Explaining the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in advertising using AIDA model: The case study of COCA-COLA and young consumers

Abstract

Nowadays, the majority of business firms use celebrity endorsement in advertising to publicize their products to the target markets, because this is one of the most popular marketing strategies which can motivate consumers to pay attention to the advertisement and the product. However, using celebrity endorsement can sometimes lead to negative effects on the firm‟s image and reputation. Therefore, measuring the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in advertising is an interesting topic of most marketers in different industries.

Besides, among the consumer response models, which provide a deep understanding of the effects of communications to achieve marketing goals, AIDA model is one of the most popular used models to measure the advertising effectiveness (Gharibi, 2008). The AIDA model is an action-oriented promotion model (Fontaine, 2011), including four stages: attention, interest, desire and action. The celebrity endorsement in advertising can be assessed by how strong it can impact on consumers‟ attention, interest, desire and action.

Many previous researches, which are published up to date, on the celebrity endorsement and advertising effectiveness only focus on the US market. Therefore, the main concern of this study is the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in advertising in Vietnam market. By using AIDA model, this thesis is conducted to explain the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in advertising through the case study of Coca-Cola and young consumers. To be more detailed, this case places emphasis on Phuong Vy singer - the brand ambassador of Coca-Cola for nearly five years.

After three months on research, the result of this study has turned out that Coca-Cola‟s advertisements using Phuong Vy singer as endorser cannot impact on consumers‟ attention and interest strongly enough to motivate their desire and action towards this soft-drink product. This means these advertisements of Coca-Cola Vietnam are not sufficiently effective. The findings of this thesis, which are mostly based on statistical evidences and consumers‟ perception from in-depth interviews, will suggest some solutions to Vietnamese businesses in general and to Coca-Cola Company in particular about how to use the celebrity endorsement in advertising effectively.