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Effects of parasocial interaction, Celebrity

endorsement
brand credibility and product on microblog

involvement on celebrity
endorsement on microblog 1437
Wanqi Gong Received 26 December 2019
Revised 23 July 2020
School of Journalism and Communication, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, 3 September 2020
Guangzhou, China 26 October 2020
Accepted 7 November 2020

Abstract
Purpose – This study explores the influence of parasocial interaction (PSI), brand credibility and product
involvement on celebrity endorsement, and how PSI interacts with brand and product factors and affects
celebrity endorsement synthetically.
Design/methodology/approach – This study employs a 2 (high/low product involvement) by 2 (high/low
brand credibility) between-subjects factorial design experiment to test the hypotheses.
Findings – Brand credibility has a positive effect on followers’ attitudes toward advertising and products, and
product involvement influences its moderation. PSI has salient positive effects on followers’ attitudes and
behavioral intention, regardless of high/low product involvement. Brand credibility mediates PSI’s influence on
celebrity endorsement.
Research limitations/implications – The results reinforce the significant effect of PSI on endorsement
effectiveness and brand credibility, show the influence of brand credibility and product involvement and show
how their influence conditionally interacts with others.
Practical implications – The corporate advertiser should prefer a high PSI celebrity as their endorser. The
advertising message design on the microblog also deserves the attention of advertisers.
Originality/value – This study is the primary attempt to construct an integral model to demonstrate the
synthetic effect and interaction process of consumers’ perception of the endorser, brand and product category
factors on celebrity endorsement within the social media context.
Keywords Parasocial interaction, Brand credibility, Product involvement, Celebrity endorsement, Microblog
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
The microblog has taken up a significant portion of people’s daily lives. Twitter has
330 million monthly active users (Statista, 2018), and Sina Weibo has 392 million monthly
active users (China Internet Watch, 2018). Microblog is an online platform that enables users to
post opinions, update their activities through short messages and broadcast these messages to
their followers (Zhang and Pentina, 2012). The microblog is typically used for information
sharing (news, opinions and experiences) when compared with other popular social media
channels, such as Facebook and YouTube (Smith et al., 2012). An increased number of
celebrities have turned to the microblog platform and attracted millions of followers (Marwick,
2011), and brands have begun to utilize these celebrity microbloggers to post brand-related
messages. These celebrity microbloggers aim to promote products through their influence,
which matches the definition of celebrity endorsement (Mccracken, 1989).
Compared to traditional mass media, the microblog provides a more interactive platform
for celebrity and follower (Lee and Jang, 2011). Celebrities and followers can engage in
Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing
The paper is supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71802058), and Logistics
Vol. 33 No. 6, 2021
MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (No. 18YJC860007), pp. 1437-1454
Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (No. 2018A0303100008), and Department of © Emerald Publishing Limited
1355-5855
Education of Guangdong Province (No. 2017WTSCX029). DOI 10.1108/APJML-12-2019-0747
APJML interaction such as posting and reading daily updates, comments and messages on microblog
33,6 (Stever and Lawson, 2013). Since most followers do not know celebrities personally, the
majority of the follower-celebrity interaction on microblog is followers’ unilateral engagement
(Thorson and Rodgers, 2006), which is called “parasocial interaction” (PSI) (Giles, 2002). PSI
can enhance celebrity-follower mutual understanding (Song and Zinkhan, 2008), strengthen
follower’s evaluation of celebrity’s credibility and further contribute to followers’ positive
attitudes and purchase intention (PI) toward celebrity endorsement (Gong and Li, 2017; Liu
1438 et al., 2019). More importantly, follower’s reaction is more valuable for endorsement
effectiveness on microblog than on traditional mass media. Followers can help to enlarge the
audience number of the endorsement if they are willing to retweet the message (Gong and Li,
2019). In this sense, microblog empowers the consumers, redefines the consumer-endorser
relationship and brings new opportunities for celebrity endorsement strategy.
Source attractiveness model, source credibility model and the match-up hypothesis are the
most influential theoretical models for investigating celebrity endorsement mechanism
(Amos et al., 2008; Erdogan, 1999). Literature suggests that celebrity attractiveness,
credibility and celebrity-product congruence and brand credibility are significant positive
predictors of celebrity endorsement within mass media context (Bergkvist and Zhou, 2016;
Silvera and Austad, 2004). Besides another essential component of source credibility, the
brand credibility also has a positive impact on consumers’ attitudes and PIs through
providing authentic brand signals for consumers, especially on microblog which is riddled
with misleading information (Lee and Kim, 2020; Yu and Yuan, 2019). Recent studies have
paid more attention to the influence of PSI due to the interactivity and closer follower-celebrity
relationship on microblog (e.g. Chung and Cho, 2017; Gong and Li, 2017; Liu et al., 2019).
The existing literature concentrated on investigating the influence of PSI and endorser’s
characteristics (attractiveness, credibility and congruence) (Ferchaud et al., 2018; Gong and
Li, 2017) while neglecting the synthetic influence of PSI, brand and product factors. The
elaboration likelihood model (ELM) pointed out that product involvement serves as a
moderator between source factors and celebrity endorsement (Mathew and Thomas, 2018).
These three factors represent the consumer’s relationship with different parts of the
advertising source: PSI reflects the consumer’s involvement with the endorser, product
involvement reflects the consumer’s connection with products and brand credibility stands
for the consumer’s accumulated knowledge and evaluation of the brand (company).
Drawing on the source credibility model, ELM and PSI literature, this study intends to
explore the synthetic influence of PSI, brand credibility and product involvement on celebrity
endorsement, and how PSI interacts with brand and product factors and affects the celebrity
endorsement. The specific objectives of the study are as follows: (1) to examine PSI’s influence
on brand credibility and further test the mediating role of brand credibility between PSI and
celebrity endorsement effectiveness within microblog context, (2) to test the moderation effect
of product involvement on PSI and brand credibility and (3) to propose a theoretical model to
demonstrate the mechanism of celebrity endorsement on microblog.
The findings of this study reveal different roles and interrelations among celebrity
endorsers, brands and product types in consumers’ advertising information processing
within the social media context. Besides, this study construct provides practical guidance for
advertising practitioners when choosing a proper brand endorser and enables more effective
utilization of celebrity endorsements on microblog for product and brand promotion.

Literature review and hypotheses development

Endorsement effectiveness on the microblog
Attitudes toward advertising (Aad), attitudes toward product (AP) and PI are the three main
discussed celebrity endorsement effectiveness in previous studies (Amos et al., 2008;
Erdogan, 1999). Besides Aad, AP and PI, on the microblogging platform, followers
(audiences) can perform more direct reactions, such as retweets or comments on the celebrity Celebrity
endorsement message, and express their views and attitudes directly to the celebrity endorsement
endorser. Among all these microblogging reactions, retweeting is crucial for advertising
effectiveness. Retweet means users copy other microbloggers’ messages and forward them to
on microblog
the users’ followers (Huang et al., 2009). If followers retweet the endorsement messages, the
message can be seen by the followers’ followers. Therefore, the “retweet” can increase
audience numbers and boost the advertising effects (Kim et al., 2014). Therefore Aad, AP, PI
and retweet intention (RI) are proposed as the outcome (dependent) variables in this study. 1439

Parasocial interaction
The “one-way, imaginative communication” between an audience and media character is
defined as PSI (Horton and Richard Wohl, 1956; Rubin and McHugh, 1987). “One-sided
psychological engagement” and “illusive mutual awareness” are two main characteristics
which differentiate PSI from other interpersonal interactions (Hartmann and Goldhoorn,
2011). PSI leads audiences to form empathetic interactions with media characters (celebrities)
(Giles, 2002), and to further form the illusion that they “know” the celebrities who can be often
seen on the television or in films (Rubin and McHugh, 1987). PSI will make audiences generate
a more favorable perception of the celebrity and the related product (Lueck, 2015), and more
positive value will be transferred from the celebrity to his/her endorsed product (Basil, 1996).
The appearance of social media strengthens the PSI between followers and celebrities.
Labrecque (2014) argued that the perceived interactivity of media persona and openness are
two significant predictors of PSI and that these two predictors are enhanced within a social
media context. The instant comment, retweet and message functions on microblog make
followers feel that they can directly communicate with celebrities and enhance media
persona’s ability to communicate with viewers (Song and Zinkhan, 2008). Conversely,
celebrities largely enhance their openness on social media platform through posting their
private pictures, information and feelings on their microblog or Facebook (Wood and
Burkhalter, 2014). In this way, the microblogging platform intensifies the feeling of mutual
awareness and attention between followers and celebrities (Labrecque, 2014; Wood and
Burkhalter, 2014).
Microblog enhances follower-celebrity PSI through improving followers’ feelings of
interactivity and celebrity’s openness, and the intensified PSI will make followers further
attached to celebrity microblog (Chung and Cho, 2017; Lee and Jang, 2011). Therefore, PSI has
salient positive impacts on Aad, AP, PI and RI within microblog context (Gong and Li, 2019;
Saldanha et al., 2018).

Brand credibility
The source credibility model suggests that consumers’ perception of source credibility has a
positive effect on their attitudes toward endorsement, endorsed product and PI (Amos et al.,
2008). Brand credibility is an essential part of source credibility (Laffery and Goldsmith,
1999), although extensive literature on celebrity endorsement focuses on the celebrity
endorser’s credibility when they study the effect of source credibility (Amos et al., 2008; Gong
and Li, 2017). Brand credibility means the trustworthiness and dependability of the conveyed
brand information (Tirole, 1988). Consumers already have some knowledge, impressions and
evaluations of brand credibility from past marketing campaigns and strategies (Lafferty and
Goldsmith, 1999). Brand credibility signals product quality and positioning; therefore, the
highly credible brand will enhance consumers’ confidence in the products of the brand (Alam
et al., 2012). Brand credibility is found to have a direct salient effect on Aad, AP, PI (Laffery
and Goldsmith, 1999) and other related consumers perceptions and behavior (Choi and Rifon,
2012; Smith and Brynjolsson, 2001).
APJML Within the online media context, brand credibility also has a significant impact on
33,6 audiences’ online behavior. High brand credibility will generate more brand searching
behavior on the Internet and higher PI (Lee et al., 2011), enhance the brand image (Martın-
Consuegra et al., 2018) and even electronic word-of-mouth intention (Lee and Kim, 2020).
Microblog affords technical convenience to enhance consumer-brand communication.
Although previous studies indicated that brand credibility has a positive impact on
followers’ participation on brand microblog (Li et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2015), there is limited
1440 empirical evidence to support the influence of source credibility on RI (Gong and Li, 2019). No
study directly explores the relationship between brand credibility and RI. To further test
brand credibility’s influence on celebrity endorsement, this study postulates the following
hypothesis:
H1. Brand credibility is a positive predictor of (1) Aad, (2) AP, (3) PI and (4) RI of celebrity
endorsement on the microblog.

Synergy of PSI and brand credibility

Gong and Li (2017) found that frequent follower-celebrity PSI enhances celebrity endorsers’
credibility and enhances followers’ attitudes toward the advertising and endorsed product
subsequently. Endorser’s trustworthiness and credibility are found to have a positive impact
on brand credibility, since consumers may probably transfer their evaluation of endorser’s
credibility to the brand (Wang and Scheinbaum, 2018). Chung and Cho (2017) also found that
fan-celebrity parasocial relationship (PSR) has positive impacts on source credibility and
brand credibility. Their model also suggested that brand credibility is a mediator between
PSR and PI. Following this logic, when followers view a high PSI celebrity posting brand-
related information on his/her microblog, they may transfer their affection from the celebrity
to the brand and may subsequently enhance their evaluation of the brand’s credibility.
Therefore, the following hypotheses are raised:
H2a. Follower-celebrity PSI positively influences endorsed brand credibility.
H2b. Brand credibility mediates the PSI’s influence on Aad, AP and PI.

Elaboration likelihood model: the moderating role of product involvement

The ELM reveals the underlying influential mechanism of product involvement (Petty et al.,
1983). Product involvement refers to consumers’ thoughts and feelings toward a product
category (Petty and Cacioppo, 1984). It is noteworthy that the product involvement degree is
driven by consumer’s value system; therefore, it is essentially consumer’s response to product
and defined by consumer but not product (Harari et al., 2009). The ELM posits that there are
two distinct routes reacting to persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route. People
will elaborate on object-related information through the central route when facing a high
involvement object. The quality of the argument, such as the cogent and the compelling, is
more effective in attitude and behavioral changes in the central route (Agostinelli and Grube,
2002; Petty et al., 1983). Conversely, people utilize the peripheral route to evaluate object-
related information when facing low-involvement objects. Less effort is devoted to rational
and reasoning processes; therefore, simple cues (such as the celebrity endorser or Internet
website features) have more salient effects on attitude and behavior changes (Ha and
Lennon, 2010).
A celebrity endorser serves as the peripheral cue that aims at arousing a positive attitude
and behavioral intention through associating products with the positive perception of and
affection for a celebrity (Choi et al., 2005; Chaiken and Maheswaran, 1994). Therefore,
celebrity endorsement is more effective and prevalent in promoting low-involvement
products (Choi et al., 2005). Product involvement moderates the influence of the endorser’s Celebrity
characteristics (expertise and attractiveness) on endorsement effectiveness (Harari et al., endorsement
2009; Pornpitakpan, 2003).
The microblog provides a more interactive platform for follower-celebrity PSI, and PSI
on microblog
will strengthen followers’ emotional attachment to a celebrity endorser (James, 2011; Stever
and Lawson, 2013). Emotion has a stronger influence on consumers’ (followers in this study’s
context) attitudes and behavioral intentions in promoting low-involvement products (Chang
and Ko, 2016). Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that PSI has a stronger effect when 1441
promoting low-involvement product through strengthening followers’ emotional attachment
to a celebrity endorser, as the following hypothesis:
H3. Follower-celebrity PSI has a stronger influence on endorsement effectiveness under
the low-involvement product condition rather than under the high-involvement
product condition.
A few studies have explored the synthetic influence of brand credibility and product
involvement on consumer’s attitude and behaviors, such as the customer satisfaction-loyalty
relation (Suh and Youjae, 2006) and service purchasing decision process (Hyun Baek and
Whitehill King, 2011). Both studies found no significant difference in the influence of brand
credibility on the outcome variables between high- and low-involvement products. Wang and
Scheinbaum (2018) found brand credibility has a stronger influence on PI when consumers
are in the high product involvement. To further test the synergy of brand credibility and
product involvement on endorsement effectiveness, the next hypothesis is formulated as
follows:
H4. Brand credibility has a stronger influence on endorsement effectiveness under the
low-involvement product condition rather than under the high- involvement product
condition.

Interrelationship among endorsement effectiveness

The relationships among Aad, AP and PI have been confirmed by a substantial body of
literature: Aad has a positive effect on AP, then AP has a positive subsequent effect on PI (e.g.
Choi and Rifon, 2012; Gong and Li, 2019). Followers are more likely to retweet the
endorsement message if they have favorable attitudes toward the endorsement message on
the microblog, which infers that Aad should be the positive predictor of RI. To further test the
interrelationships among outcome variables and to delineate the complete influential process
of celebrity endorsements within the microblog context, the following hypotheses are
proposed:
H5a. Aad is a positive predictor of AP.
H5b. AP is a positive predictor of PI.
H5c. Aad is a positive predictor of the RI of the endorsement message.

Method
This study employs a 2 (high/low product involvement) by 2 (high/low brand credibility)
between-subjects factorial design experiment to test the hypotheses. Two celebrity endorsers
(a male and a female) were chosen for testing to further enhance the validity of the result.
Before the main experiment, the author conducted a pretest to select the celebrity endorser
and product category for testing. The subjects of the study are chosen from the Sina Weibo
users. Sina Weibo is chosen as the site to conduct the pretest as it holds almost the same scale
of users as Twitter and has loose restrictions on the celebrity endorsement.
APJML Pretest
33,6 To select the celebrity endorsers and product categories for the experiment, an online survey
was conducted as a pretest. The questionnaire included four product categories: skincare
products, mobile phones, clothes and shampoos, which are commonly used for testing
endorsement effectiveness (e.g. Choi, 2002; Goldsmith and Emmert, 1991). Four celebrity
microbloggers for testing (Chen Kun, Yao Chen, Zhao Wei, and He Jiong) ranked the top four
on the Sina Weibo top microbloggers list, and all have more than 40 million followers
1442 on Weibo.
An online survey was conducted (n 5 111). Respondents were asked to rate their
involvement with the four product categories (Likert scale, 1–7) and their PSI with the four
celebrities (Likert scale, 1–5). Among the four products, skincare products have the lowest
product involvement (M 5 5.54, SD 5 1.01). However, the skincare products category is not
significantly different from the shampoo category (M 5 5.59, SD 5 0.72); t (110) 5 0.605,
p 5 0.546). To exclude gender influence in the main experiment, shampoo was selected as the
low-involvement category since skincare products exhibit a significant difference between
males and females (t [109] 5 0.463, p 5 0.002). Mobile phones have the highest product
involvement (M 5 6.04, SD 5 0.77) and were therefore chosen as the high-involvement
product.
The celebrity endorsers for testing were expected to have a large variance because a large
variance degree ensures followers’ variety and allows for the further comparison of followers’
reactions toward endorsement in high and low PSI groups. Chen Kun (M 5 3.35, SD 5 0.886)
and Yao Chen (M 5 3.48, SD 5 0.854) had larger variance than He Jiong (M 5 3.62,
SD 5 0.835) and Zhao Wei (M 5 3.68, SD 5 0.849). Therefore, Chen Kun (CK) and Yao Chen
(YC), who are famous male and female movie stars with around 780 million followers on
Weibo, were chosen as the celebrity endorsers for testing.

Stimulus
The Chinese brand credibility has declined to a level significantly lower than that of
international brands, due to the emerging scandals of Chinese products (Wang and Bian,
2008; Wang, 2010; He, 2006). Nielsen Global Brand-Origin Survey (2016) found that 67% of
Chinese consumers believe that international brand’s product quality was better than the
Chinese local brand. Therefore, the study chooses international brand as a highly credible
brand and Chinese local brand as a low credible brand. In the shampoos, product category
L’Oreal (international brand, high credibility) and Lafang (Chinese brand, low credibility)
were chosen. In the mobile phone category, Samsung [1] (international brand, high credibility)
and Konka (Chinese brand, low credibility) were chosen.
The first 50 messages on YC’s and CK’s microblog were analyzed to ensure the
representativeness of the endorsement message for testing. The results indicated that the
most representative form of promotional messages on their microblog contains texts that
promote the subject’s name and pictures of the product and the celebrity (24 out of 25 original
microblog messages). Hence, eight endorsement messages were created as the stimulus
materials (4 for YC and 4 for CK), which all consisted of the endorser’s photo cut out from the
celebrity microblog and a statement in the form of a sentence.

Procedure
We executed the experiment through Sojump, an online research service provider. The
respondents were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions (two endorsers each with two
products and two brands). A total of 540 respondents completed the questionnaire. To
enhance the reliability of the online participants’ answers, respondents that used fewer than
180 seconds were further excluded. Finally, 452 validated questionnaires were collected;
44.5% (n 5 201) of the participants were male and 55.5% (n 5 251) were female. The age of Celebrity
the participants ranged from 18 to 68 years, M 5 31.18, SD 5 7.002. endorsement
on microblog
Measurement
Follower-celebrity PSI. The original PSI scale was developed in the traditional mass media
context by soap opera character studies (Rubin et al., 1985; Rubin and McHugh, 1987); some 1443
items do not fit the social media context, such as “If my favorite soap opera character
appeared on another TV program, I would watch that program” and “I look forward to
watching my favorite soap opera character on tomorrow’s episode.” As a result, the author
excluded these two items and partially used the five-point PSI Likert scale (Auter and
Palmgreen, 2000; Rubin et al., 1985; Rubin and McHugh, 1987) to measure this variable
(8 items, α 5 0.903, M 5 3.41, SD 5 0.828).
Product involvement. Several items in Zaichkowsky’s original scale (1994) have a similar
meaning in Chinese due to translation ambiguity. As a result, the author excluded some
synonymous items in Chinese and partially used the seven-point semantic differential scales
to measure product involvement, including six items: important-unimportant, relevant-
irrelevant, valuable-worthless, appealing-unappealing, exciting-unexciting and needed-not
needed (α 5 0.868).
Brand credibility. Brand credibility was measured on a nine-point Likert scale (Erdem and
Swait, 1998). The measurement consisted of six items (α 5 0.895), including “the brand
delivers what it promises,” “claims from the brand are believable,” “my experience with the
brand has led me to expect it to keep its promises,” “the brand is committed to delivering on its
claim,” “the brand has a name I can trust” and “the brand has the ability to deliver what it
promises.”
Attitudes toward the celebrity endorsement/endorsed product. Aad and AP were measured
by the established attitude measure scale (seven-point semantic differential scale)
(Henthorne et al., 1993), including good/bad, favorable/unfavorable, interesting/boring
and pleasant/unpleasant (For Aad, α 5 0.917, M 5 4.94 and SD 5 1.18; for AP, α 5 0.910,
M 5 5.29 and SD 5 1.05).
Purchase intention and retweet intention. PI and RI were measured by a one 7-point Likert
scale question, respectively, probable/improbable (Lafferty and Goldsmith, 1999; Yi, 1990).
The respondents were asked how likely it was that they would consider buying the endorsed
product and retweet the endorsement message.
The correlation matrix is presented in Table 1. A collinearity test was run in SPSS to
detect multicollinearity. The variance inflation factor (VIF) values in all the models were
under 4, which indicated that variables did not contain problematic collinearity.

Result
Manipulation check
Significant differences were observed in the credibility levels between the international
brands and the Chinese brands as indicated by the results of two independent-samples
t-tests in SPSS 23. The credibility of L’Oreal (M 5 7.12, SD 5 1.13) was significantly
higher than Lafang (M 5 6.54, SD 5 1.21); t (222) 5 3.649, p < 0.001. The credibility of
Samsung (M 5 7.18, SD 5 1.14) was significantly higher than Konka (M 5 6.23,
SD 5 1.35); t (226) 5 5.736, p < 0.001. Another manipulation check was executed to assess
the different involvement levels of the two products. The involvement level of shampoos
(M 5 5.75, SD 5 0.87) was significantly lower than mobile phones (M 5 6.09, SD 5 0.73);
t (450) 5 4.59, p < 0.001, as expected.
APJML Attitude Attitude
33,6 Brand Parasocial Product towards towards Retweet Purchase
credibility interaction involvement advertising product intention intention

Brand
credibility
Parasocial 0.443**
1444 interaction
Product 0.385** 0.257**
involvement
Attitude 0.528** 0.651** 0.264**
toward
advertising
Attitude 0.764** 0.540** 0.308** 0.680**
toward
product
Retweet 0.460** 0.699** 0.196** 0.775** 0.626**
intention
Table 1. Purchase 0.676** 0.545** 0.222** 0.629** 0.806** 0.659**
Correlation matrix of intention
the key
variance (N 5 452) Note(s): **p < 0.01

Multiple-groups analysis
The respondents were classified according to four different brand products, including
L’Oreal (n 5 115), Lafang (n 5 109), Samsung (n 5 113) and Konka (n 5 115). The descriptive
statistics of dependent variables under the four conditions and their correlations are
summarized in Table 2 and Figure 1. We conducted a multivariate analysis of the variance
(MANOVA) to compare respondents’ Aad, AP, PI and RI under four different experimental
conditions. The Box’s M value of 54.841 was associated with a p-value of 0.005, which is
acceptable to assume equal covariance matrices between the groups and satisfies the
assumptions to conduct the one-way MANOVA (Meyers et al., 2006; Huberty and
Petoskey, 2000).
We executed a one-way MANOVA in SPSS 23. A statistically significant MANOVA effect
obtained Pillai’s Trace 5 0.144, F (12, 1341) 5 5.646, p < 0.001, partial η2 5 0.048. The result of
a series of Levene’s F tests suggested that the assumption of variance homogeneity of DVs
was satisfied (p > 0.05). Further one-way ANOVA tests were used to examine the univariate
main effects. Significant univariate main effects for the product categories were obtained for
AP, F (3, 449) 5 11.505, p < 0.001, partial η2 5 0.072, power 5 1.00; and for PI,
F (3, 449) 5 10.544, p < 0.001, partial η2 5 0.066, power 5 0.999. But there are no significant
univariate effects for Aad and RI. Finally, a series of post hoc analyses indicate that the mean
scores for AP are statistically significantly different between L’Oreal and Lafang (p 5 0.024),
between L’Oreal and Konka (p < 0.001), between Samsung and Konka (p < 0.001) and between
Samsung and Lafang (p 5 0.041). The mean scores for PI between L’Oreal and Konka
(p < 0.001), Samsung and Konka (p < 0.001) and Langfang and Konka (p 5 0.01) are also
significantly different.
The attitudes toward Samsung and L’Oreal are significantly higher than that of Lafang
and Konka, which indicates that the respondents have more favorable attitudes toward high
credibility brands than toward low credibility brands, despite different levels of product
involvement. The respondents reported the lowest PI (statistically significantly lower than
for the other three products) toward Konka, which represented high product involvement and
low brand credibility. But under the low product involvement condition, there is no
Variables M SD N
Celebrity
endorsement
Attitudes toward advertising L’oreal 4.963 1.27055 115 on microblog
Langfang 4.9381 0.94841 109
Sansumg 4.9801 1.26206 113
Konka 4.8826 1.20412 115
Attitudes toward product L’oreal 5.5587 0.87065 115
Langfang 5.1743 0.98219 109 1445
Sansumg 5.5354 1.05532 113
Konka 4.8848 1.12697 115
Retweet intention L’oreal 5.22 1.19 115
Langfang 4.86 1.391 109
Sansumg 5.11 1.391 113
Konka 4.3 1.439 115
Purchase Iintention L’oreal 4.29 1.853 115
Langfang 4.24 1.672 109
Sansumg 4.17 1.787 113
Konka 4.08 1.841 115
Note(s): Sample size 5 452. N stands for the respondents in each condition. L’oreal represents the high brand Table 2.
credibility and low product involvement condition; Lafang represents the low brand credibility and low Descriptive statics for
product involvement condition; Samsung represents the high brand credibility and high product involvement effectiveness variables
condition; Konka represents the low brand credibility and high product involvement condition in four conditions

Attitudes towards Advertising Attitudes towards Product

5.6 5.6 Low product involvement

5.4 5.4
5.2 5.2
Low product involvement
5 5
High product involvement
4.8 High product involvement 4.8
4.6 4.6
4.4 4.4
4.2 4.2
4 4
Low brand credibility High brand credibility Low brand credibility High brand credibility

Retweet Intention Purchase Intention

5.6
5.6
5.4
Low product involvement 5.4
5.2
5.2
5 5
4.8 4.8
4.6 4.6
4.4 High product involvement 4.4
Figure 1.
Low product involvement
4.2 4.2
Endorsement
4 4 High product involvement effectiveness in
Low brand credibility High brand credibility Low brand credibility High brand credibility different conditions

significant difference between Lafang and L’Oreal. This suggests that brand credibility plays
a more important role in respondents’ purchase decisions relative to high-involvement
products.
APJML Structural equation modeling
33,6 Structural equation modeling was further conducted to test the hypotheses in AMOS 23. The
variables of the model were assessed in terms of composite reliability (CR) and convergent
validity (Table 3). The CR for all the constructs is greater than 0.844. Besides, all the scores for
average variance extracted (AVE) were above 0.50. Furthermore, the AVE for all factors is
greater than the square of their correlation and was greater than both the maximum shared
variance (MSV), which indicates that each construct differs from the other related constructs
1446 (Hair et al., 2010).
The overall model fit was acceptable: χ 2 (238) 5 534.158, p < 0.001; TLI 5 0.960, CFI 5 0.965,
RMSEA 5 0.053. The results suggest that PSI has positive effect on Aad (β 5 0.492, p < 0.001),
PI (β 5 0.124, p < 0.001) and RI (β 5 0.351, p < 0.001), while PSI’s influence on AP is
insignificant (β 5 0.042, p > 0.05). H1 addressed the influence of brand credibility. The results
showed that brand credibility is a significant positive predictor of Aad (β 5 0.311, p < 0.001)
and AP (β 5 0.632, p < 0.001), while it does not have a salient effect on PI (β 5 0.006, p > 0.05)
and RI (β 5 0.004, p > 0.05). H1a and H1b were supported, while H1c and H1d were rejected.
The result confirms that PSI has a significant positive effect on brand credibility (β 5 0.496,
p < 0.001). Therefore, brand credibility is suggested to be a mediator between PSI and Aad and
AP (two-tailed significant bootstrap confidence of indirect effects for Aad and AP are
p 5 0.001). H2a and H2b are supported. Aad is a salient positive predictor of AP (β 5 0.349,
p < 0.001) and RI (β 5 0.562, p < 0.001), and AP is a salient positive predictor of PI (β 5 0.773,
p < 0.001). Hence, H5a, H5b and H5c are all supported.
The non-significant relationships were removed to refine the model, including the paths
(1) from the PSI to AP, and (2) from the brand credibility to PI and RI. None of the removed
paths resulted in significant changes in chi-square. The revised model is a better model fit:
χ 2 (241) 5 535.199, p < 0.001; TLI 5 0.961, CFI 5 0.966, RMSEA 5 0.052. The refined model
was chosen as the final model, the standardized coefficients of which are summarized in
Figure 2.

The moderating effects of product involvement

H3 and H4 address the moderating role of product involvement. The entire data set was
divided according to the different conditions: high (n 5 228) and low (n 5 224) product
involvement. We conducted a multi-group invariance analysis. The difference between
unconstrained model (x2 5 1557.9, df 5 682) and fully constrained model (x2 5 1585.9,
df 5 710) is insignificant (Δx2 5 28, Δx2df 5 28, p 5 0.464), which means high- and low-
involvement groups are not different in model level and could further conduct multi-group
analysis.
First, the unconstrained models and the constrained models were run for split data
(according to the different experimental conditions) for comparison. Then, a chi-square
difference test was executed to compare the model differences across groups. The chi-square

CR AVE MSV MaxR(H) Cronbach’s α

Parasocial interaction 0.904 0.542 0.490 0.980 0.903

Brand credibility 0.844 0.584 0.335 0.947 0.895
Product involvement 0.875 0.545 0.149 0.975 0.868
Attitude toward advertising 0.912 0.722 0.549 0.913 0.917
Table 3. Attitude toward product 0.919 0.739 0.549 0.968 0.910
Test of the Note(s): CR: composite reliability; AVE: average variance extracted; MSV: maximum shared variance:
measurement scale maximum reliability
 Product Involvement Celebrity
endorsement
on microblog
Brand Credibility
0.308***
Attitudes towards
advertising
0.496***
0.636*** 0.378***
1447
0.548*** Attitude towards
product
Parasocial Interaction 0.348*** 0.764***
Figure 2.
Purchase Intention Final model of
influence of brand
0.132*** credibility, PSI and
Retweet Intention 0.569*** product involvement
on celebrity
endorsement on
Note(s): χ2 (241) = 535.199, p < 0.001; TLI = 0.961, CFI = 0.966, RMSEA = 0.052. microblog
***p < 0.001

differences of the models are not significant between high- and low product involvement
(Δx2 5 37.313, Δx2df 5 26, p 5 0.07). Next, each path was fixed, one by one, to compare the chi-
square differences across groups (high vs. low involvement). These results are summarized in
Table 4. It can be confirmed that the conditional factors (product involvement) have a
moderating effect between independent variables and dependent variables if the path
coefficients of IV vary significantly across the different experiment groups (Kline, 2015).
There is no significant difference in the path coefficients of PSI to Aad, PSI to RI and PSI to
PI between the high and low product involvement groups. Therefore, H3 was rejected and
product involvement does not moderate the effect of PSI on Aad, RI and PI on the microblog.
The chi-square differences are significant in the path coefficients of brand credibility to
Aad (Δx2 5 9.535, Δx2df 5 1, p 5 0.002) and AP (Δx2 5 4.498, Δx2df 5 1, p 5 0.034), which
suggests that product involvement is a moderator between brand credibility and Aad and
AP. The results indicate that the power of brand credibility’s influence on Aad and AP is
stronger under low product involvement conditions than for high product involvement
conditions. H4 was supported.

High Low χ2 High brand Low brand

Fixed path χ 2 difference involvement involvement difference credibility credibility

PSI →Aad 0.478 0.596 0.616 0.181 0.554 0.627

PSI →RI 3.66 0.364 0.357 0.025 0.368 0.347
PSI →PI 0.867 0.137 0.146 0.837 0.173 0.143
Brand 9.535 0.324 0.374 – – –
credibility (p 5 0.002)
→Aad
Brand 4.498 0.589 0.742 – – –
credibility (p 5 0.0339) Table 4.
→AP Chi-square differences
Note(s): Δdf 5 1. PSI means “parasocial interaction”; Aad means “attitudes toward advertising”; AP means across groups after
“attitudes toward product”; RI means “Retweet Intention”; PI means “purchase intention” fixing paths
APJML Discussion
33,6 Based on the PSI literature, source credibility model and ELM, this study explores the
synergic of PSI, brand credibility and product involvement on celebrity endorsement within a
social media context. The source of a celebrity endorsement includes celebrity endorser,
brand and product type. The findings of this study reveal the interrelationship and synthetic
influence of these three factors and could further reflect a comprehensive information
processing mechanism of celebrity endorsement on social media.
1448 This study reinforces the pivotal role of PSI within the microblog context. PSI has a
significant effect on Aad, RI and PI regardless of the different involvement product
categories, and further confirms that PSI has a positive impact on brand credibility.
Importantly, PSI is the only factor that has a significant influence on RI and PI in the model,
which is noteworthy since the two behavioral intentions are crucial outcome variables for
celebrity endorsement. If followers are willing to retweet an endorsement message, the
advertising could be seen by their fans, which increases the potential size of the advertising
audience.
Brand credibility has a positive impact on consumers’ attitudes on the microblog, which is
consistent with previous studies conducted in the traditional mass media context (e.g. Baird
and Parasnis, 2011; Goldsmith et al., 2000). Results further reveal that brand credibility
mediates the relationship between PSI and advertising effectiveness. However, brand
credibility does not have salient direct effects on the two behavioral intentions. One probable
explanation for brand credibility not affecting RI is that followers may view a brand-related
message as advertising. The microblog is also a social media channel through which
followers have connections with their friends (Java et al., 2007). Even though the respondents
have favorable attitudes toward the brands, they may not retweet the advertising messages
to their microblog. Brand credibility contributes to the RI and PI through its influence on
attitudes, rather than influencing them directly.
Product involvement moderates brand credibility’s influence on Aad and AP. Followers
will make less effort to digest the message content in low product involvement condition and
rely on their previous impressions and evaluations of the brand to form their attitudes.
Conversely, they adopt the central route to elaborate the argument when they see a high-
involvement product endorsement message on the microblog. The magnitude of the effect of
brand credibility, although still significant under this condition, is weaker.

Theoretical implications
This study is the primary attempt to construct an integral model to demonstrate the synthetic
effect and interaction process of consumers’ perception of the endorser, brand and product
category factors on celebrity endorsement within the social media context. The findings
provide certain theoretical implications. First, the study further highlights the importance of
PSI on advertising effectiveness within a social media context. PSI has positive impacts not
only on endorsement effectiveness but also on brand credibility. The findings provide
empirical evidence to support that PSI will not only strengthen follower’s favor toward the
celebrity (Song and Zinkhan, 2008) but will also transfer their favor to enhance their brand
attitude and even their evaluation of brand credibility. Future research could further explore
the influence of PSI on consumer-based brand equity since brand credibility contributes to
consumer-based brand equity.
Second, the study extends our understanding of source credibility model within a social
media context. It is noteworthy that brand credibility is the only one that has a significant
positive direct effect on AP among the three influential factors and brand credibility mediates
the relationship between PSI and consumers’ attitudes. This is supplementary evidence to
support that brand credibility is also part of source credibility (Lafferty and Goldsmith, 1999)
and is prominent for successful social media marketing campaigns. It is probably because the Celebrity
brand credibility can enhance customers’ security of advertising information on celebrity’s endorsement
microblog, and then consumers would transfer their favor attitude from the celebrity to the
endorsed product.
on microblog
Third, the study further examined the moderation role of product involvement celebrity
endorsement within a social media context and has theoretical implications for ELM. PSI has
a significant effect on Aad, RI and PI regardless of the different involvement product
categories. Although previous literature suggests that the celebrity endorser serves as a 1449
peripheral cue and the influences of celebrity endorsement are moderated by product
involvement (Petty et al., 1983), this study provides empirical evidence to support that the
celebrity endorsement strategy can also be effective in promoting high product involvement
on microblog with a high PSI celebrity endorser. The finding also provides preliminary
empirical evidence that brand credibility serves as a peripheral cue rather than central cue
during consumers’ information process on the microblog. Future studies should further test
the influence of brand credibility on social media advertising effectiveness in different
product involvement conditions.

Implications for advertising strategy

Although the advertising regulation of Weibo may have some differences from that of
Twitter and other microblog service, findings from this study also have practical implication
for global microblog service providers and advertisers since the advertising revenue
accounts for major share of microblog platform and microblog has also become a crucial
media advertising channel (Chu et al., 2016). First, the advertiser should prefer a high PSI
celebrity as its endorser. Compared to the celebrity’s characteristics (such as attractiveness
and credibility), which lie in audiences’ perceptions, the PSI degree of the celebrity
microbloggers has more objective statistical indicators. Brand could choose their endorser
based on the followers, retweet, comment and interaction number of celebrity microblog.
The advertising message design on the microblog also deserves the attention of
advertisers. The stimulation in this study, which consisted of the celebrity’s photo and a
statement about the product, turned out to ensure PSI’s significant effect on advertising
effectiveness across different product involvement groups. Therefore, if the design of the
advertising messages on microblog can draw followers’ attachment from the celebrity to the
endorsed products, it can achieve a good persuasion effect even in high-involvement product
categories.
Besides, subtle combinations of a celebrity’s photo and the product, and making a
statement more like a recommendation rather than an advertisement would make
endorsement campaigns more successful. Moreover, because brand credibility’s effect is
more salient under low product involvement conditions, messages should emphasize the
brand when promoting low-involvement products, and spotlight product function when
promoting high-involvement products.

Limitation and future research

Although this study provides several valuable insights for understanding celebrity
endorsement on the microblog, it also has several limitations. First, the measurements of
PSI used in this study were established based on previous studies conducted within the
traditional mass media context (Auter and Palmgreen, 2000; Rubin and McHugh, 1987).
Several items that were more focused on followers’ PSI in the traditional mass media, such as
“I hope to see him/her on TV,” while other crucial indicators on social media, such as
“perceived interactivity,” are not included in the PSI scale. Moreover, the two behavioral
APJML intentions were only measured using a simple question. Future studies are needed to further
33,6 establish scales to measure these concepts within the social media context.
It is noteworthy that the celebrity’s response to followers on the microblog, even though
such a reaction is rare, may enhance PSI through strengthening the mutual awareness
between followers and celebrity. A future study could test the influence of PSI on followers if
the celebrity has an actual response to followers’ comment or message to advance our
recognition of the interaction and “imaginative” interaction.
1450 Besides, the tested endorsement messages stand alone in the questionnaire with no other
surrounding messages, which is different from that on the real microblog platform. This
inevitably reduces the external validity of this study. Data mining research on these big data
can provide more reliable outcome variables for testing the influential factors and provide
profound insights for understanding the celebrity endorsement mechanism.
This study focuses on the effects of the source (brand credibility) and audience (product
involvement and PSI) factors. The message is also an essential factor in the Hovland-Yale
model (Hovland et al., 1953). The microblogging platform allows more complicated formats
and combinations of the message, and endorsement messages are blurred with daily
messages which make the advertising message more obscure. Future research on the
influence of different message compositions, different placement strategies (explicit vs
implicit) and different posting ways (created vs retweet) could provide more in-depth insights
for the celebrity endorsement mechanism on microblog.
Finally, the results were drawn from only two celebrity microbloggers and two product
categories, and the data were collected on Weibo in China, thus limiting the generalizability of
the findings. Besides, the brand personality, the product type (e.g. fast-moving consumer
goods vs durable goods; hedonic vs utilitarian) and the celebrity-product congruence also
have impacts on endorsement effectiveness (Nashtaee et al., 2017) and brand credibility. It is
recommended that the model be further assessed for more types of celebrity and product
categories on more social media channels within more cultural contexts.

Conclusion
This study explored the influence of source factor and audience factor on celebrity
endorsement effectiveness through an experiment. PSI was confirmed to be a positive
predictor of Aad, PI and RI, a salient feature regardless of high/low brand credibility and
product involvement. Brand credibility has a positive effect on followers’ attitudes toward
advertising and products and its influence is moderated by product involvement. This study
also provides empirical evidence for the causality relationships of attitude and behavioral
intention within microblog context: attitude toward advertising has a positive effect on RI. In
summary, the celebrity endorsement strategy could have a positive effect for both high/low
credibility brands and high/low involvement products on social media with the proper
selection of high PSI celebrity endorsers.

Note
1. The data were collected in 2015, before the Samsung Note 7 battery explosion incident.

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Corresponding author
Wanqi Gong can be contacted at: yunkigong@gmail.com

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