Impact of Celebrity Endorsement towards Brand Equity: With Special Reference to Carbonated Soft Drinks Brands.

Abstract

Nowadays, companies spend billions of dollars per year on celebrity endorsement to create the positive awareness for their products and brands. Most of carbonated soft drink brands tend to implement celebrity endorsement as an effective promotional tool .on the other hand the impact of the celebrity endorsement on brand equity varies from country to country according to previous research studies. But here the researcher could not found out any prior research conducted on the impact of celebrity endorsement towards the brand equity with special reference to carbonated soft drinks brands in Sri Lankan context. Thus the key purpose of this research to study the impact of celebrity endorsement towards the brand equity; with special reference to carbonated soft drink brands. In order to obtain a more reliable result, a quantitative research is carried out to investigate the topic. Descriptive statistics were used for analysis of demographic data. Correlation analysis was carried out to find out the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. According to the research findings, all the factors of celebrity endorsement (trustworthiness, expertise, attractiveness, product congruency, celebrity activation and celebrity multiplicity) have a liner relationship with brand equity .However; the level of impact of each factor is different from one another. Celebrity multiplicity and attractiveness of celebrity endorsement are most prominent factors which impact to build brand equity.