The Impact of Celebrity and the Spokesperson’s Ethnicity on Country-of-Origin Effects

Advertisers in the U.S. continue to employ celebrities of various ethnic origins in advertising campaigns. At the same time, with greater regularity, more products are appearing in the market place from different countries. This study examined the impact of celebrity and the spokesperson’s ethnicity and country-of-origin (CO) on consumer evaluations of a product. The results suggest that advertisers need to be less concerned about the ethnicity of the spokesperson than CO and celebrity. The former did not appear to affect the communications effectiveness or purchase intention. However, both CO and celebrity status of the spokesperson affected the communications effectiveness as well as purchase intention.