*Joyce Cheah Lynn-Sze, Goh Pei Wen

Abstract:

The growing trend of using entertainment celebrities for advertising is evident in the business world today, particularly Korean celebrities. Due to the highly competitive market, planning effective persuasive communication strategies is certainly the main challenge businesses face when attracting customers. In this context, the objective of this paper is to identify the persuasive factors of celebrity which influence audience purchase intention. This paper also seeks to explore the characteristics of celebrity that are most appealing to the audience. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 informants who are Hyun Bin’s fans from Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea. The findings demonstrate that the persuasive factors of celebrity endorser which influence customer intention to purchase consist of source credibility, source attractiveness and popularity appeal. Additionally, characteristics such as likeability, expertise and trustworthiness in a celebrity are found to be most appealing to the audience.

Keywords: Celebrity endorsement, persuasive communication, persuasive factors, celebrity characteristics, source credibility theory