Introduction
The contemporary business landscape continues to face an upsurge of stiff competition from the existing and the incoming players. The fiercely intense competition is even higher in business segments whose survival depend on product differentiation and innovativeness like the high fashion segment of the garment industry. On that note, in this segment, merely having a good product is inadequate to sustain the competition and keep the clients returning. Advertisement has, thus, taken center stage with most brands and companies showing great innovativeness in their modes of advertisement. It is on such backdrop that celebrity endorsement has become a major advertisement technique. For the current generation (people between the age of 18 to 25 years), Television and pop stars, business tycoons, and even athletes have becomes chief arbiters of public opinion, morality and fashion sense, therefore, making them influential characters on the buying behavior. Besides, people admire and easily attach to celebrities as icons. Celebrities range from universal icons to local reality TV stars who, in some cases, climb the ladder of success overnight through appearing on shows with, for instance, a unique dress or indomitable fashion sense. Companies, given their unhinged quest for differentiation and competitive advantage, have embarked on exploiting the celebrity concept and their power to in their advertisement. The layman’s explanation for this trend is that famous people are conspicuous, thus, apart from attracting consumer interest, will increase brand awareness tenfold. Other experts and professionals have postulated that a combination of an intricate and effective advertising strategy, and celebrity endorsement drastically increases the brand value, thus, stimulating purchase by the consumers especially those allied to the celebrity either as fans, relatives, or mere admirers.
The popularity of this concept and the supposed benefits have seen the crescendo of celebrities endorsing products or brands gradually but steadily surge over the years. Marketers and advertisers overtly recognize and harness the influential power of celebrities to manipulate the decisions of their buyers. The move anchors on a hypothesis advancing the belief that favorable attitude towards a brand or product comes from its association with an influential personality. Across the globe, celebrities have been believed to have special powers for bestowing the special attributes upon a brand even if the brand initially lacked the attributes. Even as the craze is not expected to change in the foreseeable future, the advertisers have ignored the potential dangers associated with this mode of advertising. The wave of endorsements and the subsequent profits have barred the advertisers from seeing the obvious threats like loss of credibility that are synonymous with celebrity marketing. While that is not the focus of this discussion, it is worth a consideration. Meanwhile, the lingering questions remain whether celebrity endorsement really have a psychological impact on the consumers’ psychology and has the ability to change their brand preferences. Also, it remains to be seen how celebrity endorsement influences the buying decision of consumers, and mediate between the brand and the common buyer. The questions notwithstanding, the following discussion is set in the backdrop of absolute certainty that celebrity endorsement greatly influences the consumer behavior in the high fashion industry.
Theoretical Underpinning of Celebrity endorsements
Celebrity endorsement refers to a campaign or advertisement technique that brands use, and involves famous people, otherwise known as celebrities. The celebrities leverage their fame and high social regards to promote a product or a brand (Domiguez, Herrero & Salmones 2013). Advertisers apply this concept purely on hypothetical grounds hoping that the positive regards and the high social status of the celebrities will trickle down to the brand, thus, increase its value and awareness. The practice has currently become synonymous with the high fashion industry turns celebrities into fundraisers of sorts. To this end, it is noteworthy that celebrity endorsement is not a preserve of the modern era. The practice dates back to the early 19th century. Clothing or garment, perfumes and cosmetics manufacturers and distributors heavily rely on well-known people to market their products and create a sustainable competitive advantage. Celebrity endorsement vis-à-vis brand awareness is largely associated with the concept of celebrity reach. Belch and Belch (2012) define celebrity reach as the population of consumers that have heard or seen the message from the brand at least once as a result of the use of a celebrity. The authors project that the use of a celebrity by a fashion company is an indication that they are attempting to reach the largest assortment of prospective buyers or consumers of their product. In the age of social media, fans and admirers of the celebrities connect through the social media networks. Thus, the magnitude of celebrity reach can be gauged through the number of people who follow them on twitter, for instance, or the number of likes they have accrued on their Facebook fan pages. The reach has been linked with the celebrities’ ability to turn their network into potential consumers of the specific product they represent.
High-fashion brands higher celebrities to endorse their products or the brand on two grounds: celebrities are reference groups, and style icons. Solomon (2009) defines aspirational reference groups as comprising people unknown to others in reality but are still admired and considered successful by the public for the past or current actions, for instance, actors. The reference group phenomenon has contributed in making brands hire famous people to endorse or vouch for their products in advertising campaigns with a view to increasing the visibility of the brands and products. From the standpoint of high-fashion industry, celebrities are adorable emblems of style and fashion (Solomon 2009). The author defines style as a unique yet risky statement that an individual makes and extends to other individuals, for instance, through wearing a particular piece of cloth or perfume. They originate from the consumers’ adaptation to the inventions or creative products that the designers generate which meet the needs of the consumers. Celebrity endorsement of a style makes it traverse the globe both virtually and in reality as most people imitate the sense of style of the particular celebrity either in the short or long-term. Influential people play a pivotal role in shaping the styles that will succeed in the high-fashion industry.