Exploring the impacts of celebrities product advertisement facebook posts on customers' brand attitude - A case of Chi Pu advertising make-up products and female university students in Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

Considering the fact that Vietnam is a highly celebrity-obssessed society and Facebook is currently the number 1 social networking site in Vietnam with over 20 million daily users, using celebrities to promote products or service on Facebook has become a widely used marketing tool. Celebrities are usually paid by brands to write Facebook posts introducing or recommending a certain product or service to their fans/followers. However, this method has also received a lot of backlash from customers since they believe that they are being fooled or tricked by the celebrities and that these advertisement Facebook posts should be taken with a grain of salt. Meanwhile, brands have to pay very high amount of money just for one advertisement post from one celebrity. Therefore, understanding exactly the true nature and the impacts of using celebrities to promote on Facebook on customers’ attitude can help brands utilize this method more wisely and effectively. In this research, the case of Chi Pu’s advertisement posts on Facebook and female university students is the main focus. The conceptual framework and questionnaire are developed based on existing literature about celebrity endorsement and customers’ attitude toward Facebook advertisement. The independent factors: expertise, trustworthiness, similarity, likeability, attractiveness, credibility, informativeness and irritation were proposed to have influence on customers’ brand attitude through their attitude toward the advertisement. 252 finished questionnaires were valid for further analysis. According to the result, customers do not find advertisement Facebook posts by Chi Pu trustworthy but they think these posts are a convenient source of information, keeping them up-to-date with new products in the market. The advertisement posts are more effective and more welcomed by customers if they are written by a celebrity who they consider attractive, likeable and similar to them. Moreover, the posts also have to be perceived as credible and informative by customers to be deemed persuasive. As a result, when using this kind of Facebook advertising, brands need to clearly understand their target audience in order to figure out new and exciting ways to make their advertising messages more effective.