The relationships among self-congruity, celebrity endorser's credibility and purchase intention in Ho Chi Minh e-commerce industry
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among celebrity endorsers’ source credibility, self-congruity concept and consumer purchase intention in the Vietnam electronic commerce context. This research surveyed 223 Ho Chi Minh citizens who once saw an advertisement featuring celebrity endorsers of an electronic commerce company.
Testing the proposed structural model by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the results confirm that there is an initiator, self-congruity, which contributes to the consumer decision making process to purchase products; beside the major role of the source credibility including attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise, which was highly rated in some previous studies. Self-congruity and its relationship with source credibility do have considerable encouragement to consumer purchase intention, which were relatively overlooked.
Practically speaking, the results suggest the companies related to electronic commerce that apply endorser strategies to their marketing campaigns, importantly, should employ celebrities who have ability to embody and effectively transfer company brand image to their target customers.
Keywords: Advertising, Celebrity Endorsement, Consumer Attitude, Electronic Commerce, Key Opinion Leaders, Purchase Intention, Self-congruity, SEM, Source Credibility, Vietnam
Paper type: Research paper