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Brian D. Till: Assistant Professor, Marketing Department, Saint Louis University, St Louis, Missouri, USA
Michael Busler: Assistant Professor of Business, Cabrini College, Longport, New Jersey, USA
Understanding the effectiveness of endorsers is an important issue for both practitioners and academics. Indeed, there have been a number of studies that have examined whether, and under what conditions, celebrities make appropriate endorsers for products (e.g. Agrawal and Kamakura, 1995; Atkin and Block, 1983; Freiden, 1984; Kamins, 1989; Kamins et al., 1989; Ohanian, 1991; Tripp et al., 1994). There have been endorser/product matches which seem to have a natural fit such as Michael Jordan for Nike, Elizabeth Taylor for White Diamonds perfume, Nolan Ryan for Advil, and Cindy Crawford for Revlon. Some endorser/product matches, on the other hand, seem to lack apparent fit such as Michael Jordan for WorldCom communications, Whitney Houston for AT&T, Angela Langsbury for Bufferin, and Kate Jackson for Lincoln-Mecury.
Despite well-publicized problems with celebrity endorsers, including O.J. Simpson's arraignment on murder charges, Mike Tyson's rape conviction, and Michael Jordan's gambling debt, the use of celebrity endorsements continues unabated. Indeed, around 20 percent of all commercials use some type of celebrity endorsement with the top ten endorsers earning $111 million (Bradley, 1996). Even less conventional use of celebrity endorsers such as dead celebrities resurrected from the past, e.g. Humphrey Bogart, and animated celebrities, e.g. Bugs Bunny, has become popular (Calcott and Lee, 1994; Goldman, 1994). This extensive investment in celebrity endorsers makes understanding how to improve their effectiveness imperative.
McCracken (1989) believes that some celebrity/product endorsements work better than others due to an inherent match or congruency between the celebrity and the product. McCracken (1989) cites examples of Bill Cosby for E.F. Hutton, George C. Scott for Renault, and John Houseman for McDonald's as examples of well-liked celebrities who were, nonetheless, mis-matched with their endorsed product. This idea of endorser/product fit or congruence has been labeled the "match-up hypothesis". The match-up hypothesis (e.g. Kamins, 1990) suggests that endorsers are more effective when there is a "fit" between the endorser and the endorsed product. Most of the empirical work on the match-up hypothesis has focused on the physical attractiveness of the endorser. The argument is that attractive celebrities are more effective endorsers for products which are...