Celebrity and Testimonial Advertising of Lush and Darling Hair Products: The Anatomy of Influences and Buyer Behaviour

Abstract

Advertisements through the use of celebrity endorsement and testimonials have been useful in creating product awareness and perception in the minds of target customers in recent times, just as advertisers try to use the powers therein to leverage the image and characteristics of the celebrity to promote product brands. Today, testimonial of products and services in advertising has become an important and integral aspect of modern-day advertising. Amongst others, this study was designed to check the extent to which purchases of Lush and Darling hair products are based on celebrity and testimonial advertisements. Anchored on the frameworks of Reference Group Theory and The Source Credibility Theory, the study adopted the descriptive research design, while the survey research method was used in this study. Based on the statistics obtained from the National Population Commission, the population of the study is 257,589 (the total population of females in the Umuahia metropolis, making up Umuahia North and Umuahia South Local Government Area, based on the 2006 population Census figure. Accordingly, a sample of 384 was drawn using the SmartSurvey online sample size calculator. A questionnaire was used for collecting quantitative data from the sampled respondents. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Evidence from research data shows that celebrity endorser credibility and testifier have a positive effect on consumers’ advertisement recall and purchase intention for Lush and Darling hair products. Based on the findings, we concluded that it will be easy for product manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers of hair products to influence the purchasing behaviour of consumers by building consciousness and sustainable insights in the minds of their consumers using celebrity endorsement, more especially the celebrities that are trustworthy, attractive, and with the requisite expertise. To remain successful and competitive, it was suggested amongst others, that hair product marketers should aggressively implement the use of celebrity endorsement attributes in the advertisement of their products as a business strategy.