CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 601Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and IdentificationDigital Marketing and Social MediaMarketing and Advertising Strategies

The effectiveness of celebrity endorsements: a meta-analysis

Open access
Knoll, Johannes, Matthes, Jörg·2017·Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
DOI 10.1007/s11747-016-0503-8
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Celebrities frequently endorse products, brands, political candidates, or health campaigns. We investigated the effectiveness of such endorsements by meta-analyzing 46 studies published until April 2016 involving 10,357 participants. Applying multilevel meta-analysis, we analyzed celebrity endorsements in the context of for-profit and non-profit marketing. Findings revealed strong positive and negative effects when theoretically relevant moderators were included in the analysis. The most positive attitudinal effect appeared for male actors who match well with an implicitly endorsed object (d = .90). The most negative effect was found for female models not matching well with an explicitly endorsed object (d = −.96). Furthermore, celebrity endorsements performed worse compared to endorsements of quality seals, awards, or endorser brands. No publication bias was detected. The study has theoretical and practical implications, and provides an agenda for future research.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s11747-016-0503-8

Cites

144 of 144 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The influence of celebrities on attitudes, beliefs, and behavior is so strong that their endorsements are a key part of businesses' marketing strategies.

    “The influence of celebrities on attitudes, beliefs, and behavior is so strong that their endorsements are a key part of businesses’ marketing strategies (Erdogan, 1999; Knoll & Matthes, 2017).”

    From Stories in Action. (2022) · cites this paper as Knoll & Matthes, 2017

    The paper’s marketing-strategy passage describes celebrity endorsements as well established and widely used, and its Theoretical and managerial implications section says they can improve attitudes and behavioral intentions when marketers choose the right endorser. But the Overall analysis finds no average cognitive or behavioral-intention effects and only a modest positive effect on attitudes toward the endorsed object versus no endorsement. The claim overstates how consistently strong their influence is. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Alba, J. W., & Hutchinson, J. W. (1987). Dimensions of consumer exper- tise. Journal of Consumer Research, 13(4), 411-454.
  2. Erfgen, C., Zenker, S., & Sattler, H. (2015). The vampire effect: when do celebrity endorsers harm brand recall? International Journal of Research in Marketing, 32(2), 155-163.
  3. Kilburn, D. (1998). Star power. Adweek, 39(2), 20-21.
  4. Stephens, A., & Rice, A. (1998). Spicing up the message. Finance Week, 76(26), 46-47.
  5. Viechtbauer, W. (2010). Conducting meta-analyses in R with the meta- phor package. Journal of Statistical Software, 36(3), 1-48.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Knoll, J., & Matthes, J.
Affiliations
University of Vienna (AT)
Corresponding author
Matthes, Jörg
ORCID
Matthes, Jörg
Venue
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2016-10-12
Volume
45
Issue
1
Pages
55-75
ISSN
  • 0092-0703 (ISSN-L)
  • 1552-7824
DOI
10.1007/s11747-016-0503-8
OpenAlex
W2531871136
Cited by
601
References
144
Citations by year
2026: 63 · 2025: 73 · 2024: 77 · 2023: 64 · 2022: 82 · 2021: 86 · 2020: 63 · 2019: 54 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 17
FWCI
7.85
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Phaidra (Universität Wien) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
University of Vienna
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Marketing and Social Media
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Marketing and Advertising Strategies
Keywords
celebrity endorsement, endorsement effectiveness, quality seals, awards

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review