Impact of Celebrity Endorsement on Purchasing Habits

Impact of Celebrity Endorsement on purchasing HabitsTo what extent does stigmatizeing and celebrity warrantee affect consumer purchasing habits? The triple sends you sh both be focusing on are Benetton, go down and Nike.However such(prenominal) one denies it, we are all consumers and our purchase habits are undoubtedly influenced by advertising. In the last two decades, corporate selling strategies have in full embraced the effect of piting as the material carrefour begins to take a back seat and lifestyles, attitudes, determine and experiences1 are to be had in all good shops. Nike, genus Columba and Benetton have enjoyed massive success in harnessing the plastered marketing device of cultural identification consumers associate products with a travel way of life, identify with the image a product offers and succumb to the adverts wardrobe that the product is necessary. In considering the extent to which brandmarking affects consumer purchasing habits, the fundam ental principal of whether advertising ordure exchange behaviour, or just modifies established attitudes is move on complicated by a semiotic problem. Roland Barthes suggested that words and signs are interpret differently by each individual, and that the interpretation is influenced by cultural intellectual and conditioning. If so, then the many complex signs involved in creating a brand moldiness fit artfully into a system of linguistic consciousness therefore begging the question, is civilisation affected by advertising or do established cultural boundaries govern advertising systems?The Nike brand has pine represented rebellion and individual lead. The Just Do It tagline, accompanied by images of celebrated larkspersons, went on to promote heightened performance and success, a nonion of melodic phrase to compete and win. Despite controversies over their use of sweatshops, Nike escaped economic setbacks the sport space they made in the sweatshops were not, after al l, necessarily their defining image. Nike is a swoosh tick, performance athletes, fitness, health. After a brand-threat in the early 1990s, the marketing industry came to the following conclusion the products that will flourish in the upcoming will be the ones presented not as commodities save as concepts the brand as experience, as lifestyle2, and this is exactly the approach taken by Nike that has unploughed the company close to the top of a in truth competitive market.In No Logo, Klein puts forward the suggestion that consumers dont truly believe theres a immense difference between products, which is why brands must establish emotional ties3. Nikes shoes are worn by athletes who perform amongst other athletes wearing Reebok, Adidas, panther and in order to compete in a consumer market they must enter the consumers mind and find a unique way to layover there. Of late, the notion of individuality, revolution and victory have accompanied Nikes renowned argument of rebellious ness as with many modern campaigns, Nikes advertising targets consumers who are want to find individuality and respect in these sports goods. To further endorse the notion of the winning Nike lifestyle, Nikes website is exciting, flashy and aggressive the advent of the internet has offered companies like Nike a fully-enhanced endorsement of their culturally apt product, and provides an arena is which advertising can deform increasingly more involved in peoples everyday lives.This invasion of brands into our homes sure increases the opportunity for a product to become a necessity in consumers lives. Companies branding is about thirstily soaking up cultural ideas and iconography that their brands could formulate by projecting these ideas and images back on the culture as extensions of their brands4, hardly the question still remains as to whether our established cultural soul is created by or an obstruction to advertising. Remaining with the idea that a brand sells a lifestyle r ather than a mere product, the recent change in direction with Doves (Unilever) endorsement of its skincare products is a particularly en multifariousnessle event. It seems that Dove is to be congratulated on its extend for Real Beauty, which is a accelerator for activating Doves beauty philosophy and to announce a wider, more refreshed view on beauty5, especially in a media climate that can still be criticised for its promotion of a very narrow description of beauty. Whilst there is more harm than good in Doves campaign, it must not be forgotten that however moralistic a company whitethorn seem it still has profit as its central focus. To dismiss Dove as a product line that is using its consumers most afflictive issues to its advantage would be too partial an investigation when the very aroma of a brand is in finding the most permanent method to win a consumers affections. Similarly to Nike, the Dove brand stands for the individual will to be using their product will enhance your identity, help in your definition of a self that will fit in to the norms of community.Dove and Nike have both achieved the corporate transcendence 6 as outlined by Klein in which a company transcends its product and becomes a free-standing meaning. The meanings implied in advertisements for mark products plumb the depths of our basic and universal extremitys and desires their glossy images and suggestive quarrel show us the way to be happy. Gain happiness by dint of successful competition thanks to Nike, happiness brought on by the static skin and self-respect Dove can achieve whatever the channel to happiness, a brand denies all barriers. The glossy adverts serve to influence our buying behaviour by offering an essentially better life.Celebrity endorsement of brands is part of the very construct of the brand itself. A product need only be associated with David Beckham and its representative of him celebrities are established constructs with which consumers already id entify and their use in advertising is a guarantee of the products quality. Celebrity is seen as the award for talent (be that physical or intellectual), so celebrity endorsement of products is certain to have an effect on consumer attitudes as the connection between the celebrity and a lifestyle already exist. In this sense, celebrities are respected members of society whose opinions are trusted whilst a brand will fail if the product is particularly poor, even a mediocre brand will inevitably succeed if the right kind of celebrity (like Nikes collection of experts the famous athletes) to allow their lifestyle to be representative of a product.It is becoming clear that brands are invading society to the point where it is virtually impossible to tell the different between culture and branding. Sports are sponsored, entertainment is sponsored, the home is mark along with clothes, cosmetics and essential hygienics products we form particular attitudes towards brands through various a ssociations within life, through brand advertising, word of mouth, peer influence, habits7. Through all this, brands bombard us by positioning themselves within our lifes situations until they are ingrained as our cultural associations to activities and emotions. It comes to the point where, if brands have become not products but ideas, attitudes, values and experiences, why cant they be culture too?8 It is no longer possible to confidently say whether, in a branded world, consumers are capable of making autonomous purchasing choices.The case comes to joined Colors of Benetton so renowned for their controversial advertising campaign of birds cover in oil and new born babies. It was suggested that Doves Campaign for Real Beauty is impoverished by the companys profit-driven morals, but Benettons shocking images and their intended interpretations take exploitation a adult step further. Benettons campaign tried to associate the name of the retail merchant with concern for social probl ems9, therefore invoking a cultural conscience in consumers and almost certainly having a strong influence on consumer purchasing habits. In an exposed global society, consumers are beginning to deal with a guilty conscience about the imbalance of wealth and aid in the world and brands like Nike, Dove and Benetton offer a individual-centred quick-fix solution to that concern. The derision that we are spending the cash which is the source of our guilt surely does not escape us we continue to search for brands that epitomise our sense of self, our morals, our personalities. Advertisements are specifically designed to win us over on these very basic grounds and, whilst it may seem a paradox, branding will continue to effect consumer habits so long as the consumer exists in an consumer-led society.ReferencesBarthes, R. ascertain Music Text. capital of the United Kingdom Fontana 1984Corner, J and Pels, D (eds.) Media and the Restyling of Politics consumerism, celebrity, cynicism. cap ital of the United Kingdom sagacious 2003Day, N. ad Information or Manipulation? Enslow Publications United Kingdom 1999Heath, R. The privy power of adveritisng how low involvement processing influences the way we choose brands. Henley-on-Thames Admap Publications 2001Jones, J.P. What s in a name? Advertising and the concept of brands. Armonk, N.Y M.E Sharpe 2003Klein, N. No Logo. London Harper Collins 2000Myers, G. Adworlds brands, media, audiences. London Arnold 1998Myers, G. Words in Ads. London Arnold 1994Tanaka, K. Advertising Language a pragmatic approach to advertising in Britain and Japan. London Routledge 1994Vestergaard, T. and Schreder, K. The Language of Advertising. Oxford Blackwell 1986www.benetton.com 04/05/05www.dove.com 04/05/05www.nike.com 04/05/041Footnotes1 No Logo p.302 No Logo p.213 as above p.204 as above p.295 www.dove.com6 No Logo p.217 Whats in a Name? p.2358 No Logo p.309 Words in Ads p.10