Solanki Sandip P, Symbiosis International University, Pune
Sheth Bhagyashree H, Gujarat Technological University, Ahmedabad
Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF
Abstract:
Purpose: This study is mainly done in order to find out the relative effectiveness of celebrity-endorsed advertisements verses animated-character-endorsed advertisements on the purchase intention of children. Further, the study is done for the same product and for the low involvement food product. The study finds that for low-involvement food product category, the impact of animated spokes characters and cartoon characters is more than that of celebrity. Regarding the purchase intention of children, it was found that the impact of animated and cartoon characters in advertisements is more than that of celebrities in advertisements especially for low-involvement food product category.
Keywords: Celebrity endorsed, Animated character, Children, Purchase intention, Television, Print, Advertisements.
- Introduction:
The use of celebrities to promote a product is not a new method. It is logical to try and boost popularity of one’s product by linking it to someone who is already popular and who will undoubtedly receive a lot of attention. Celebrity endorsing has reportedly been around since the 1920’s, first using radio and later in the 1950’s using television as media tool. Hollywood movie stars were often used for commercials promoting products ranging from pies to cigarettes. Besides movie stars, sport stars were also used in commercials.
A celebrity endorser is “an individual who enjoys public recognition and who uses this recognition on behalf of a consumer good by appearing with it in an advertisement” (McCracken, 1989, page 310). Friedman and Friedman state that “a celebrity endorser is an individual who is known to the public for his or her achievement in areas others than of the product class endorsed” (Friedman & Friedman, 1979, page 63). A typical family has at least two television sets and a consumer is exposed to around 1000 ads per day. Moreover, people forget 80% of the information in just 24 hours. All these things lead to high amount of clutter. To defeat the clutter of all the brands one of the most prominent solutions is ‘Celebrity Endorsement’ for the brand (Dr. Vipul Vyas, 2012, page 212). The situation is even worse for the low involvement product categories in which differentiation is very little. This is because in low involvement categories consumers neither have the time nor the desire to comprehensively investigate and assess all the offerings available to them. As a result in such categories consumers often make purchase decisions on the basis of in store factors and extrinsic cues like endorsement of product by well known person, innovative packaging etc.
Today every child is trying to emulate the characters from which they get inspired and pushing themselves to be like them in every manner. If one follows a routine of a child, one can clearly observe that a child wakes up in the morning wearing Disney character clothes, roll out of bed sheet having some licensed character on it, his toothbrush and everything covered in his favourite cartoon characters and even in his breakfast he eats up cereals packed in some cute cartoon box. Moreover, in today’s world kids have more independence in making their decisions as compared to the earlier generations and they can influence their parents to buy what they like. “Pester power” defined as the ability of the children to influence their parents to buy something which they may not buy in some other conditions. (Asim Tanvir & Muhammad Rehan Arif, 2012, page 653). So to take advantage of this increased pester power of children marketers use well known cartoon characters for endorsing their products especially targeted or related to kids or children because they know how cartoon characters play a very important role in affecting the day-to-day life of children.
Moreover, nowadays marketers tend to use animated characters to promote the products that are targeted to children. So, nowadays both celebrity endorsed advertisements and animated character endorsed advertisements are widely used for promoting and boosting the popularity of the products. Also, the study includes both television as well as print advertisements for both celebrity endorsement & animated character endorsement. The reasons for using both television & print advertisements are as under. A typical super-market in India displays more than 12000 brands, an Indian family has at least two television sets and a consumer is exposed to around 1000 ads per day. Likewise, there are more than 530 television channels in India broadcasting over 3.5 million television commercials each year in India. The media-explosion can thus be easily demonstrated (Dr. Vipul Vyas, 2012, page 212). Since, Television and Print are being considered as those popular media through which one can reach large number of people at the same time, marketers usually tend to choose these media for their advertisements so as to aware more number of people about their products…Full Text PDF