the importance of advertising and the resources available to the business. The advertising budget determines the marketing objective and the way to advertise. Whereas, if resources are available, the advertising strategy can be developed to meet predetermined marketing objectives.

The following approaches are the most common methods of developing an effective budget: percentage of future or past sales, competitive approach, market share, all available funds, and the task or objective approach.

Product placement advertisements are promotional ads placed by marketers using real commercial products and services in media, where the presence of a particular brand is the result of an economic exchange. To place a product somewhere in a movie, the company wanting to place their product there would have to pay for the product placement. The story of the movie attract different types of audience in a way that they imitate the actors, therefore advertising for a product will be very effective.

2.2 Body image in Advertising:

The beauty of females is misleading; since it is not fair to be measured by body image only. The behavior of a women also involve in her attractiveness. A beautiful woman who behaves in a negative way cannot be considered as a sexy lady since she will never reach self-satisfaction. No matter what the way for having a sexy body and attractive body image was, the results are mostly negative and unhealthy. Therefore, women must be aware the pretty body images are not important if they must be related to sexuality since the only benefited party are the companies, marketers, and fashion industries. One can argue that schools and parents must increase the awareness between women in order to persuade them to love their real body images and improve it in the healthy ways since they are the most to be attracted to celebrities in advertising (Baranksi, and Batt, 2003).

Advertising is the sensitive strategy that attracts the eyes of the consumer in a way to control his behavior. The advertising process includes analyzing the market, making the consumer aware of the product, choosing the media, and selecting the body image. The efficient selection of the media will be by mixing the different media formats that will clarify the massage. Place the ads on billboards, selecting the most popular TV show, the cover of a well known magazine, and other famous media centers. Teenagers are attracted to the women body image while trying to understand the message of the ad; therefore the best idea is to offer the role of acting the ad’s scenario to a beautiful, sexy, attractive woman. Women are considered to be active target consumers to the whole business industry. So women behavior is the most important point in the consumer behavior, due to the strong relation between woman and shopping. This may be the reason that led the business companies to use the body image in their ads to increase their selling. This argument shows that even the pretty women who are involved in adverting industry are not satisfied since they knew that their body image does not transfer their real image (Ferrante, Haynes, and Kingsley, 1988).

"Women exposed sexually in ads, but they are also presented in very limited roles. They never seem to be shown in business roles, work settings, or any position involving authority." (Baranksi, and Batt, 2003). They are shown as more feminine and sexual. Ads do not only show women, since men also are shown in many different ways. Most often they are shown in more dominant roles. They carry characteristics such as being cool, confident, independent, powerful, or even being rebellious. Women are shown as being excessively thin, whereas men are shown as being muscular and athletic, which notes for the power. However, these ads can reduce men just as much as they do women. It is definitely not as common for the spotlight to be put on men in terms of sexual ads.

2.3 Celebrity Advertising:

Celebrity advertising is the use of a public figure’s likeness for the purpose of selling a product or service. Celebrity advertising can be accomplished through celebrity endorsements, whereby the celebrity consents for his or her likeness to be used in advertisements for a certain brand. Celebrity advertising without the celebrity’s consent results in products that are referred to as plagiarize merchandise which feature the celebrity’s photo or likeness on a product. Celebrity endorsements imply that the celebrity uses the product or service that he or she is endorsing, and prefers it above others of its kind. For this reason, brands will often target celebrities who appear to reflect effects the advertisement is promising. For example, celebrities who are already fit are often approached to represent fitness and weight loss products, and stars that are known for their hair are approached to endorse certain brands of shampoo. In some cases, the celebrity might not even use the product or service at all (Jones, 1999).

A known brand is a differentiated product and helps in identifying the product and making it stand out due to its name, design, style, symbol, color combination, or usually a mix of all these. The effect of celebrity endorsement on the overall brand is related to the act of strong brand images or values: experience of use which depends on familiarity and proven reliability, user associations which means that brands acquire images of prestige from the type of people who are seen using them, belief in efficiency which shown the ranking from consumer associations, brand appearance that provide ideas about quality and affects preferences, and manufacturer’s name & reputation which represents the brand name.

Research has shown that effective celebrities must be assessed against five Essential attributes, usually referred to as ' TEARS ' model (Shimp, 2003):

Trustworthiness consists of honesty, integrity, and believability of an endorser. It reflects the extent to which audience members trust and believe what celebrities say regarding the advertised brand.

Expertise consists of knowledge, experience, and skills of an endorser regarding the advertised brand.

Attractiveness is related to all characteristics that make an endorser attractive to audience members such as physical look, personality properties, and attractive lifestyle.

Respect refers to the quality of being admired or esteemed due to endorser's overall accomplishments.

Similarity represents the extent to which an endorser matches target audience on characteristics related to the endorsement relationship (sex, age, lifestyle … etc.).

Alsmadi, (2006) have stated that the decision to select celebrity endorsers in television advertising is very important due to cost consideration. Marketers and advertising makers use variety of select on criteria such as celebrity/audience match up, celebrity/brand match up, celebrity credibility.

Based on the attraction of people to the body image, Female celebrities have gained popularity. Consumers generally have a more positive attitude towards attractive people. The effectiveness of a message depends on the similarity, familiarity and liking of the endorser, this ensure why physically attractive endorsers are more successful at changing beliefs.

2.4 Advantages of a Celebrity Endorsing a Brand:

The celebrity endorsements provide the brand a lot of advantages:

Establishment of Credibility: Approval of a brand by a star fosters a sense of trust for that brand among the target audience especially on the advertising of new products.

Ensured Attention: Celebrities ensure attention of the target group by breaking the clutter of advertisements and making the ad and the brand more noticeable.

PR Coverage: is another reason for using celebrities. Since managers perceive celebrities as topical to create high PR coverage.

Higher Degree of Recall: People tend to commensurate the personalities of the celebrity with the brand thereby increasing the recall value.

Associative Benefit: A celebrity’s preference for a brand gives out a persuasive message because the celebrity is benefiting from the brand, the consumer will also benefit.

Psychographic Connect: Celebrities are loved and adored by their fans and advertisers use stars to capitalize on these feelings to sway the fans towards their brand.

Demographic Connect: Different stars appeal differently to various demographic segments (age, gender, class, geography etc.).

Mass Appeal: Some stars have a universal appeal and therefore they prove to be a good option to generate interest among the masses (global advertising).

Celebrities in advertising build brand awareness since they build it much more quickly than traditional types of advertising. Brand awareness measures the percentage of people who are familiar with a particular brand. Small businesses spend lots of money and time for exposure to incrementally increase brand awareness among consumers. The use of a local celebrity can do much to enhance consumers' awareness and understanding of what a small business offers.

Some small companies use celebrities in advertising to position their brands. Product positioning is placing a company's products in the best possible light in the minds of a target group.

The use of a celebrity in an advertisement may also help to breathe life into a failing brand. For example, a small soap manufacturer might think about dropping a brand or product, especially if production and overhead costs are leaving little or no profit. However, the use of a celebrity to tout the benefits of the brand could help create new interest and excitement in consumers (Suttle, 2009).

2.5 Disadvantages of a Celebrity Endorsing a Brand:

The celebrity approach has a few serious risks such as the reputation of the celebrity may derogate after he/she has endorsed the product since the behavior of the celebrity may influence on the brand image. Moreover, the vampire effect pertains to the issue of a celebrity overshadowing the brand. On the other hand, the celebrity may lose his or her popularity due to some lapse in professional performances. Multi brand endorsements by the same celebrity would lead to overexposure which means that the celebrity is endorsed in too many advertisements. An important risk for celebrities in advertising is when celebrities endorsing one brand and using another (competitor) since it decrease the trust of the customers. The risks are due to the mismatch between the celebrity and the image of the brand because each celebrity portrays a broad range of meanings, involving a specific personality and lifestyle.

2.6 Previous studies on celebrities in advertising:

After a consumer has processed information, there is a need to evaluate it. The consumers will need to determine how believable the information is and how relevant it is to their individual situation in life and to their behavior as consumers. This evaluation phase poses significant problems for advertisers. Most consumers tend to discount the information in advertising because they understand that the purpose of the advertising is to persuade.

"Celebrities are the driving force in social media, creating the lion's share of content that attracts consumers and keeps them coming back," said Arnie Gullov-Singh, CEO, Ad.ly. "Facebook is no exception. By expanding into the world's most popular social network, we're making it easy for Marketers to tap the power of celebrity influence at scale."

The match up theory was born out of the observation that using an attractive model is not universally effective for all products that is advertising online. They tend to work better for products that are beauty related (Baker and Churchill, 1977).

Kahle and Homer (1985) discussed the hypothesis that implies the physical attractiveness of a celebrity endorser may only enhance both product and ad-based evaluations if the product's characteristics "match-up" with the image conveyed by the celebrity. The "match-up" hypothesis would predict a positive impact upon product and advertisement evaluations. However, if there is incongruence between the product and celebrity attractiveness, evaluations will decline.

Empirically, it was found that for an attractiveness-related product, use of a physically attractive celebrity (Tom Selleck) was observed to significantly enhance measures of spokesperson credibility and attitude toward an ad, relative to use of a physically unattractive celebrity (Telly Savalas). From a theoretical perspective, Assael (1984) suggests that celebrities are effective endorsers because of their symbolic aspiration reference group association. Atkin and Block (1983) present two reasons why a famous endorser may be influential. First, celebrity spokespeople are traditionally viewed as being highly dynamic, with both attractive and likeable qualities. In addition, their fame is thought to attract attention to the product or brand. Caballero and Pride (1984) examined whether the sex and attractiveness of a sales representative used as a model in a direct-mail advertisement, findings revealed that the use of a highly-attractive female sales representative resulted in a significantly higher purchase rate than did the representatives who were rated respectively as low or medium in attractiveness.

In this study, the theory of Kahle and Homer was adopted since it shows both the positive and the negative impacts. If the celebrity image match-up with the advertised product, then the results will be positive. If it doesn’t match the results will be negative.

2.7 Research Hypotheses:

H2: Using celebrities in advertising influence positively on consumer buying decision.

H3: Using celebrities has a greater impact than non – celebrity on consumer buying decision.