How Effective Are Celebrity Endorsements in Changing UK Consumer Attitudes about Various Clothing Brands - Research Paper Example

 How Effective Are Celebrity Endorsements in Changing UK Consumer Attitudes about Various Clothing Brands? EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Promotion, as one of the most important elements of the marketing mix for fashion clothing sales, identifies the possibility that celebrity endorsements can change the buying intentions and behaviours of UK consumers; and consumers abroad. The fashion clothing industry is a multi-billion pound industry in all areas of consumer fashions from the lower-end merchandise to the more upscale, designer brand apparel options. However, with the growing recognition that consumer incomes and confidence levels are down due to current global economic conditions, promotion seems to be an even larger objective of today’s fashion designers and manufacturers. Many companies utilise celebrities as a means of building higher consumer interest in fashion brands and also to build a more positive brand reputation with specific target consumer audiences. The extent to which celebrity presence in fashion brand promotions actually instills changes in consumer attitudes has not been appropriately answered by existing research on the topic. This research study proposal intends to utilise qualitative and quantitative research methodology in order to measure real-time consumer reactions to celebrity-inclusive and non-inclusive fashion brand promotions to determine whether celebrity involvement and presence effectively alters consumer behaviour in different UK consumer demographics. CONTEXTUALISATION Fashion marketing is a complicated business process, much like any other industry, which involves everyone in the industry from manufacturing workers to the retail buyer. Clothing is produced, promoted using a variety of mediums, and ultimately delivered to the final buying segments. Once in the retail environment, the buyer instructs salespersons about new clothing merchandise, develops employee talents in selling and sales techniques, and generally has flexibility in deciding on specific fashions and designs (Careers, 2005). All of these activities contribute to the process of ensuring that sales targets are met for both the manufacturer and the retail organisation which carries the fashion brands. This proposed study will focus on the promotional aspects of fashion marketing. In the UK alone, consumers spent £46.2 billion on clothing in 2006 (Brand Strategy, 2008). Across the whole of Europe, consumers spent 311.6 billion euros on clothing and fashion, representing a massively profitable industry internationally. However, there is evidence that many of today’s more upscale fashion brands are experiencing drops in sales revenue due to limited consumer spending created by the current global economic slowdown. Coach Inc. cited slowdowns in retail buying in 2006 as well as Ralph Lauren which continues to provide lower profit forecasting (Rohwedder, 2007). In fashion marketing, when profitability is reduced due to external conditions, heavier emphasis on promotion might be the key to ensuring higher sales revenue to make one brand more attractive than a competing brand. Many companies use promotional strategies involving celebrities, as there is evidence that consumer attitudes about a brand can be coerced by celebrity endorsement. Well-known celebrities such as Kate Moss, Jennifer Lopez, and Donald trump have been involved in fashion promotion (Marketing Week, 2007). Even high-dollar designers use celebrities, like Armani, who has pursued talents such as Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, Robert DeNiro, and Warren Beatty, in order to build a promotional brand image of elegance and success (Iacobucci, 2001). Consumer behaviours seem to be adaptable to brand identification through a variety of factors. Even a recent study identified that shoppers greatly changed their perceptions of how they viewed merchandise quality based on the layout and design of the mall shopping environment (Michon, Yu, Smith and Chebat, 2008). This should be of considerable concern to today’s fashion designers and marketers since both celebrity appeal and the internal retail environment can dramatically change the brand perspective of a consumer. Bennett (2000) offers that consumer fashion trends, which essentially involves the proposed life cycle of a particular brand or garment variety, are measured based on style, quality and appeal in the eyes of the consumer. The key word is appeal, which is strongly linked to the consumer in terms of whether or not a particular brand or garment will be a fashion hit or a consumer-perceived disaster. To further illustrate trend changes, Hatch and Schultz (2008) offer that “green is the new black”, which would tend to illustrate that consumers, in today’s marketplace, prefer green, but how long will this life cycle last? Will the item fly off of retail or boutique shelves or will it be clearanced and tucked away as a promotional failure and forgotten? “Fashion trends are moving at lightning speed today” (Binkley, 2007, p.D1). This would seem to represent a significant business risk in terms of ensuring higher sales volume and higher profitability. It is vital to this proposed study to identify the different behavioural and attitude-related tendencies in relation to consumer purchasing of fashion brands. There are clearly psychological and sociological issues which impact the buying decision-making of consumers, and with many top designers feeling the pinch of a erratic economy, understanding how best to reach consumers through promotion would seem to be a paramount business objective to remain profitable and hold connection to their prized consumer segments. For example, Russian consumers, according to one recent research study, care largely about clothing quality and little about brand name (Karpova, Nelson-Hodges and Tullar, 2007). When promoting to this international audience, the company or retail facility would likely position the fashion merchandise in terms of quality and would not focus on building strong connection with brands through celebrity promotion. In the UK, however, celebrity endorsements greatly impact the buying behaviours of consumers, which is supported by Child (2008) who offers that celebrity weddings have proved profitable for various gown-makers and wedding fashion designers. Understanding the theoretical impact of celebrity presence in brand promotions is of utmost importance to marketing professionals and to high-ticket fashion designers as well. Some more upscale clothing designers have their own businesses or cater to individual clients on appointment basis whilst others rely on retail environments, boutiques or specialty stores to market their products (Farr, 2002). Regardless of the sales environment, understanding how to create brand connection with designers’ most appropriate target markets is achieved by knowing what consumers really value in terms of clothing purchases. If celebrity endorsements maintain the ability to radically-alter buying intentions and behaviours, designers in a multitude of selling environments would benefit from new research data regarding whether to consider celebrity or reject the notion when creating new promotional materials. Celebrity endorsements are certainly not inexpensive marketing strategies, therefore this study impacts designers and manufacturers from a budgetary perspective. It has been established that many well known brands have utilised a conglomerate of celebrity endorsements in order to build consumer connection and improve the brand image to gain consumer support and alter buying behaviours. What existing literature on the subject of fashion marketing fails to answer is to what extent celebrity endorsements can impact fashion buying behaviour. Are celebrity endorsements as effective in generating consumer interest as suggested by the contemporary efforts of current fashion designers and retailers? Finding just the right celebrity who fits with the image and values of a particular fashion brand is likely a difficult pursuit, however before this perfect celebrity individual can be identified, the brand should understand what the consumer is really looking for when trying to identify with different clothing brands. If sales are down, but celebrity endorsements are up in today’s society, there could be a disconnect between the business perception of consumer views on celebrity and the tangible impact of celebrity promotion on buying behaviour. One valuable outcome of this proposed study is the ability to create a portrait of the UK consumer, from a mass-market viewpoint, related to celebrity and the impact of celebrity endorsement on buying behaviour. This study will measure consumer reaction to brand and celebrity images to see if specific demographics make similar brand selections. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY One researcher offers the results of a recent study which identified that celebrity presence in branded apparel advertisements generated higher purchase intentions and overall positive attitude toward the brands and the advertisements shown (Renton, 2006). However, Prasad and Girdhar (2005) disagree and state that even if a brand has a celebrity whose image and values are congruent with the brand’s values, there is no guarantee that it can alter consumer behaviour or purchasing intentions. There are clearly mixed viewpoints about the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements in altering buying behaviour and there does not seem to be an effective model of brand-building using celebrity endorsement. This proposed study maintains several objectives: Identify specific market segments which will be most likely to make fashion purchases based on celebrity presence. To determine the extent to which consumer buying intentions have changed due to exposure to celebrity images. Assess the level to which brands receive acknowledgement of credibility or importance linked to celebrity involvement It is the aim of this study to determine whether celebrity representation can actually build a more positive image for a brand. It is hypothesised that consumers will react more favourably to brands which display celebrity images over those fashion brands which are promoted without the use of celebrity involvement. RESEARCH METHOD In order to fulfill the objectives of this proposed study, a significant sample group must be recruited, consisting of widely-different demographics in the UK. The researcher will identify an environment which receives a considerable volume of foot traffic, such as a local shopping district or a recreation area. At random, consumers will be invited to view seven different well-known fashion brand advertisements. Prior to offering consumer opinion regarding the promotional materials, respondents will be asked to give their age, career and economic position, and gender. Four of the advertisements for different clothing brands will contain the image of a well-known, international celebrity. Three of the advertisements will not contain a celebrity image. The celebrities chosen for each brand advertisement will be selected randomly, with different genders and celebrity status. The purpose is not to identify whether specific celebrities have the right blend of personality and values for a particular brand, but only to identify whether the presence of celebrity creates more interest for different brands. This research study will take both a qualitative and quantitative approach. The qualitative portion of this study will utilise observational research and a consumer questionnaire as the most appropriate research instruments for this study. Observational research is vital to this study as it allows for measurement of non-verbal cues from participants as they assess the different fashion advertisements. The consumer questionnaire will consist of 8-10 questions regarding purchasing intentions and overall view of the brand after assessing the research instruments. The quantitative portion of this study will consist of a consumer survey, with multi-tick, structured responses, to determine the level to which consumers view celebrity endorsements generically. The survey will be distributed to interested participants prior to viewing the promotional materials. In order to determine whether any correlations exist in brand identification with specific consumer segments, a considerable sample population will need to be recruited. It is targeted to achieve responses from 75 to 150 random UK consumers in order to achieve a broad spectrum of consumer attitudes related to celebrity. Any consumer-related observations made throughout the process of administering the study will be noted in an appropriate research journal for later analysis. In order to improve the study’s reliability, none of the respondents will be informed as to the nature of the study so that they are not led into responding in a method which they believe might be favourable to the researcher. Recruited participants will only be informed that they are taking part in an educational research study on fashion clothing. If the recruited sample were to understand that celebrities were the focal point of the research, they would likely draw on personal biases against specific celebrities when offering responses. When exposing the participants to the promotional materials, they will be consistently mixed in different presentational combinations for each new participant to further inject an element of randomness to the study’s purpose. The specific fashion brands which will be chosen for the study will all consist of different design and price origin. Some of the promotional materials containing a celebrity will be mid-range fashion brands as well as more upscale clothing advertisements. The rationale for this randomness is because this proposed study does not seek to identify whether celebrity status impacts buying decision-making but to identify whether familiar celebrity faces, simply being present in promotional materials, provides more positive responses in brand-related emotion and intention to purchase. Additionally, none of the celebrities chosen for inclusion into different branded fashion promotions will maintain negative social backgrounds such as recent criminal behaviour or outlandish, inappropriate celebrity status to avoid corrupting the responses. All selected celebrities will have a very generalised positive public, international image. Using a comparative analysis, both the qualitative data and the quantitative data will be correlated to different demographic responses to determine whether specific attitudes toward the brand ranked similar in certain UK consumer segments. For instance, if the buying segment aged 25-34 identifies celebrity endorsements as paramount to their buying intentions and the majority of this group did not favour advertisements with no celebrity image, this will identify potential marketing implications related to the importance of celebrity presence in brand-building for this group. In order to make these comparisons or correlations, it is necessary to have statistical survey data as well as interpretative qualitative assessments to identify specific target market values and beliefs related to celebrity. Upon analysis, the survey data will be plotted on an X-Y scatter graph showing the extent to which celebrity is deemed important as well as the specific consumer segments which responded this way. If specific data clusters have a higher frequency in certain consumer groups than others, this will support or refute the importance of celebrity endorsements in this group. Compared to questionnaire responses related to the branded celebrity and non-celebrity promotional materials, it should give an accurate portrait of consumer beliefs and values related to the presence of celebrities in fashion advertisements; at least for the UK consumer. FEASIBILITY OF THE RESEARCH The benefit of the chosen methodology is that it poses no considerable budget restrictions on the researcher as the construction of the research instruments will consist of generic observational journals and the design/printing of color advertisements with different celebrity images. These images are widely available on the web and copyright laws allow for the usage of these materials in the pursuit of academic research and education. The physical representation of the celebrities utilised and the specific fashion brands chosen will be attached as an appropriate Appendices section in the final study report with specific source citations to avoid copyright issues or concerns should they potentially arise. Granting approval to secure an appropriate recruited sample will also not be necessary unless the researcher is unable to procure an appropriate research venue in a public environment. Should it become necessary to conduct the study in a commercial area, in order to guarantee enough consumer foot traffic, approval to set-up a temporary research station near retail or commercial environments will be necessary. This will require discussion with area commercial leadership or setting up an appropriate appointment for research efforts in these areas. Qualitative analyses are somewhat subjective in how data is interpreted, therefore the researcher will rely on personal skills related to business and marketing, as well as the researcher’s foundational skills in human psychology in order to make assessments of observed non-verbal responses. Examination of psychology journals and appropriate academic textbooks will be consulted in the event that researcher limitations in this area are experienced during the data analysis portion of this proposed study. The only ethical consideration for this study is guaranteeing anonymity to respondents, which will be satisfied by developing an Ethics Guarantee template which identifies the privacy policy of this study. This template will be shown to all recruited sample groups in the pursuit of guaranteeing anonymity and to provide the motivation to provide unbiased and honest responses to the questionnaire and promotional materials. Below is a representation of the proposed research timeline for completion and submission of the final research project: Timeline for Project Completion Task Start Completion Perform Secondary Research May 5 May 25 Construct Research Instruments May 25 June 3 Perform Research June 4 June 10 Analyse Research Data June 11 June 23 Chart and Correlate Data June 24 June 28 Construct Final Project June 29 July 20 Barring any disruptions to the research process, July 20 is an appropriate target for completion and submission of the final research project. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bennett, Peter D. (2000). Dictionary of Marketing Terms. Lincolnwood: NTC Contemporary. A useful dictionary which offers definitions of common marketing methodologies, including positioning, marketing mix, and advanced promotional efforts. Binkley, Christina. (2007). On Style: Tracking the Trouser Cycle. Wall Street Journal, New York, NY. 16 Aug, p.D1. ABI/INFORM Global Database. (accessed 18 Apr 2009). Brand Strategy. (2008). Rulers of the high street. London. 8 Apr, p.56. Careers. (2005). A Career in Fashion: Merchandising and Marketing Management. Chicago Institute for Career Research, No. 117. Ebsco Database. Retrieved 20 Apr 2009. This Western publication describes the buyer habits in retail stores and how this role is linked with profit objectives and fashion brand purchasing. Child, Katy. (2008). Kellogg on Marketing: Analyst Comment. Marketing, London. 13 Feb, p.29. This article identifies the impact of celebrity lifestyle events on inspiring consumer attitudes. Farr, Michael J. (2002). America’s Top Jobs for College Graduates: Detailed Information on 127 Jobs for People with Four-Year and Higher Degrees. Jist Publishing. Describes the current job market for fashion marketing and fashion designers as well as role and links to profit and strategy at the business level. Hatch, Mary Jo and Schultz, Majken. (2008). Taking Brand Initiative: How Companies Can Align Strategy, Culture, and Identity through Corporate Branding, 1st ed. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hsu, J. and Chang, K. (2008). Purchase of clothing and its linkage to family communication and lifestyles among young adults. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management. Bradford. 12(2), p.147. Iacobucci, Dawn. (2001). Kellogg on Marketing, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Karpova, Elena, Nelson-Hodges, Nancy, and Tullar, William. (2007). Making sense of the market: An exploration of apparel consumption practices of the Russian consumer. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Bradford. 11(1), p.106. Describes the brand importance of fashion in Russia with an explanation on how to develop efficient positioning strategies in this region of the world. Marketing Week. (2007). Kate Moss: Vamping the brand. London. 20 Sep, p.22. Michon, R., Yu, H., Smith, D. and Chebat, J. (2008). The influence of mall environment on female fashion shoppers’ value and behaviour. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Bradford. 12(4), p.456. This journal article describes how consumer attitudes and behaviours are altered by the sales environment. Prasad, S.B. and Girdhar, R. (2005). Impact of Celebrity Endorsements on Overall Brand. Indian Institute of Management. http://www.coolavenues.com/know/mktg/surabhi1.php. (accessed 20 Apr 2009). A generic assessment on the presence of celebrity in brand-building exercises in marketing. Renton, Carla. (2006). The relationship of celebrity advertisements to consumer attitudes and purchases intentions. Florida State University, Department of Textiles and Consumer Services. http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07052006-234654/unrestricted/thesis.pdf. (accessed 21 Apr 2009). This research study explores how companies look for celebrities which maintain the same values and image which fashion brands are attempting to instill in consumers. The study further provides evidence that celebrity presence can significantly change buying behaviours. Rohwedder, Cecilie. (2007). Earnings Digest: Burberry Says Luxury Will Still Sell. Wall Street Journal, New York, NY. 15 Nov, p.C8. ABI/INFORM Global Database. (accessed 20 Apr 2009). Offers statistical information regarding the fashion industry in terms of domestic and international revenue streams and sales. Strategic Direction. (2008). International success or failure? Comparing the strategies of two fashion retailers. Bradford. 24(1), p.9. This research article explores the trends of the current UK fashion marketplace, including business strategies domestic and international. BIBLIOGRAPHY Read More