Paper Type
Short
Paper Number
PACIS2025-1829
Description
Celebrity endorsement has become a cornerstone of firms' advertising strategies, serving as a powerful tool to capture consumer attention. In the digital era, the proliferation of social media has amplified the impact of celebrity endorsements, enabling brands to rapidly disseminate promotional content while also posing significant risks. Still, the current understanding of cross-channel impacts from the online social media scandals to the offline sales is limited. There is also a lack of understanding about the response strategies from both celebrity endorsers and the brand. Utilizing a unique scanner sales dataset from a major offline supermarket chain in China, we employ a difference-in-differences model to quantify these effects. Our analysis suggests that apologies from celebrity endorsers can effectively reduce consumer backlash. However, the power of brands' responses has limited effectiveness in mitigating the negative impact of scandals. These insights contribute to a more profound understanding of crisis management in celebrity endorsement.
Recommended Citation
Liu, Tinghe; Huang, Yuxin; Zhang, Ying; Zhang, Cheng; and Wang, Xinwei, "Investigating Celebrity and Brand Response Strategies to Online Social Media Firestorms" (2025). PACIS 2025 Proceedings. 20.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2025/sm_digcollab/sm_digcollab/20
Investigating Celebrity and Brand Response Strategies to Online Social Media Firestorms
Celebrity endorsement has become a cornerstone of firms' advertising strategies, serving as a powerful tool to capture consumer attention. In the digital era, the proliferation of social media has amplified the impact of celebrity endorsements, enabling brands to rapidly disseminate promotional content while also posing significant risks. Still, the current understanding of cross-channel impacts from the online social media scandals to the offline sales is limited. There is also a lack of understanding about the response strategies from both celebrity endorsers and the brand. Utilizing a unique scanner sales dataset from a major offline supermarket chain in China, we employ a difference-in-differences model to quantify these effects. Our analysis suggests that apologies from celebrity endorsers can effectively reduce consumer backlash. However, the power of brands' responses has limited effectiveness in mitigating the negative impact of scandals. These insights contribute to a more profound understanding of crisis management in celebrity endorsement.
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