FACTORS AFFECT CUSTOMER’S PERCEPTIONS TOWARD CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT ON PERFUME

During Egypt time, perfumes were made of various kinds of flower, plants and oil and used for varies reasons. For example, ingredients like iris roots, almond and lilies oil and ointment which only use natural ingredients. Other than that, perfumes were used for ritual ceremonies like selecting the new king and burial preparation. As women like to be beautiful today, during Egypt time as well, women use fragrance to attract the opposite gender. However, women use lesser perfume than men and men use it every day during the Egypt time (Lichtheim, 2006). Today, perfume is made of different type ingredients like water, alcohol and other liquid to put on attires or body (Susan, 2016). Perfume actually shows the personality of person who wearing it. People usually wear perfume based on place and also mood. For example, when the person feels excited, they will choose perfume that shows that have exciting feel in it. Perfume is not only used for scent but it is used for different reasons. One of it will be memories; it is because when people wear a special or unique scent, other people tend to remember the scent and recall the memory with them. For example, the thing people experience for the first time like the first date and wedding dinner (Evans, 2013). Nice scents do not only make people smell better but it also make people look more beautiful. The person who wear perfume tend to be more attractive rather people who do not wear it physically. For, example research found that beauty is not affect by rational but by emotions (Kirkova, 2014).

FACTORS AFFECT CUSTOMER’S PERCEPTIONS TOWARD

CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT ON PERFUME

to put on attires or body (Susan, 2016) Perfume actually shows the personality of person whowearing it People usually wear perfume based on place and also mood For example, when theperson feels excited, they will choose perfume that shows that have exciting feel in it Perfume

is not only used for scent but it is used for different reasons One of it will be memories; it isbecause when people wear a special or unique scent, other people tend to remember the scentand recall the memory with them For example, the thing people experience for the first time likethe first date and wedding dinner (Evans, 2013) Nice scents do not only make people smellbetter but it also make people look more beautiful The person who wear perfume tend to bemore attractive rather people who do not wear it physically For, example research found thatbeauty is not affect by rational but by emotions (Kirkova, 2014)

1.2 Celebrity Endorsement

Celebrity endorsement is used as a one of the option for advertisement and it is a greatstrategy to increase the brand equity and market the product Celebrities are used for differentkind of product because it has big impact on the sales and also impact on attracting customers topurchase the product Companies use celebrity that is suitable for the product that they areselling For example, Indian customers will purchase product that endorse by their owncelebrities or popular figure from varies field like, cricket and Bollywood celebrities Celebrities

are used to make the customer more confident and trust the product that the customers going tobuy When the products are endorsed by celebrity, customer will add more value toward theproduct compared to products that are just advertised with normal people For example, whenCadbury sales and recognition was not that good in India, the used Amitabh Bachchan topromote product After using the celebrity the creditability and the trust return of the publicretuned and the sales increased Talking about credibility it is important to have suitable celebrity

or public figure that suits the product well (Malik &Guptha, 2014) For example, products likesportswear are endorsed by famous athletes because it is more suitable rather than usingcelebrities Under Armour is recent example, where they use many professional athletes fromdifferent fields to endorse their product The result of the endorsement incredible as UnderArmour took Adidas as the Second place with the revenue of $ 11.8 billon (Felino, 2015) Otherexamples will be perfumes; they use celebrities that are attractive and beautiful, which suits thestyle and fragrance of the perfumes For example:

Britney Spear

Since Britney Spear joined the perfume line, the sales for the company boost incredibly.These was a normal perfumes at first but after celebrity endorsed for the product, it becomepopular and people start buying it (Gould, 2013)

One Direction

One Direction is one of the popular Idol group that adored by young adults is also target byperfume companies It is a strategy to attract younger adults to purchase the perfumes (Gould,2013).

1.3 Problem recognition

Why does young adult more focus on the celebrity endorse the perfume rather than theproduct? Today there is a lot of imported perfume that is endorsed by popular singers and actorsfrom western For example:

N°5 CHANEL and HIDDEN

(Rainey, 2012)

Other than that, there are some perfume companies that launch their product by using the

celebrities’ name For example, in the year 2012, 73 celebrity perfumes has released in themarket, which is huge compared to 10 years ago with only nine celebrity perfume per year.Companies use them to endorse to attract young adult market to buy their products (Rainey,2012) On the other hand, do adult between the age of 30 to 45 really know about these celebrityand effected by the advertisement? There are some adult that don’t really know about thecelebrity that endorse the product and also they do not really want to buy product that is writtenname celebrity that they do not know.

There two objective of this research, which are:

1 To find out whether young adult purchase perfume because of the endorsement ofCelebrity only or they care about the quality as well

2 To find out whether customers care about celebrity that endorses the product and justpurchases the perfume after testing the quality

Chapter 2

2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Social Cognitive Theory

The theory that will be used for this research is social-cognitive theory Social cognitive theorybasically is ability to understand human social behavior and does research on how humanexpress their taught in their life (Sheng, Hartmann, Chen & Chen, 2015) Prati(2012) says thatsocial cognitive is an extension from another theory which is social leaning theory, where socialexperience of a person is influenced by the behavior Other researchers also said that it is theory

to explain why humans adopt other people’s behavior and attitudes Social cognitive is not onlybased on the attitude but information as well Customer will view the same advertisement overand over again to understand about the product before getting on other information Customerneed to find other information because advertisement not enough to evaluate the product Forexample customers will read various magazine first before purchasing the wanted product( Kahle &

Homer, 1985)

This social cognitive theory may explain on why celebrity endorsement influences purchase ofperfumes When a person knows about the celebrity endorse a certain product or brand, thecustomers will feel connected toward the celebrity The process of this theory is basically toevaluate whether customer feel connected toward the endorser It does depend on demographicand personality of the endorser For people who are a fan of celebrities and recognize thecelebrity it is more likely the customer will be attracted When a person knows about thecelebrity and love the celebrity, he or she is more likely to follow the behaviors of the celebrity(Lin, 2010).

2.2 Celebrity endorsement

2.2.1 Celebrity attractiveness

Physical beauty is not the only factor considered as attractiveness but other factors likeintelligence and social activity, which make the celebrity more attractive The reason is becausecustomers do not evaluate attractiveness based physical only but other traits like intelligent andcharms (Worthen, 2014) Other researcher also agree thatattractiveness is not only about thephysical appearance or beauty but also other attributes like personality and extra skills( Malik&Sudhakar , 2014)

Attractiveness means customers will love the endorser by having similar connection withendorser, customer familiar and like the endorsers (Charbonneau & Garland, 2005).Raluca(2012) also said celebrity attract customer according to three factors which is familiar, like andfeel similar with the celebrity The success of the advertisement depends on whether customerfamiliar, like and feel connected to the spoke person (Malik &Sudhakar , 2014)

Beauty used in advertisement because is a way to attract customer toward the product andattractiveness change customers’ perception by switching customer’s attention to advertisement.Customers do not really focus on what the celebrity is delivering; customers are more focus onthe physical appearance (Charbonneau & Garland, 2005) The beauty of the endorser is a factorwhy customer might change their perception toward the product In addition, the messagedelivered by the endorser is not the main point but the appearance of the endorser is moreimportant because customers focus on the appearance first Marketers use beauty to direct thecustomer’s focus toward the advertisement (Racula, 2012) Attractive people tend to have power

to convince customer in purchasing intention and have positive image toward the product, whichendorsed by the celebrity or spoke person (Worthen, 2014) Attractiveness is an importantcondition for marketers because attractiveness might have power to change customer’sperception toward the product (Audi, Al Masri&Ghazzawi, 2015) Generally customer will havepositive perception toward handsome or beautiful spoke person and the spoke person can changethe way customer think toward the brand or product ( Malik &Sudhakar , 2014) Research haveshown that public will create a positive labeling toward attractive endorsers, so marketers takethis chance and use attractive celebrity on television and print media to attract customers.However, only attractive endorsers have pulled this method successfully compared tounattractive endorsers (Worthen, 2014) An attractive figure in the advertisement does attractcustomers to see the advertisement and contract a positive thought toward the advertisement Inaddition, the endorser in the advertisement does affect purchasing intention This advertisementwith the celebrity endorse actually shows does having endorser in the advertisement, make theadvertisement more effective (Ahmed, Farooq&Iqbal, 2014) However, in most of the cases,attractive customer does not affect customer’s purchasing decision because attractiveness notonly based on one factor, which the physical beauty Varies factor will be evaluated beforelabeling the endorser as attractive person (Ahmed, Farooq&Iqbal, 2014)

Customers more likely to accept information from attractive endorser because customersonly identify sources that customer want and ignore the rest Gender of the celebrity also plays

an important role in advertisement and the way message delivered is also different Male andfemale have different way of advertising and different feel For example, in perfume industrymarketers use female celebrity as endorsers in order to target to female market (Lindqvist, 2013).Female endorsers influence more in changing the attitude compared to male endorsers Otherthan that, research found out that, customers more likely to accept the sources and will havestronger purchasing intention when the gender of the endorser is same as the customers.However, some research found that gender of the endorser does not really affect the delivery ofthe advertisement and customer do not include endorser when making purchasing decision( Malik& Sudhakar , 2014)

2.2.2 Celebrity Credibility

Generally credibility means the person must be an expert on the subject and the opinion of theperson can be trusted and accepted by the customers To evaluate whether the message is useful

or useless depend on how strong customer believe the endorser or celebrity The informationfrom the certain endorser can be factor influence customers to change their opinions of theproduct because the endorser or celebrity is creditable (Reluca, 2012) The source delivered can

be effective if the endorser is credible enough and can make the source delivery persuasiveenough to change the customer’s belief toward the brand and product (Worthen, 2014)

Celebrities usually will show positive vibe when the celebrity is delivering message to theaudience and the audience will accepted the message without any force (Reluca, 2012) Thereare two parts in credibility, which is trustworthiness and expertise Expertise means the statementmade by the person is factual and believed by the public To become an expert, the endorsermust have past experience and developed skills in advertisement industry or as an endorsers Aresearch found that when the endorser is expert in term of delivering information and in the field,easier to persuade customer to purchase the product The statement is agreed by Raluca (2012) toconsider the endorser is expert, the celebrity must have past experience

On the other side, trustworthiness means the statement that the communicator going to makeshould be truth and the communicator have confident on the fact of the content The celebritymust be trusted by the public, so that the delivery of message can be easily accepted by thepublic Credibility is always related with how trustable the communicator is (Audi, AlMasri&Ghazzawi, 2015) In addition, the factors needed to consider the endorser trustable is arethey honest, reliable and someone who is dependable The older group of age does not depend onthe celebrity endorsers compared to the youngsters The reason is because today’s generationusually follows what the celebrity wears and the celebrity’s style as well If a certain peoplefollow what the celebrity do, the celebrity is considered as reference group In addition, celebrity

is the most trusted reference group If the celebrity or endorser have good image in the publiceyes and repeatable, the company also get the advantage (Ahmed, Farooq&Iqbal, 2014)

In addition, companies have potential to gain customer from the public, when the customersacknowledge the endorsers as trustable information deliver (Malik &Sudhkar, 2014) Other thanthat, when the celebrity deliver the message or try to give opinions on the product, the messageshould have positive and negative opinion toward the product The reason is because customer

will feel the celebrity is bias, if the celebrity only talks positive side of the product (Reluca,2012) The product or the brand must be match together and have strong connection with theendorser to gain customer’s trust However, the product endorsed by the celebrity is not used inreal life and customer will not trust them because celebrities do not have knowledge how theproduct works (Malik &Sudhkar, 2014) In addition Customer believe when a celebrity endorse alot of product, the credibility of the celebrity reduces because the celebrity is not expert andexperience in every product (Reluca, 2012) The main characteristic needed to persuadecustomer to purchase the product is the expertise of the celebrity Therefore, celebrity credibility

is important when evaluating does the message can be trusted or not ( Malik&Sudhakar , 2014)

2.2.3 Celebrity Meaning Transfer

Public will form a perception toward celebrity from what the public watch in the television andfrom celebrity attitude toward the society The major reason why brands use celebrity is becausethe company wants the customer’s perception of the celebrity transferred to the product offered

by the company (Worthen, 2014) Before purchasing a certain product, customers already havethe image of product from the advertisement The reason is because customers will already have

a certain image on the endorser, so whenever the customers think of the concept of the product,they will refer back to the celebrity (Malik &Sudhakar, 2014)

Customer will usually associate celebrities with trait, style or personality, so the company hope

by choosing the celebrity as the endorser, customers will transfer the same perception to theproduct (Audi, Al Masri&Ghazzawi, 2015) This model is all about what customer considerwhen customers have certain image when looking at the endorser and the process of transferringthe image into the product (Charbonneau & Garland, 2005) Celebrity will have a specialcharacteristic that the public will remember each time the celebrity appears at any media, sowhen the celebrity endorse for a company, the special characteristics will be transferred to theproduc t(Worthen, 2014)

There are three parts required in evaluating the meaning transfer and the first part is meaningtransfer from the celebrity to the product Celebrities have certain meaning in the heart of thepublic, so when the celebrity endorse the product, the marketer hope customers will transfer the

exact meaning to the product endorsed by the celebrity In the second part marketers wantcustomer to always connect whatever activity he celebrity do to the product In the last part thecustomer are influenced by the celebrity, so the customer will feel connected to the product(Audi, Al Masri&Ghazzawi, 2015) To evaluate the meaning, there are about three steps,forming of endorser’s image, the process of transferring meaning from the endorser to the brandand finally transferring meaning from product to the customer Customers need to get to knowthe celebrity and accept the celebrity, so that the customer do not mind if the celebrity influence

in the customer’s purchasing decision So customer hope when the customers purchase theproduct, the meaning will give some impact on the customer’s life (Worthen, 2014)

There are varies reason why customer perceive a certain meaning toward the celebrity, likepersonality, demographic and lifestyle Celebrities actually have more than one meaning butevery communication is successful as the celebrity deliver message in different way The role ofcelebrity is to give a certain image toward the product, which gives customer moreunderstanding what the product is all about (Audi, Al Masri&Ghazzawi, 2015) Research haveproven customer actually will be attracted toward an advertisement that endorsed by popularcelebrities In addition customers are more willing to accept and have happy vibration when thecustomer look at popular celebrity compared not so popular customers The happy emotions will

be transferred to the product and have higher chance customer will purchase the product.Customer does not process the meaning just by looking at celebrity but also the product that thecelebrity is endorsing (Raluca, 2012)

Marketers will only choose an endorser after conforming with the company what kind ofpersonality suits the product (Audi, Al Masri&Ghazzawi, 2015) The companies use celebrity asendorser because marketers believe customer will be attracted to the celebrity’s image Inaddition if there is no any connection between the celebrities, the process of meaning transferwill not occur and customers will be confused about the brands image (Illicia & Webster,2014) For example, Linda Evans fit to endorse a certain perfume brands, which reflect on thebrand (Ohanian, 1990) Therefore, companies usually choose celebrities which have connection

to the product Consumer will buy product that have similar characteristics with them orcustomer purchase product which have similar characteristic with the celebrity endorsers(Worthen, 2014)

Chapter 3

2.1 Methodology 2.2 Research objective

3 To find out whether young adult purchase perfume because of the endorsement ofCelebrity only or they care about the quality as well

4 To find out whether adults care about celebrity that endorses the product and justpurchases the perfume after testing the quality

5 To find out which group of customers focus more on customer endorsement rather thanthe product itself

3.1 Problem Identification Research

This research paper will be focused on problem identification research This researchbasically is where the problems have existed or will exist in the future There many type ofproblem identification research, such as market share, market potential, brand or companyimage, market characteristics and sales analysis This research is to identify, does celebrityendorsement really effect customers perception toward the perfume brands

3.2 Exploratory Research

This research will further classify under exploratory research Exploratory research usedwhen researcher do not have much information and understanding of the problem that theresearcher tackling The process of this research is very flexible and unstructured Since it is aresearch to understand more about the problem, so the research is ore loosen and do not havestrict procedures The same that used in this type of research is small and the questionnaire isnon-representative The result of exploratory research is tentative That means that the result ofthe research will further use for conclusive research or exploratory research (Malhotra, Hall,Oppenheim & Shaw, 2008)

3.3 Primary and Secondary Data

Two data used for this research, the first data is secondary data Secondary data is datacollected from other people to use it for other uses in the research The process to collect thedata is easy and very fast There many articles or journals that can get on internet in a second.The cost to do collect the data is very cheap sometimes it is free For example, secondary data

can download from website for free The time required to collect the data is short The seconddata used for this research is primary data Primary data are data that originated by the researcherfor the specific purpose of addressing the problem at hand The information of the research isfrom the researchers experiment or research It is used to solve the problem that the researchersare having Researchers have to be very focus and involve while doing this research The cost tocollect this data is very high It is because theresearchers need to use tools to collect theinformation or data The time to collect the primary data is long It is because the researchershave to collect data from respondent of the questionnaires, so it takes longer time (Malhotra, et.

al, 2008)

3.4 Quantitative Research

The deeper research used in this research is quantitative research The main reason to usethe quantitative research is to find out the data and generalized the result based on number fromthe sample of a population This research involves large number of participants and it isstructured and formal research The data analysis for this quantitative method is statistical Theconclusion and outcome of this research will be some recommendation a final course ofaction(Malhotra, et al, 2008)

3.5 Survey Method

The method used for this research is survey method There are many types under surveymethod but this research will only focus on two main methods The first method is personal Theresearchers have to interview or do survey face-to-face interview There are in-home face-to-faceinterview, where the researcher have to interview the respondent at the respondents house.However today in-home survey have decline because of high cost Other method under personal

is central location or mall intercept The researcher target location or places that have a lot ofpopulation that needed for the survey(Malhotra, et al, 2008)

The second main survey under survey methods is electronic method This method can beused to collect primary and secondary data The first method under electronic is e-mail Theresearcher will send the questionnaire through the e-mail and participants will answer thequestions individually This method cost lesser money and this survey gives participants someprivacy to answer The second survey will be Internet The researchers have more option to give

the consumer questionnaire through, where they can post the survey in social Medias like,Facebook(Malhotra, et al, 2008).

3.6 Research Tools

The reason tool is used to design the questionnaire and the questionnaire consist of 3sections which is Section A, Section B, Section C Section A is will consist of age, gender,occupation and icome Section B will be asked whether respondent aware about the certain topic.For example, does the respondent now about western music or not Section C will be askedwhether customer agree or disagree to the statement related to perfume Likert scale will be used

in section C The questions will be done pretest before continue with the research

3.8 Sampling

Researchers do not have time and impossible to get all the participant from the population, soresearcher need to target a certain number of sample from the population The number of samplemust be to suitable represent the population the population In addition, the number of the samplemust be achievable with the time and resources The sampling is divided into 4 categories, which

are sampling population, size, frame and technique.

3.8.1 Sampling Population

Sampling population is basically the sample, which represent the population The sampling must

be suitable and enough to do research based on the population After decide the amount ofsample, the researcher will continue with the research The target population is Klang Valley, soquestionnaire will be distributed to the places that have I population, like Selayang, Damansaraand Klang The reason why the survey distributed at Damansara area is because HELPUniversity is located there and offices nearby The researcher target students and workers atDamansara area because the possibility that the participant will fill in the questionnaire is high.The research target housing area like Taman Selayang Baru, Teluk Pulai and Selayang Mutiara

to get respondent from different age group like the age group of 37 to 46 Even though some ofthem reject, the researcher successfully pulled quite big number from the age group

3.8.4 Sampling techniques

Before choosing the sampling technique the researcher need to consider whether to useprobability or non-probability A non-probability technique is se selection based on theresearcher’s judgment and not based on the chance from the population Researcher can choose

to include any element they want in the sampling However, in probability, element in thesampling is chosen based on the chance, which means the sampling element is selected from theaudience of population In this research, the researcher decides to do non-probability technique

because the researcher can choose each sampling to element can be include Other reason isbecause the researcher can collect as fast as possible Two sampling method will be used; firstone will be convenient sampling Convenient sampling means the researcher select a time andplace to distribute to a group of people For example, the data collected at Madrasah Al-Ghazaliafter some seminar about religion The other sampling method is judgmental sampling, whichmeans researcher will choose which respondent to answer the questionnaire based on thetargeted group For example, target a student at HELP University because he or she might fallunder age group of 17 to 26 years old

3.9 Limitations

The first limitation will be difficulty in distributing the data The reason is because people are notinterested in filling in the questionnaires because they are busy with other task like doingassessment and studying for exams Other than that, some of the questionnaires are rejectedbecause the participants answer the questions without reading the instruction probably This willresult in inaccurate data and the hypothesis will be affected Some of the survey forms need to berejected because the participants tick too many neither agree nor disagree and the output will beaffected

Chapter 4

4.1.2 Age

Figure 4.2.1 and the figure 4.2.2, shows the percentage of different age group, which collectedfor the research The questionnaire are distributed and collected at different area like HELPUniversity, Taman SelayangBaru, SelayangMutiara, Klang and online From the figure above,the age group 17 to 6 contribute the highest number of participants with the percentage of 48%and the number of participants is 293 The second highest is age group 37 to 46 with thepercentage of 36.2% and the number of participant of 221 Besides that, the age group of 27- 36with the percentage of 14.4% (88 participants) and age group of 46-56 with the percentage of1.3% (8 participants) The age group 17 to 26 has the highest number of participant since thedata is collected at three different HELP University campuses for over two weeks, so it is easier

to get participant from age group between 17 to 26 The data from the age group between 37 to

46 is collected at the area like Taman SelayangBaru and TelukPulai, Klang, because most of therespondent from this areas are middle age residence

Table 4.3 shows the relationship between occupation and Income and to make it clear Income