The Effect of Celebrity Endorsement Towards Consumer Purchase Intention

Chapter I

Introduction

• Background of Study

 Tight business competition is now demanding and forcing a company to have advantages such as superior product quality, excellent in the services offered, and so forth. The company's​​ benefits must be well managed so that consumers can know and understand the advantages of a company's products or services. Advertising is one of the right ways for companies to introduce their products or services. Advertising is considered very effective​​ in increasing consumer awareness of the existence of a product, service or brand.

 Kasali (2010) defines advertising as a message offering a public product through media. Meanwhile, according to Morisan M.A (2015: 18), advertising is one of the best known​​ and most talked-about forms of promotion; this relates to broad reach. From the understanding, according to Kasali, it can be interpreted that advertising is the primary source of information that can influence the public or consumers in making purchasing​​ decisions. This advertising activity is one way most companies certainly do it because advertising has a​​ broad reach, persuading, and decisive factor in influencing consumer tastes and intentions. Advertising is an effective and efficient element in building the image of a product or service used to increase consumer purchasing decision-making (Kurniawan and Kunto, 2014).

 In advertising a product, many media types can be done, for example, print and electronic media. One of the advertising media that is often used by companies today is through the internet. The development of technology is very rapid; mainly, the internet provides many companies' contributions to advertising their products. With the internet and the many social media that have sprung up like Facebook and Instagram, it has become easier for companies to promote and introduce their products to the general public. The use of the internet as an advertising medium is carried out considering that company advertisements must be visible to the public with a wide area and reach the public quickly, inexpensive, and attractive. Several other companies also use artists to support and introduce their products through social networks like Instagram. Celebrity endorsement is a common advertising strategy.

 Marketing and advertising are two inseparable things to convey a persuasive message (Ohana, 1990). In introducing a product or​​ service often, companies use artists to help advertise their products, which we often hear with the term celebrity endorsement.​​ Celebrity endorsement is considered an effective way for companies to introduce their products or services to the public, hopefully increasing consumer purchase intentions and leading to actual purchases (Kurniawan and Kunto, 2014).​​ 

 Royan (2014) states that celebrities' use in advertising can help shape two things, namely forming a brand personality or increasing sales volume in the short term. Celebrities are concrete manifestations of various images or associations that consumers think of a brand. Celebrity endorsements are someone famous or someone who has the visibility, credibility, Attractiveness, and strength in communicating messages in a product to attract consumers' attention, increasing the purpose of buying consumers for the advertised products​​ (Wijaya, 2015). If a brand's word is associated with a beautiful and young brand, then celebrities must represent all of these associations. For a marketer, brand personality is critical because, like humans, a character makes a product's brand look different from other brands. While competitors will easily imitate features and prices, personality is more difficult to replicate.

 The role of celebrities in advertising a product is very influential if a star has credibility supported by Expertise,​​ Trustworthiness, and liking (Royan, 2014). In marketing, celebrities' testimonials become a benchmark for consumers in determining what products they will buy (Ohanian, 1990). The selection of stars in conveying messages about products is expected to impact brand awareness and recognition. According to Hardiman (2016: 38), an endorser is interpreted as the person chosen to represent the image of a product, usually from among potential consumer figures who have prominent characters and strong aa product's image endorsements that have promising careers, high popularity, and have a lot of fans will be straightforward in increasing consumer awareness of endorsed products. The suitability of the image and popularity of celebrities must be following the brand that​​ is being carried. For example, a girl group artist from South Korea, BlackPink, which has recently been in the spotlight, has a strong and energetic character that has made several companies interested in using them as iconic products of companies such as​​ Pepsi, Samsung, Adidas. Because BlackPink has many fans, consumers will quickly experience the products of the companies they are working with, especially fans. Due to the high popularity of​​ celebrities, their collaborative products are highly anticipated, especially fans. A celebrity usually does a lot of advertisements that can change consumers' perceptions of stars as a product or brand endorser.

 Companies should be more focused and selective in deciding celebrities who will become endorsers of their products or brands. Companies must be able to review who they are, the size of the product range, the image they want to build related to the product, the compatibility between the product image and the endorser must be done carefully by the company to determine the maximum and appropriate results. Gupta et al. (2015) state that one of the models used to evaluate celebrities as endorsers is to measure endorsers' credibility by using three dimensions, namely Attractiveness, Expertise, and Trustworthiness. Attractiveness is related to the physical attractiveness or celebrity characters that stand out, such as personality, lifestyle, attitudes, etc. Expertise is associated with the experience, knowledge, or skills possessed by a celebrity or endorser for the products it offers. At the same time, Trustworthiness is related to honesty, integrity, responsibility. It can be trusted by celebrities (the endorser) as a source.

 Understanding the importance of the relationship between celebrities and products to increase​​ consumer purchase intentions of their brands or products triggers company management to use appropriate stars and under the company's products or brands as endorsers. One of the celebrity endorsements of the widely used homeland is Karin Novilda, with the​​ social media account Instagram @awkarin. The beauty and Attractiveness of Karin Novilda would not doubt that this is what makes many companies, especially on social media Instagram, use and offer to collaborate with Karin Novilda. Of course, Karin's popularity is expected to attract the public's interest to buy company products advertised through Instagram social media.