The Impact of Celebrity Credibility, and Corporate reputation on their Intention to Purchase smart phone “HONOR” Brand among Chinese Customers

Abstract

Celebrity endorsement is an effective strategy for marketers to communicate with the consumers, that not only increase product exposure, but also to enhance consumers’ corporate reputation of the brand and increase sale volume in China. The study aims to examine the impact of celebrity endorsements on corporate reputation and Chinese consumers’ intention to buy, with HONOR products. Two hundred Chinese respondents participated in the questionnaire and data was analyzed using Multiple Regression analysis at the statistical significance at .05. Chinese customers age 20-35 years were selected using convenience sampling methods. The findings revealed that (1) All source characteristics including attractiveness, expertise, and trustworthiness of advertising recognition are accountable for 51% of HONOR’ s corporate reputation. When examining the influence of each dimension, expertise and trustworthiness are significant positive predictors of corporate reputation but attractiveness is not significant predictor. Trustworthiness has the greatest positive effect on a customer's perception of reputation, followed by expertise, but attractiveness has a negative effect on corporate reputation. (2) All source characteristics including attractiveness, expertise, and trustworthiness of advertising recognition are accountable for 34.6% of the customer’ purchase intention. In addition, expertise is not a significant predictor but trustworthiness and attractiveness are significant positive predictors of customer’s purchase decision. (3) all source characteristics including emotional appeal, product and service, workplace environment, social and environmental responsibility, financial performance of reputation recognition are accountable for 39.5% of the customer’ purchase intention , which is considered to be quite high (R2= .395*, p > .05). When examining the power of each dimension, the findings found that only corporate social responsibility and financial performance had a positive effect on customers’ purchase intention of HONOR.