Impact of Celebrity Endorsement on Brand Switching Behavior of Customers: With Special Reference to Sri Lankan Mobile Telecommunication Industry in Puttlam District

Abstract

The mobile telecommunications business has evolved into a vital aspect of today's fast-paced, technologically advanced world. As the market matures, mobile communication services become more similar, resulting in increased rivalry for new customer acquisition and retention in order to maintain and improve market share and profitability. Therefore, all industry players in the telecommunication industry trying to retaining the existing customers and attract new customers to increase their customer base, to achieve these, aims marketers are spending a huge sum of money on celebrity endorsement. As a result, the main purpose of this research is to look at the impact of celebrity endorsement on brand switching behavior in the Puttlam district's mobile telecommunications business. This research has one independent variable and four dimensions namely celebrity endorsement, trustworthiness, expertise, attractiveness, and respect. 150 customers who are using mobile telecommunication services were selected from Puttlam district as the sample for the study. As this study was quantitative in nature, structured questionnaire was employed to gather primary data. The Descriptive statistics, Correlation analysis, and Regression analysis were employed to analyses the data and testing hypotheses. The findings revealed that there is a moderate of to celebrity endorsement, specially, trustworthiness, expertise, attractiveness, on brand switching behavior of the customers’ mobile telecommunication industry. However, findings further noted that there is no significant impact on expertise of the endorser for switching behavior of the customer in mobile telecommunication industry in the present research context.