Impact of Celebrity Endorsement on Purchasing Habits

Impact of reputation Endorsement on Purchasing HabitsTo what extent does branding and celebrity stock warrant affect consumer purchasing habits? The three brands you shall be focusing on ar Benetton, Dove and Nike.However much one denies it, we ar all consumers and our buying habits be undoubtedly influenced by advertizing. In the last two decades, corporate merchandising strategies have fully embraced the notion of branding as the material intersection begins to replication a back seat and lifestyles, attitudes, set and experiences1 ar to be had in all good shops. Nike, Dove and Benetton have enjoyed massive success in harnessing the hard marketing device of cultural identification consumers associate products with a rounded way of life, identify with the image a product offers and succumb to the adverts insistence that the product is necessary. In considering the extent to which branding affects consumer purchasing habits, the fundamental question of whether advertising ca n change behaviour, or just modifies established attitudes is further complicated by a semiotic problem. Roland Barthes suggested that words and signs are interpreted differently by each individual, and that the interpretation is influenced by cultural understanding and conditioning. If so, then the many building complex signs involved in creating a brand must fit artfully into a system of linguistic understanding therefore begging the question, is culture impact by advertising or do established cultural boundaries govern advertising methods?The Nike brand has long represented rebellion and individual go away. The Just Do It tagline, accompanied by images of celebrated sportspersons, went on to promote heightened performance and success, a notion of striving to compete and set ahead. Despite controversies over their use of sweatshops, Nike escaped economic setbacks the sport shoes they made in the sweatshops were not, after all, 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 future will be the ones presented not as commodities but as concepts the brand as experience, as lifestyle2, and this is exactly the go about taken by Nike that has kept the family close to the top of a precise competitive market.In No logo, Klein puts in front the suggestion that consumers dont truly believe theres a huge 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, Puma and in order to compete in a consumer market they must enter the consumers mind and find a unique way to stay there. Of late, the notion of individuality, revolution and victory have accompanied Nikes renowned air of rebelliousness as with many modern campaigns, Nikes advertising targets consumers who are seeking 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 equivalent Nike a fully-enhanced mug of their culturally apt product, and provides an arena is which advertising can become increasingly more involved in peoples everyday lives.This invasion of brands into our homes sure enough 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 reflect by projecting these ideas and images back on the culture as extensions of their brands4, but the question still remains as to whether our established cultural understanding is created by or an obstruction to advertising. Remaining with the idea that a brand sells a lifestyle rather than a mere product, the recent change in direction with Doves (U nilever) endorsement of its skincare products is a particularly interesting event. It seems that Dove is to be congratulated on its Campaign for Real Beauty, which is a catalyst for activating Doves beauty philosophy and to forecast a wider, more refreshing view on beauty5, especially in a media climate that can still be criticised for its promotion of a very narrow definition of beauty. Whilst there is more harm than good in Doves campaign, it must not be forgotten that however moralistic a friendship may seem it still has profit as its central focus. To dismiss Dove as a product line that is using its consumers most small issues to its advantage would be too partial an investigation when the very essence 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 society.Do ve and Nike have both arrive atd 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 branded products plumb the depths of our basic and universal needs and desires their glossy images and suggestive language show us the way to be happy. Gain happiness through successful competition thanks to Nike, happiness brought on by the smooth skin and self-respect Dove can achieve whatever the route 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 identify and their use in advertising is a guarantee of the products quality. Celebrity is seen as the awar d 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 relate 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 branded along with clothes, cosmetics and essential hygiene products we form particular attitudes towards brands through various associations within life, through brand advertising, word of mouth, peer influence, habits7. Through al l 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 United Colors of Benetton so renowned for their controversial advertising campaign of birds covered in oil colour 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 think interpretations take exploitation a big step further. Benettons campaign tried to associate the name of the retailer with concern for social problems9, therefore invoking a cultural conscience in consumers and almost certainly having a strong influenc e on consumer purchasing habits. In an exposed global society, consumers are stolon 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 theme to that concern. The irony that we are spending the cash which is the source of our guilt surely does not escape us we conserve 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. Image Music Text. London Fontana 1984Corner, J and Pels, D (eds.) Media and the Restyling of Politics consumerism, celebrity, cynicism. London SAGE 2003Day, N. Advertising reading or Manipulation? Enslow Publications United Kingdom 1999Heath, R. The hidden 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