Abstract: The advertising literature indicates that celebrity endorsement can facilitate brand awareness and reinforce purchase intention. If the image of a specific celebrity fits well with that brand, the effect of endorsement can be strengthened through meaning transfer or emotional attachment. However, little is known about how deeply the celebrities should be involved in the advertising. While celebrity endorsement has been shown to be able to influence the perception and behavior of customers, to what extent should celebrities be involved in the advertising, and how would this affect the relationship between the brand and customers? Would the celebrity involvement be contingent on product categories and contexts? The authors tried to answer these questions by conducting a 2 (involvement: high and low) × 2 (product category: hedonic and utility) × 2 (need for cognition: high and low) experiment. In the pretest, 57 subjects were recruited from a prestigious university in China. Later on, 140 students from the two universities were divided into four subgroups to participate in the experiment, and 120 responses were used for analysis. The ANOVA results indicated that involvement could significantly affect both customer attitudes toward a brand and their perception of its brand culture. Higher celebrity involvement in the advertising could positively improve customers’ attitude and their evaluation of the brand’s underlying cultural values, and this effect existed for both hedonic and utility products. In addition, need for cognition played a moderating role in the relation between involvement and customer attitude.
This study enriches the literature on celebrity endorsement by introducing the concept “celebrity involvement” in advertising research. The findings show that, for both hedonic and utility products, high levels of celebrity involvement in the advertising lead to positive impacts on customer attitude and perception of brand culture. Therefore, if a firm hopes to make full use of celebrity endorsement, it will be insufficient to use only his/her image or name in the advertising. Instead, the firm should carry out well-organized marketing campaigns to cultivate the deeper meanings and values of this celebrity so as to build up closer relation between customers and the brand.

Key words: celebrity endorsement, involvement, need for cognition, hedonic product, utility product, brand culture