The basis for the effectiveness of celebrity-endorsed advertising can be linked to Kelman’s processes of social influence as discussed by Friedman and Friedman. According to Kelman, there are three processes of social influence, which result in an individual adopting the attitude advocated by the communicator:
Compliance, Identification & Internalization
These latter two processes are particularly applicable to celebrity-endorsed advertising.
Compliance infers that another individual or group of individuals influences an individual cause he or she hopes to achieve a favourable reaction from this other group. This process of social influence is not directly applicable to celebrity advertising because there is little, if any, interaction between the celebrity and the consumer.
Identification applies to the situation wherein the individuals emulate the attitudes or behaviour of another person or group, simply because they aspire to be like that person or group. This process is the basis for referent power. It was found that celebrities are more commonly liked than a typical consumer spokesperson.
Internalization as a process of social influence is said to occur when individuals adopt the attitude or behaviour of another person because that behaviour is viewed as honest and sincere and is congruent with their value system. The effectiveness of celebrity advertising traditionally has not been strongly linked to this process, as a celebrity’s reason for promoting a product can just as easily be attributed by the consumer to an external motive (i.e., payment of fee) as to an internal motive (i.e., the celebrity’s true belief in the value and benefit of the product). An important issue of concern relates to the development of a strategy for use in Celebrity Advertising, which benefits from the dramatic impact of dual support of both the identification and internalization processes of social influence. Celebrities are well-liked, but the techniques that can be used to enhance their credibility as spokespeople, and therefore, tie-in more closely with the internalization process needs to be looked into.
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