Examining functional congruity and self-congruity in celebrity spokesperson endorsed advertising context

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test the dual-pathway persuasion model proposed by Johar and Sirgy (1991) in a celebrity endorsement context. This study attempted to provide empirical evidence for the proposition that the perceived functional congruity and self-congruity are effective factors to predict viewers’ behavioral intentions. The study revealed that celebrity spokespersons who are perceived as expert source are able to improve viewers’ utilitarian evaluations and to induce purchase intentions of the endorsed products . Similarly, celebrity spokespersons who are perceived as similar source can make viewers believe that the endorsed products are able to satisfy viewers’ value-expressive needs and trigger viewers’ purchase intentions of the endorsed products. In addition, this study found that functional congruity and self-congruity are positively correlated with purchase intention, and functional congruity, compared to self-congruity, is able to explain more variance in purchase intention. Findings and contributions of this study, implications of advertising strategy and limitations were discussed. Keywords: source expertise, source similarity, functional congruity, self-congruity, advertising effectiveness