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Introduction
Imagine that you are glancing through a lifestyle magazine featuring glamorous and flashy lifestyle pictures of a film celebrity. At this point, you happen to spot the same celebrity in an advertisement recommending that you buy the endorsed product and save money. Would you be convinced to buy the endorsed product?
Now, imagine that you are watching a movie and the celebrity is playing the role of a rich and affluent person in the movie. During the commercial break, you come across an advertisement with the same celebrity suggesting that you buy the expensive brand because you are worth it, even if it costs a lot. Would you buy the endorsed product?
Social psychological research suggests that you are less likely to buy the brand in the first case but could be influenced to make a purchase in the second one because of priming. Prior research defines priming as a short-term effect of unconscious memory activation that occurs when the perception of a stimulus influences responses to a subsequent, unrelated stimulus (De Luca and Botelho, 2020; Bargh and Chartrand, 1999). Consumer response is affected by even the most subtle characteristics associated with the celebrities they know from the media (Newman et al., 2011; Escalas and Bettman, 2017). From the kind of brands, the celebrities wear to the type of lifestyle they enjoy, priming manipulations activate a range of associations exerting significant influence on consumer behavior. The persuasive effects of celebrities are so deep rooted that merely watching, reading about or even thinking about the celebrity might result in setting-off behaviors associated with the celebrity (McCormick, 2016) and that such effects can occur beyond their conscious awareness (Wheeler and Petty, 2001; Knoll and Matthes, 2017). The effects of using celebrities as priming stimulus in predicting consumer behavior through activation of celebrity associations seem intuitive and even obvious, but so far this social category has not received attention in priming literature. Priming effects have been successfully demonstrated many times using different social groups as primes (Jamiszewski and Wyer, 2014; Cesario, 2014), yet this discussion has not truly examined the effect of using celebrity as a priming stimulus. Given the popularity of celebrity endorsements, an understanding of celebrity priming will provide a potentially powerful tool for...