A Cross-National Study of the Effect of Negative Celebrity Endorser Information

ABSTRACT - Prior research has demonstrated that negative information about celebrity endorsers has been shown to decrease evaluative judgments of products with which the celebrity is engaged in an endorsement relationship. Building on this literature, the current study makes a cross-cultural comparison between Japan and the United States and also examines the effect that type of negative informationCeither personally damaging just to the celebrity (self-oriented negative information) or also to his friends and family (other-oriented)Chas on consumers’ evaluative judgments toward a new product. Collectivism in the Japanese culture is expected to produce less favorable product evaluations when advertising associates a new product with celebrities who have negative information affecting others than for Americans, who are posited to view self-inflicted embarrassment and other-oriented damage equally. In a rather unexpected twist on attribution-theory expectations, our results revealed that when the experimental product was associated with a celebrity who had engaged in untoward behavior that had negative implications only for him (i.e., self-oriented negative information), endorsed product evaluations were significantly more positive for both Japanese and American respondents in comparison to product evaluations produced by the no negative information control group and the other-oriented negative information group.

Citation:

R. Bruce Money, Terence A. Shimp, and Tomoaki Sakano (2003) ,"A Cross-National Study of the Effect of Negative Celebrity Endorser Information", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 6, eds. Darach Turley and Stephen Brown, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 217.

European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 6, 2003      Page 217

A CROSS-NATIONAL STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF NEGATIVE CELEBRITY ENDORSER INFORMATION

R. Bruce Money, University of South Carolina, USA

Terence A. Shimp, University of South Carolina, USA

Tomoaki Sakano, Waseda University, Japan

ABSTRACT -

Prior research has demonstrated that negative information about celebrity endorsers has been shown to decrease evaluative judgments of products with which the celebrity is engaged in an endorsement relationship. Building on this literature, the current study makes a cross-cultural comparison between Japan and the United States and also examines the effect that type of negative informationCeither personally damaging just to the celebrity (self-oriented negative information) or also to his friends and family (other-oriented)Chas on consumers’ evaluative judgments toward a new product. Collectivism in the Japanese culture is expected to produce less favorable product evaluations when advertising associates a new product with celebrities who have negative information affecting others than for Americans, who are posited to view self-inflicted embarrassment and other-oriented damage equally. In a rather unexpected twist on attribution-theory expectations, our results revealed that when the experimental product was associated with a celebrity who had engaged in untoward behavior that had negative implications only for him (i.e., self-oriented negative information), endorsed product evaluations were significantly more positive for both Japanese and American respondents in comparison to product evaluations produced by the no negative information control group and the other-oriented negative information group.

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