CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT AND CUSTOMERS' PURCHASE OF SMARTPHONES IN YENAGOA METROPOLIS.

Abstract

The literature recognises celebrities as social influencers. As influencers, celebrities possess

the capacity to modulate followers’ decisions. This paper investigates celebrities' role in

purchasing smartphones in Yenagoa, Nigeria. Five specific objectives were stated in this study.

Five (5) hypotheses were formulated and tested in this study based on celebrities' attributes.

The survey research method was adopted for these study.350 copies of a semi-structured and

self-administered questionnaire were distributed to conveniently selected residents of Yenagoa

Bayelsa state; with the aid of SPSS 23.0, multiple linear regression was employed to test the

formulated hypotheses at a 5% level of significance. The report shows that celebrity

endorsement accounts for about 52% increase in sales of smartphones. Specifically, all the

celebrity attributes exhibits a positive relationship with customers' purchase of smartphones.

The research further reports that all the celebrity attributes except celebrity cultural beliefs

had a significant relationship with the purchase of smartphones. This paper recommends that

marketing managers be cautious in choosing celebrities for product endorsement purposes if

their aspiration for marketplace dominance is to be achieved.