The perception of

De La Salle University Manila students

to Celebrity Endorsements

A Research Paper
In ENGLRES

Submitted by:
Medina, Stefhanie Mae E.
Reyes, Tristan Miguel A.

Submitted to:
Ms. Karen Gabinete

Date:
December 13, 2014

Table of Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................................................1
Methodology.....................................................................................................................3
Results. idk
List of Figures
U do this
Discussion.idk
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................idk
References.....................................................................................................................idk
Appendix..idk

MEDINA | REYES
Perception of DLSU students to celebrity endorsements

Introduction
In todays world, different kinds of advertisements are circulating and its aim is to
grab its desired consumers to buy a product. A lot of people are being drawn into
believing this generation which are full of publicities and promotions yet why do all of
these advertisements have to target a certain group to be effective? According to Keller
(1993), brand imagery is the ability of a person to remember how effective a certain
product is. It is quite common in the world of advertising because businesses can get
some help from famous celebrities to endorse a product. From this, businesses will be
able to connect with other people and entice them take part in using their products
(Erdogan, 1999). These celebrity advertisements are known to be the most effective
type of endorsement because it gives off a lasting impression to a product user (Sridevi,
2014). It is also said that celebrities tend to be seen as more believable as an endorser
rather than using common people in advertisements (Muda, Musa, Mohamed & Borhan,
2013). Even though a celebrity is seen in a lot of advertisements, it can still give off a
positive feedback to the advertisement and the brand (Ilicic & Webster, 2011).
De La Salle University is known for fostering students who will imbibe Lasallian
achievers for God and and country. In this prestigious school, we wanted to know if
Lasallians are familiar with the brand image that they often see inside and outside the
campus. We, the researchers, focused on the whole Lasallian community to know their
perspective on the type of advertisement that they are exposed to. We wanted to know
how this can affect their choice of buying products in the market. More than that, we
also wanted to know if they even notice a celebrity in an endorsement.
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Perception of DLSU students to celebrity endorsements

This research paper will help businesses understand what people think when
they hear of celebrity endorsements. This study aims to know the perception of De La
Salle University Manila (DLSU) students by using the following questions: (1) How
effective is a celebrity advertisement? (2) Do celebrity endorsers influence your
purchase decisions? (3) What is the most effective form of advertising? To know if we
have successfully answered those three questions, we published an online survey to
the DLSU community by blasting it to different DLSU groups in Facebook. We have
gathered 107 respondents who answered questions about celebrity endorsements. The
study showed that 67% of the respondents positively viewed celebrity endorsements as
a powerful tool in advertising. However, the result also showed that some still recognize
the content, sense, usage, and promotions of the product.
We discovered that celebrity endorsements have dominated our television sets in
todays world. It is still the medium where we can watch commercials and infomercials
with ease. Moreover, we noticed that online advertisements are starting to settle in and
overrule the position of television advertisements. Yet, it is more interesting to know that
there are only a few articles with regards to radio commercials which we were surprised
to know since our respondents viewed radio commercials as the least effective form of
advertising.
We believe that utilizing every form of advertising to seek a targeted audience
should be done by businesses, big and small. Finding the correct forms of advertising
for a certain business will ensure circulating money, increasing sales and new
customers.

MEDINA | REYES
Perception of DLSU students to celebrity endorsements

Methodology
The researchers found out the perception of De La Salle University students to
celebrity endorsements through a survey, which comprises ten (10) questions.
Stefhanie Mae Medina and Tristan Miguel Reyes are advertising students and they
formulated the questions based on their knowledge on the Principles of Marketing and
Principles of Advertising. The survey was conducted on October 27, 2014 to November
6, 2014 via Google Forms and the link was shared through the Facebook Pages of De
La Salle University. The students answered the surveys anonymously. The researchers
ended up having 65 female respondents and 42 male respondents, having 107
respondents in total.
As said, the survey comprises of ten (10) questions, but only three (3) questions
are relevant for this article:
1. How frequent do you come across advertisements that feature celebrities?
2. Which medium do you consider most effective when celebrity endorsement is used?
3. Overall, would you consider the presence of celebrity endorsement as positive or
negative when making a purchase decision?
The summary of the results of all the questions may be found in Google Forms in
two

(2)

formats:

Graphical

Format:

http://bit.ly/15dTFYP

and

Excel

Format:

http://bit.ly/1FjcbvD
Students who have completed answering the survey comprised of 65 female
students (61 percent of the total respondents) and 42 male students (39 percent of the
total respondents). Since most college students are of legal age, out of 107
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Perception of DLSU students to celebrity endorsements

respondents, 70 of our respondents are aged 18 and above (65% of the total
respondents). Although we wanted to have an equal frequency for the gender, we did
not achieve our goal because the environment is mostly resided by females.
The number of respondents is not that sufficient to represent the population of De
La Salle University. Therefore, the results of this research may not be fully accurate.
This research is conducted only to the students of the university, therefore it may not be
applied to other universities, institutions, or a specific population / sample. Students may
have their own opinion about the research topic and that may therefore lead to
prejudices. The responses are kept confidential in order for the university students to
answer the survey with full honesty. But nonetheless, every response must be taken
into account and must be counted as one of the respondents.
The research topic would be very interesting to those who plan to have their
businesses advertised. This will help the researchers in developing their researchwriting skills and understand data that they have gathered from the respondents. This
will help their audience, who are interested in the topic, to understand the perception of
young consumers to celebrity endorsers and how it is effective in the market. This may
serve as a reference for future improvement of the research, with the right sample size
and target respondents.
Results
The gender and age of the respondents will help us understand the level of
thinking of the respondents based from the said factors. 70 out of 107 of our
respondents are of legal age, having a 65% of the sample of legal age. 65 out of 107 of
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Perception of DLSU students to celebrity endorsements

our respondents are female, having 39% of the sample male. Most of our respondents
are of legal age because most of the college students are of legal age. Although we
wanted to have an equal frequency for the gender, we didnt achieve our goal because
of the limitation that the environment is mostly resided by females.

FEMALE

MALE

TOTAL

AGE

RESPONDEN
TS

RESPONDEN
TS

RESPONDEN
TS

15

16

17

18

27

18

21

18

39

19

12

20

20

21

22

TOTAL

65

42

107

Table 1: Number of Respondents according to gender and age.

The level of exposure to advertisement of our respondents will help us see the
awareness of our respondents to different types of advertisements. All of our
respondents are exposed to different types of advertisements. There are many causes
why some people answered sometimes. 7% of the population answers that they only
see advertisement rarely. One main reason for this is the hectic schedule of the college
students that they dont have much time to watch television or listen to radio.
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Perception of DLSU students to celebrity endorsements

Exposure to Advertisement

Respondents

Percentage

Always

60

56%

Often

40

37%

Sometimes

7%

Seldom

0%

Never

0%

Total

107

100%

Table 2: The level of exposure of the respondents to Advertisements

There are different types of Advertisement. Surprisingly, no one chose Radio

Advertisement as the most effective way to advertise a product. It is believe that radio is
about to be phased out. However, 65% of the respondents believe that the most
effective advertisement come from Television and Infomercial. Television and
Infomercial target not only the class that is within our respondents, but all of the class,
mostly the mass. Television is believed to be more visual among all the different types of
advertisement.
Type of Advertisement:

Respondents:

Percentage:

69

65%

Magazine and Print Advertisement

10

9%

Internet Advertisement

13

12%

Television
Infomercial

Advertisement

and

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Perception of DLSU students to celebrity endorsements

Radio Advertisement
Billboard
Digital)

Advertisement

Total Respondents

(Print

0%

15

14%

107

100%

and

Table 3: The most effective form of Advertisement according to the respondents.

Celebrity Endorsers contribute to the sales of a specific product. 56% of our

respondents prefer to have a celebrity endorser in the advertisement. 81% of our
respondents think that using celebrity endorsers will increase recall of the
advertisement. 93% of our respondents believe that using celebrity endorser will help
the company sell their product. Almost half of our respondents think that the expertise of
a celebrity endorser towards a specific brand is not that important. 64% of our
respondents think that the similarity between the consumer and the celebrity endorsers
is not important. Most of the respondents say that there is a positive impact on
consumer behavior when there is a celebrity endorser because it influences the
decision of the consumer due to knowledge being communicated.

Discussion
Celebrities are not the ordinary people that you see every day; they are more
noticed and more praised than normal people because they exhibit multi-talented skills
that helped them become who they are now (Sridevi, 2014). Yet, there are still some

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Perception of DLSU students to celebrity endorsements

undiscovered perceptions in accordance to celebrity endorsements. This led the

researchers to review other research papers and articles about the effectiveness of
celebrity endorsements in different forms of media. A lot of researches showed how
celebrity endorsements became known around the world. However, it focused on how it
circulates in the marketplace rather than the perception of people about celebrity
endorsements. Thus, we looked deeper on how traditional media (eg. television, print,
radio and billboard) and new media (eg. internet) can help us determine whether a
celebrity is effective in that form of advertising.
According to our research, television advertisements or infomercials are still the
most effective way to advertise products which is same as the result that we have
gathered in our survey. Yet, television advertisements are very costly in terms of paying
for the advertisement to preview on national TV, paying the people who worked behind
the scenes and paying for the celebrity that showed in that small amount of time
(Freiden, 1984).
According to Sridevi (2014), advertisers think that with the help of celebrities the
appeal of their advertisement will directly target their consumers. Television
advertisements or infomercials are still prominent in todays society since some are still
not affected by the extensive use of the Internet.
Internet advertisements have gone viral these past few months which led us to
believe that soon enough it will take over television advertisements or infomercials.
Internet became the source of daily social media updates which provided opportunities
for celebrity endorsers to go on a less private life (Palmieri, 2013). Other than using
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Perception of DLSU students to celebrity endorsements

social media sites of celebrities to capture the attention of their target audience,
Facebook Ads and Promoted Tweets are also easily seen nowadays (Varney, 2013).
This can help businesses who are starting big or small to reach people who are using
their social media accounts.
It was fascinating to know that our respondents still look at billboard
advertisements and with that it ranked second in our survey. According to Pragati
Enterprise, outdoor advertising such as billboards are effective for small businesses. Billboards
are designed with attractive celebrities and catchy slogans to capture the interest of its target
market (Edegoh, Nwanolue & Ezeh, 2013).

Okoro (as cited in Edegoh, Nwanolue & Ezeh, 2013) believes that billboard
advertising has high visibility, cheap price, high product retainment, high repetition, and
fast product message. According to Simcoe (as cited in Edegoh, Nwanolue & Ezeh,
2013), if a billboard is placed in a visible location, it can help a business strengthen
brand familiarity. Thus, billboard advertising invests on lives of many by capturing their
attention through spreading out in different locations publicly.
As seen in Fig. 787, it shows how small the gap is between internet
advertisements and billboard advertisements. Since we have limited respondents, we
can safely assume that internet advertisements might really change how we see todays
advertisements in the future.
Magazine and print advertisements ranked third in our survey. I believe that with
the rapid innovation of social media and Internet, magazine and print advertisements
once became the most effective form of advertising. According to Forbes.com, it is still
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Perception of DLSU students to celebrity endorsements

in the market because it is still believed as an influential and essential factor to an

effective endorsement. With small and big businesses relying on social media and
Internet, magazine and print advertisements can be used as a marketing advantage
because it can effectively and efficiently reach their target market.
The most controversial result was the radio advertisement. It showed that our
respondents do not really see how effective radio advertisements are. According to
Kokemuller of Demand Media, radio advertisements are one of the cheap costing forms
of advertisement because it does not need a lot of equipment compared to television
commercials. This led us to believe that radio advertisements once became a hit in the
market since this is more prominent to be used by small businesses wanting to get big.

Conclusion
According to Agrawal & Kamakura (1995), celebrity endorsements is effective in
both traditional and new media as it help build brand image that can encourage
consumers to buy the product.
Celebrity Endorsements are really effective and efficient in the different forms of
advertising which includes television advertisements or infomercials, magazine and print
advertisements, internet advertisements, and billboard advertisements both print and
digital. But then we recognized how ineffective radio advertisements were in terms of
data gathering and survey results. It was not a surprise for us to know that radio
advertisements will fall on the least form of advertising since there is a lot of
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advancement in our technology. Yet we still believe that it was once the most effective
form of advertising before television and internet advertising was introduced.
We, as Lasallians, are still exposed to a lot of advertisements these days and this
really helped us figure out our purchase decisions. There may or may not be celebrities
in the products that we buy but our exposure to how advertisements are affecting us
can determine how we perceive a certain product. This led us to believe that some are
still very open to seek for the content of a product rather than the celebrity featured.
Though our survey showed a high frequency of respondents that see celebrity
endorsements as effective, this has a minimal control over a person that will buy a
certain product.
Overall, it does not really matter whether a celebrity is featured or not in a
product. It is still up to the decision of the buyer whether they perceive it as something
useful or wasteful. A celebrity endorsement does not necessarily mean that they
advertise a perfect product but it is just a way to entice consumers into buying the
product that they are endorsing. It may seem as something foolish but then, this is a
marketing strategy that almost all businesses are using worldwide.

References
Agrawal, J. & Kamakura, W. (2014). The economic worth of celebrity endorsers: An
event study analysis. Journal of Marketing, 59(3), 56-62.

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Edegoh, L., Nwanolue, I. & Ezeh, N. (2013). Audience Assessment of the Use of Models
in Billboard Advertising: A Study of Consumers of Amstel Malt in Onitsha, Nigeria.
International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities, 6(1), 217-227.
Erdogan, Z. (2010). Celebrity endorsement: A literature review. Journal of Marketing
Management, 15(4), 291-314. DOI:10.1362/026725799784870379
Freiden, J. (1984). Advertising Spokesperson Effects: An Examination of Endorser Type
and Gender on Two Audiences. Journal of Advertising Research, 24(5), 33.
Illicic, J. & Webster, C. (2011). Effects of multiple endorsements and consumer
celebrity attachment on attitude and purchase intention. Australasian Marketing
Journal, 19(4), 230237. DOI: 10.1016/j.ausmj.2011.07.005
Keller, K. (1993). Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Managing Customer-Based Brand
Equity. American Marketing Association, 57(1), 1-22.
Kokemuller, N. (n.d.). What Is the Advantage of Using TV & Radio Media for
Advertising? Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantage-using-tvradio-media-advertising-17673.html
Muda, M., Musa, R., Mohamedb, R. & Borhanb, H. (2014). Celebrity entrepreneur
endorsement and advertising effectiveness. Procedia - Social and Behavioral
Sciences, 130, 1120, DOI: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.04.002
Palmieri, L. (2013). Celebrity Endorsements in Print and Twitter: Comparing Brand
Name Memorability and Credibility (Dissertation Collections). Accessed from
http://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1972&context=theses.

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Pragati Enterprise. (n.d.). Outdoor Marketing: Advertise through billboards, roadshows,

bus bench and transit advertisement. Retrieved from
http://pragatienterprise.com/outdoor-marketing-india.php
Sridevi, J. (2014). Effectiveness of celebrity advertisement on select FMCG An
empirical study. Procedia Economics and Finance, 11, 276288.
Varney, C. (2013, October 9). Celebrity Twitter Ads: Regulations, Allegations and Selling
Out. Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/celebrity-twitter-adsregulations-allegations-selling-135717903.html

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Appendix

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15