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Asian countries advertisements are linked more towards status, celebrity, beauty, modernity and also with the concept of 'face' (Schutte and Ciarlante, 1998). In India too, 60% of the advertisement expenditure consists of celebrity endorsements (Saxena, 2008) because celebrity endorser's credibility is more effective in generating attitudes towards advertisement and brand (Erdogan, 1999). With fewer studies comparing in consumer's attitude towards advertisement, brand and featuring celebrity endorsement, this study aims to investigate the impact of celebrity endorser's credibility (trustworthiness, attractiveness and expertise) on attitude towards the advertisement and brand. Questionnaires were administered on a sample of 272 respondents. Correlation analysis was significant, and after that multiple regressions was used to test the impact on brand attitude and attitude towards an advertisement. This study provides a different viewpoint on a much researched, still to be fully ushered celebrity source credibility, and explains how advertising practitioners identify the most appropriate sources for their clients' brands to be endorsed. The implications of the study-results as well as limitations and possible future research avenues are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Endorsers of products or brands or services take in many forms including identifiable people, unidentifiable (e.g., typical consumers), corporations or organization, and inanimate figures (e.g., cartoon characters) (Stout and Moon, 1990). Some of the comparative study of advertising expenditures, founded that service companies spend considerably less on advertising than do companies marketing goods (Herrington and Henley, 2000). Many of the factors is important in making an advertisements likeable is the use of positive characters, i.e., those perceived to be credible, memorable, intriguing, amusing and bright (Leather et al., 1994).
By definition, celebrity endorser defined as, "any individual who enjoys public recognition and who uses this recognition when they appear in the advertisement, in front of the consumers" (McCracken, 1989, p. 310) and who often have distinctive attributes such as attractiveness and trustworthiness (McCracken, 1989; and Silvera and Austad, 2004). Celebrities in advertisements have been increasing rapidly; as in 1975, only 15% of television advertising featured celebrities (Forkan, 1975), than in 1978, it went up to 20% (Anonymous, 1978), than in 2000, it was estimated that one out of four (25%) American commercials use celebrity endorsers (Shimp, 2000) and recently in 2006, it is stable at 25% (MarketWatch, 2006). About 60% of advertisement...