Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 874–879

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Business Research

Print advertising: Celebrity presenters

John R. Rossiter a,b,⁎, Ale Smidts c,⁎
a
University of Wollongong, Australia
b
Bergische University of Wuppertal, Germany
c
Erasmus University, The Netherlands

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study validates Rossiter and Percy's (1987) hook theory of presenter characteristics, for celebrity
Received 1 January 2010 presenters. Firstly, by employing a product-alone control group, the study demonstrates that some celebrity-
Received in revised form 1 March 2010 product pairings have a good fit and can persuade whereas others have no effect or represent such an
Accepted 1 April 2010
obviously poor fit that they dissuade consumers from buying the product. Secondly, the study suggests that
Available online 26 January 2011
good fit, and thus persuasion, for celebrity presenters, depends on the audience immediately perceiving that
Keywords:
the celebrity is an expert user of the product (for all products) and is a positive role model (for high-risk
Celebrity presenter characteristics products). On the other hand, the study reveals that failure of any of four of the celebrity's characteristics
Hook versus linear conceptualization causes dissuasion by celebrity presenters; these failures include lack of high visibility (i.e., not widely well-
of characteristics known), perceived inexpertness as a user of the product (a strong negative hook that is probably the reason
Persuasion and dissuasion for the poor fit perception), lack of trust (though this is a weak dissuasive factor for celebrities) and,
paradoxically, the celebrity being too likable (for low-risk products). Thirdly, the hook(s) conceptualization of
presenter characteristics is superior to the conventional linear conceptualization in that a hook-scored
regression model accounted for the same amount of variance in persuasion–dissuasion as did the linear model
(adjusted R2s of 41% vs. 43%) despite the hook model's handicap of at least one-third lower possible R2 due to
trichotomization of 7-point ratings into positive, neutral, and negative hooks.
© 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction credibility (Patzer, 1985). Thus, five specific presenter characteristics

A major strategic decision in advertising is whether or not to use a
presenter. Executionally, thereafter, the decision evolves into what
characteristics the presenter should have to maximally influence
persuasion. Rossiter and Percy (1987) propose a hook theory of the
way presenters' characteristics operate; in contrast with all other
theories of presenter effects, hook theory postulates that presenters'
characteristics work in a positive threshold manner (and sometimes in a
negative threshold manner) rather than in a positive, linear manner.
Rossiter and Percy's (1987) VisCAP model of presenter character-
istics incorporates hook theory. The theory's characteristics are
visibility (widely well-known, necessary for celebrity presenters and
creatable via advertising for “real people” presenters and animated
characters), credibility (expertise and trustworthiness), attraction
(likability and role-model identification), and power (for coercive
persuasion that rarely applies except in public service advertising).
Some presenter theories postulate that physical (facial) attractiveness
is also persuasive but this is merely because it heightens perceived
⁎ Corresponding authors. Rossiter is to be contacted at Faculty of Commerce,
University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia. Smidts, Rotterdam School of
Management, Erasmus University, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
E-mail addresses: john_rossiter@uow.edu.au (J.R. Rossiter), ASmidts@rsm.nl
(A. Smidts).
are relevant for advertising: visibility or well-knownness, expertise,
trustworthiness, likability, and role-model identification.
The present study compares hook theory with the conventional
linear effects theory of presenter characteristics in ads. This
comparison is important for theory and for practice. The conventional
academic theory of presenter (or source) effects implies a “more the
better” model of the presenter's characteristics in which any positive
degree of perceived possession of the characteristic is thought to be
effective. Hook theory, on the other hand, proposes a “threshold”
model in which the presenter has to be perceived as very high on
relevant characteristics if they are to influence persuasion. This “very
high” perception has to be immediate and thus can be appropriately
described as constituting a “hook.” For example, if trustworthiness is a
relevant characteristic, which it undoubtedly is for “real people”
presenters (see especially the CESLIP model, an extension of the
earlier VisCAP model, in Rossiter and Bellman, 2005, pp. 177–187),
then the presenter must be perceived, immediately, as very highly
trustworthy, otherwise the endorsement will not work. “Real people”
presenters are hired mainly because they have a positive trustwor-
thiness hook, which gives them high source credibility despite their
often-low expertise. Another instance of a necessary hook is a
presenter endorsing high-risk “transformational” consumer products
such as expensive fashion wear or luxury holiday resorts; target-
audience consumers must perceive a very high degree of role-model

0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.01.010
 J.R. Rossiter, A. Smidts / Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 874–879
identification with the presenter before they will commit to taking
action.
Functionally, hooks are “thresholds,” above which persuasion is
maximally influenced and below which the characteristic either does
not have any effect on persuasion or, if very low, has a negative effect
(i.e., dissuasion). Dissuasion, first documented in advertising pretests
of celebrity presenters by the McCollum–Spielman research company
(1980), is the outcome when a poorly chosen presenter hurts sales of
a new product and results in fewer people buying it than if it had been
launched on its own. Only the (positive and negative) hook theory of
presenter characteristics postulates both persuasion and dissuasion.
In academic advertising research, failure to acknowledge threshold
functions in the way variables operate results in many questionable
and possibly misleading findings when the independent variables are
measured in the usual continuous manner (typically with “7-point
scales”). Using 7-point scales, many academic researchers have found
what appears to be a positive linear relationship between, say, the
presenter's perceived expertise and brand purchase intention (e.g.,
Ohanian, 1991). However, the significant positive correlation could be
the result of the often small proportion of consumers who perceive
the presenter to have very high expertise (say 6 or 7 on the 7-point
scale) and who are the only individuals persuaded (and thus they
have scores of 6 or 7 on the 7-point purchase intention scale). That is,
both variables could operate in a threshold manner but this is
obscured in a linear correlation or linear regression coefficient. The
difference in interpretation between a threshold model and a linear
model has important implications for managers. From the linear
correlation results, managers might conclude, as most academics
would, that any degree of perceived expertise is sufficient to
guarantee persuasion. This is especially likely to be the erroneous
conclusion drawn when persuasion is reported as a group mean score
(e.g., 4.5 on a 1-to-7 uni-polar purchase intention scale). As Rossiter
and Percy (1987) point out, mean purchase intention scores are
uninformative about the proportion of consumers who were actually
persuaded (other than allowing the trivial statistical inference that
the higher the mean, the more people will have scored above it and
therefore fall into the “high” persuaded category). Group mean
persuasion scores, common in academic research, do not measure
persuasion because they are the confounded mixture of the incidence
of people persuaded and the degree to which each is persuaded.
Most advertising managers do not actually measure the char-
acteristics that potential presenters possess when selecting a
presenter for a campaign. Instead, most managers make an intuitive
judgment based on other people's (such as the imagined target
audience's) likely extreme perceptions. For example, when managers
choose a presenter because he or she is a role model for the target
audience, such as Britney Spears may be for young women's casual
clothing or young women's cosmetic products, they base this
judgment on the intuition that most young women in the target
audience age group identify very highly with the presenter. In doing
so, managers are implicitly using a threshold – or hook – model.
The present study tests the hook conceptualization vs. the linear
conceptualization of presenter characteristics, comparing the relative
ability of the alternative conceptualizations to explain persuasion by
comparing (adjusted) R2s. The experiment is based on presenter-
product combinations in the merely associational format favored in
contemporary print advertisements featuring a celebrity. In the
experiment, each celebrity is paired with a high-fit product and a
low-fit product to provide sufficient variance on the hypothesized
essential celebrity presenter characteristic of perceived user exper-
tise. User expertise is product-category specific and thus it varies
within presenter for different products (hence high-fit vs. low-fit
products). The other characteristics – visibility, trustworthiness,
likability, role-model identification, and (though not used here)
power – are fixed for the individual presenter and do not change with
the particular product that the presenter is endorsing.
875
2. Hypotheses
H1. The hook formulation of presenter's characteristics predicts
persuasion equally as well as the linear formulation.
The hypothesis of equal prediction is made because although the
hook formulation is expected to be more predictive, hook scoring of
the presenter's characteristics is trichotomous for well-knownness
and expertise and is effectively dichotomous, due to minimal
incidence of negative hooks, for trust, likability, and role-model
identification and these truncations substantially reduce the variance
available for prediction. Simulations by Cohen (1983) suggest that
dichotomization reduces the bivariate R2 by 35% if the predictor
variable is dichotomized at the median, and Irwin and McClelland
(2003) estimate a 42% reduction in R2 if the dichotomization is at the
70th percentile, which is where positive hooks (6 +/ 7) were split in
the present study. The reduction in multivariate variance accounted
for (by R2) is even worse with multiple predictors that are
dichotomized or trichotomized. A very conservative estimate,
therefore, would be a one-third (33%) loss in the possibly attainable
R2 due to hook scoring of the predictors. Consequently, equal
prediction by R2 (adjusted for the number of predictors) would
demonstrate superior theoretical performance of the hook model
given its statistical handicap.
The superiority of the hook conceptualization of presenter's
characteristics should, however, be manifest in another way. The hook
conceptualization allows both positive and negative hooks for each
characteristic and expects them to be especially prevalent for two of the
characteristics, perceived expertise and role-model identification.
Thus, consumers who perceive that the celebrity has very low
expertise as a user of the product should be dissuaded rather than
unaffected (see H3). Similarly, consumers who report very low
identification with the celebrity may see him or her as a “negative”
role model and thus should be dissuaded, especially if the celebrity is
endorsing a high-risk product (see H6). In the conventional linear
conceptualization of presenter characteristics, dissuasion effects
cannot be captured because what is revealed is either a nonsignificant
effect (i.e., no persuasion) or a significant positive effect (i.e.,
persuasion).
The remaining hypotheses make predictions of which particular
presenter characteristics will be significant predictors of persuasion.
As noted, celebrity presenters were chosen for the experiment.
Rossiter and Bellman's (2005) CESLIP model update of Rossiter and
Percy's (1987, 1997) VisCAP model of presenter characteristics
hypothesizes the following, for celebrities:
H2. Visibility is a positive and negative predictor. That is, a positive
well-knownness hook is persuasive whereas a negative hook whereby
the celebrity is perceived as little known will be dissuasive.
H3. Expertise is a positive and negative predictor. Indeed, the
expectation is that expertise is the strongest predictor because each
celebrity endorses both a high-fit product and low-fit product and
perceived fit for celebrities is primarily based on perceived expertise
as a user of the product category.
H4. Trustworthiness is not a positive predictor. All celebrities are
expected to be granted only moderate, not high, trustworthiness as
“obviously paid” spokespersons (whereas, for “real people” presen-
ters, high trustworthiness is essential).
H5. Likability is a positive predictor if the presenter is endorsing a
low-risk product. Again, too few celebrities are expected to be very
disliked to make this a negative predictor.
H6. Role-model identification is a positive and negative predictor if
the presenter is endorsing a high-risk product.
876 J.R. Rossiter, A. Smidts / Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 874–879
3. Experiment
3.1. Overview
The experiment examines the persuasive effectiveness of celebrity
presenters in the associational advertising format, in which the
celebrity is paired with the product without an explicit endorsement
being made. With the associational format, there is no possible
confounding of presenter characteristics with message characteristics.
(The associational format is now common in celebrity print ads.
Widely known examples are magazine ads for luxury watches where,
for instance, Brad Pitt is associated with a Tag Heuer watch and Nicole
Kidman is associated with an Omega watch.) A separate control group
rated the appeal of the product alone, without a celebrity association.
3.2. Method
3.2.1. Pretests
A series of pretests was conducted with Dutch university students,
the population from which the participant sample was drawn for the
experiment, to select celebrities and products. Based on open-ended
questioning of the students, eight celebrities were selected who
varied in their well-knownness, or visibility, and differed in their
apparent appeal as role models for students (the celebrities are
named in the experimental design table, following). Participants in
the pretest were then asked to write down, for each celebrity, a
product that the celebrity “is famous for or would be seen as an expert
user of.” Each celebrity was assigned to his or her most likely high-fit
product, with the proviso that half the products were expensive, high-
risk purchases and half were inexpensive, low-risk purchases.
A second, low-fit product was then assigned to each celebrity, low fit
meaning that the product had either very low or zero frequency of
mentions as a product that the celebrity would endorse. The proviso was
that if the celebrity was paired first with a high-risk product, then the
second product was also high-risk, and similarly for the first and second
low-risk products. This consistency was built into the experimental
design so that the celebrity would have basically the same potential for
persuasion for both products he or she was paired with, low potential for
high-risk products and high potential for low-risk products.
3.2.2. Experimental design
Table 1 shows the experimental design. Participants were
randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups or to the
control group. One experimental group was exposed to the celebrity-
product combinations denoted by an “A” superscript and the other
experimental group was exposed to the combinations denoted with a
“B” superscript, so that product fit was a within-subjects but between-
Table 1
Celebrity-product combinations and experimental design.
Celebrity High fit
Low-risk products
Inge de Bruijn (swimmer) Shampoo (for women)A
André Agassi (tennis player) Sports deodorant (for men)B
Kylie Minogue (singer) Whitening toothpasteB
Ricky Martin (singer) CondomsA
High-risk products
Julia Roberts (actress) Hair coloring (for women)A
Bruce Willis (actor) Diver's watch (with depth meter, timer, and alarm) (for men)B Art course (videocassette or DVD)A
Anita Roddick Donate €10 to “Save the Siberian Tiger” fundB
(founder, The Body Shop)
Michael Dell Subscription to e-newsletter, “Entrepreneurs' News”
(founder and CEO, Dell Computers) (26 issues per year)A
A
Product paired with celebrity at left for the first experimental group. BProduct paired with celebrity at left for the second experimental group. The control group rated both product
sets (A and B) alone.
Supplementary note: The studies were conducted prior to and with no expectation of the death of The Body Shop founder, Anita Roddick.
presenters variable. The control group participants evaluated the 16
products alone, that is, not paired with celebrities.
3.2.3. Participants
The participants were 172 students attending a large university in
The Netherlands. Their median age was 22 years and an approxi-
mately equal division of sexes was achieved in the two experimental
groups and the control group. Participants took part in the experiment
during class meetings. Sample sizes (n's) were 62 in experimental
group A, 61 in experimental group B, and 49 in the product-alone
control group. The three groups did not differ significantly in terms of
background demographics, suggesting that the random assignment to
groups was successful.
3.2.4. Experimental stimuli
The experimental stimuli were celebrity-product combinations
and the control stimuli were the products alone. The combinations
were presented in simple associational form, in words, with no
pictures. To minimize possible carryover, only one celebrity-product
combination (for the experimental groups), or one product (for the
control group), was shown per page of the questionnaire. As in the
pretest, because all students did not recognize some of the celebrities
by name, every celebrity's occupation was noted in parentheses. Also,
brief descriptive copy was added in the several cases where it seemed
necessary to help differentiate an overly generic product (see
examples below).
For those products targeted at men, the words “for men” were
added in parentheses after the product and similarly the words “for
women” were added for products targeted at women. Examples of the
exact experimental stimuli that the participants saw are: “INGE DE
BRUIJN (swimmer) for SHAMPOO (for women)”; “ANDRÉ AGASSI
(tennis player) for COFFEE (with special blends and tastes)”; and
“KYLIE MINOGUE (singer) for WHITENING TOOTHPASTE.”
3.2.5. Variables and measures
3.2.5.1. Persuasion–dissuasion. The usual persuasion variable in con-
sumer behavior studies is self-reported purchase intention (e.g.,
Ohanian, 1991). However, self-reported purchase intention is likely to
be understated by participants in studies such as the present one which
use such an obvious “celebrity recommends product” manipulation. In
the often transparent laboratory investigation of celebrity presenters, it
is unlikely that the typical intelligent student would truthfully admit
that a celebrity led them to like, try, or buy the product. Therefore, an
alternative persuasion measure was borrowed and adapted from a
study by Mittelstaedt et al. (2000) in which participants were asked to
rate the perceived endorsement effectiveness of the celebrity-product
Low fit
Chocolate cookiesB
Coffee (with special blends and tastes)A
BeerA
Candy barB
Book club (ordering a minimum of one book, CD or DVD per quarter)B
Double CD pop music “Greatest Hits of 2001”A
High-fashion ski jacketB
 J.R. Rossiter, A. Smidts / Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 874–879 877

Table 2
Estimated purchase incidence and persuasion–dissuasion in the high fit vs. low fit conditions (in percent).

Celebrity High fit Low fit

Percent would buy Percent would buy Net effect of Percent would buy Percent would buy Net effect of
without presenter with presenter presenter without presenter with presenter presenter

Low-risk products
De Bruijn Shampoo (for women) 56 39 –17a Cookies 53 28 –25a
Agassi Sports deodorant (for men) 45 54 +9a Coffee 43 26 –17a
Minogue Whitening toothpaste 43 49 +6 Beer 65 41 –24a
Martin Condoms 51 48 –3 Candy bar 60 30 –30a

High-risk products
Roberts Hair coloring (for women) 43 53 + 10a Book club 22 25 +3
Willis Diver's watch (for men) 30 40 +10a Art course 13 14 +1
Roddick Donate €10 to “Save the Tiger” fund 17 25 +8a Pop music 32 12 –20a
CDs
Dell Subscription to e-newsletter 30 46 +16a Ski jacket 32 17 –15a
a
p b .05, 2-tailed t-tests for proportions (n's were 61 and 62 for the experimental groups and 49 for the product-alone group).

pairing. This judgment presumably is “projective” of whether the 3.3. Results

participant himself or herself was persuaded. In the present study,
Mittelstaedt et al.'s measure was adapted to become a third-person
plural projective measure (see Soley and Smith, 2008) so that perceived
incidence was the measure of persuasion. Immediately below each
celebrity-product combination or, for the control group, below each
product, participants were asked to estimate “the percentage of Dutch
university students who would try [the product].”
The estimates were made on a Juster-type, 11-point answer scale
marked at intervals of 10 percentage points, that is, “0, 10, 20…80, 90,
100%.” For the gender-specific products, the projective question was
amended accordingly to “the percentage of Dutch male university
students…” or “the percentage of Dutch female university students.”
By comparing these estimates of incidence against the control group's
product-only estimates, this measure can record dissuasion as well as
persuasion attributable to the celebrity presenter.
3.2.5.2. Presenters' characteristics. After judging the celebrity-product
combinations, participants in the experimental groups then rated the
eight celebrities in terms of the five presenter characteristics on the
following semantic-differential scales, in this order: very unknown vs.
very well-known (visibility), very disliked vs. very liked (likability), very
poor role model vs. very good role model (role-model identification),
very unreliable vs. very reliable (trustworthiness), and has very little
knowledge about the product vs. has very good knowledge of the
product (expertise). Each characteristic was rated on a single-item scale
(the pretest confirmed that the trait descriptions were unambiguous
and “concrete,” and thus single items were sufficient; see Bergkvist and
Rossiter, 2007). All answer scales were numbered 1 through 7 in the
positive direction. The bipolar format of semantic differential scales
causes raters to regard the midpoint (4) as neutral and the endpoints
(1 and 7) as respectively negative and positive (see Heise, 1969, p. 414).
The bipolar-interpreted measures mean that negative hooks (if present)
as well as positive hooks could emerge. For the hook conceptualization
of presenter characteristics, the continuous ratings were trichotomized:
negative hook = 1 to 2; neutral = 3 to 5; and positive hook = 6 to 7. For
the linear conceptualization, the presenter characteristics were con-
ventionally scored: 1 = low to 7 = high.
3.3.1. Persuasion and dissuasion
An implicit hypothesis tested in the present study is that a presenter
can either persuade or dissuade. This hypothesis can be tested only by
including a product-alone control group such that persuasion is
indicated by a net positive effect of adding the presenter and dissuasion
is indicated by a net negative effect. High fit of the product with the
presenter is expected to result in persuasion and low fit to result in
dissuasion.
The results in Table 2 reveal that both effects occur, although they
don't inevitably occur. When there was a high fit (based on the
pretest) for the celebrity-product combination, statistically significant
(p b .05) persuasion was observed for five of the eight pairings; no
effect was found for two of the pairings; and in the other case the
presenter, Olympic and world swimming champion at the time, Inge
de Bruijn, “hurt” the product, resulting in dissuasion, even though she
was pre-rated as having a high fit with the product, which was
shampoo for women.
When there was a low fit (based on the pretest), dissuasion, which
was severe, was observed for six of the eight pairings – in other words,
in most cases the otherwise low-fit product was significantly (p b .05)
more appealing on its own than when introduced by a celebrity
presenter. In the other two low-fit cases the addition of the celebrity
had no effect.
3.3.2. Hook characteristics as explanations of persuasion and dissuasion
The persuasion and dissuasion effects can be explained by
presenters' characteristics if some of the characteristics have both
positive and negative effects. The simplest and clearest method of
presenting these results and testing hypotheses H2 through H6 is a
univariate approach, which looks at each presenter characteristic
separately. In reality, there may be positive interactions between
some of the characteristics but these are neither theorized nor tested
here.
The persuasion and dissuasion effects of the presenters' character-
istics considered as hooks appear in Table 3. These results are
aggregates over all celebrities and products except that low-risk

Table 3
Effects of hook characteristics on persuasion–dissuasion: signed differences in buying incidence with celebrity vs. product alone (in percent).

Type of hook Visible (well-known) Expert user of product Trustworthy (reliable) Likable (low-risk products) Role model (high-risk products)
a a
Positive hook −1 +9 0 −9 + 10a
Neutral − 9a −5 − 7a − 14a −2
Negative hook − 24a − 21a NA NA NA

NA = n b 30, so not calculated.

a
p b .05, 2-tailed t-tests for proportions (pseudo n's of participants times the number of ratings were at least 80 for experimental cells and 78 for the product-alone group).
878 J.R. Rossiter, A. Smidts / Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 874–879
products are analyzed for presenter likability (in accordance with H5)
and high-risk products are analyzed for presenter role-model
identification (in accordance with H6). All characteristics were
initially scored as trichotomies but the negative hook results are
omitted for the trust, likability, and role-model characteristics as there
were too few cases (only 20, 9, and 25 respectively) to provide reliable
estimates.
As in the previous analysis, persuasion was measured as the
difference in the projected buying incidence of the product when
presented by a celebrity vs. the projected buying incidence of the
product presented alone. Negative results (minus signs) signify
dissuasion.
3.3.2.1. Visibility (well-knownness). The findings half-confirm H2. The
positive visibility hook had no effect on persuasion. A likely ex post
explanation is that high visibility is par for the course – expected – for
celebrity presenters and therefore does not bestow a persuasive
advantage. On the other hand, both lack of high visibility, and
especially the negative hook of low visibility, was clearly dissuasive,
with the latter effect predicted. In the descriptive results for the
individual presenters (not reported here), two of the celebrities
selected for the experiment, Body Shop founder Anita Roddick and
Dell CEO Michael Dell, had a substantially widely perceived negative
hook for visibility, perceived by 46% and 20% of participants
respectively, and it was these two celebrities who contributed almost
entirely to the dissuasion result.
3.3.2.2. Expertise (product-specific). H3 was fully confirmed. As
predicted, perception of a positive hook for the celebrity as an expert
user of the product significantly increased persuasion (up by 9%
absolute) and perception of a negative hook, representing an
“inexpert” presenter, severely reduced it (down by 21% absolute)
and was thus dissuasive. Perceived very high user expertise therefore
appears to be a necessary characteristic for celebrity presenters to
cause persuasion for all types of products with which they are paired.
Very high user expertise may well be a necessary characteristic for
“real people” presenters, too (see Rossiter and Bellman, 2005, p. 177)
but this was not tested in the present experiment. Most striking,
however, was the severely deleterious effect of hiring an “obviously
inexpert” celebrity, which is the negative hook effect predicted for
expertise in Rossiter and Percy's (1987, 1997) VisCAP model.
3.3.2.3. Trustworthiness (reliability). H4 predicts that trustworthiness
would not matter for celebrity presenters because “obviously paid”
celebrities would be granted a moderate degree of trust and that the
other component of the presenter's credibility – very high perceived
expertise – would be more important. Consistent with the expectation
of moderate trust, the descriptive results revealed that the average
celebrity in our experiment was rated as neutral (a score between 3
and 5 on the 1-to-7 scale) by 74% of participants and only 2%
perceived a negative hook for trust. A positive hook for trust had no
effect on persuasion, as predicted, but a neutral rating, unexpectedly,
had a significant negative effect (− 7% absolute). This goes against
Rossiter and Bellman's (2005) CESLIP model, which predicts that
neutral trust is okay for celebrity presenters. The present finding
reveals that lack of very high trust of the celebrity presenter is
dissuasive, though possession of very high trust does not bestow a
persuasive advantage.
3.3.2.4. Likability and low-risk products. H5 was not confirmed and in
fact a “reverse” result was obtained in that even a positive hook for
likability with a low-risk product was dissuasive (− 9% absolute). A
possible explanation for this strange result may be “persuasion
knowledge” (Friestad and Wright, 1994) whereby many participants
may have regarded the use of an obviously highly likable celebrity as a
“gimmick” to sell an otherwise undifferentiated, low-risk product.
3.3.2.5. Role-model identification and high-risk products. H6 was
confirmed for the positive role-model hook with high-risk products
(the incidence of negative role-model hooks was too low to test the
dual prediction made in this hypothesis). For high-risk products, very
high personal appeal as a role model caused the celebrity's implicit
endorsement of the product to increase the projected buying
incidence significantly above that of the product on its own (+10%
absolute). Most of the high-risk consumer products were also
“transformationally motivated,” which makes this finding consistent
with the predictions of VisCAP model and the subsequent CESLIP
model.
3.3.3. Hook model vs. linear model
The main hypothesis, H1, is that the hook model (hook scoring of
presenter characteristics) is equally as predictive of persuasion as the
linear model (conventional 1-to-7 scoring). Because of the automatic
loss of variance with hook scoring, equal R2s would in fact be evidence
for the superiority of the hook model.
To test H1, multivariate regressions were computed by using as the
dependent variable the product-corrected projected buying incidence
(individuals' celebrity-product combination scores minus the prod-
uct-alone control group's mean score) so as to capture the “lift” or
“drop” in incidence caused by the ratings of the celebrity presenter's
characteristics (as in the univariate cross-tabulation results in Table 2
earlier). Also included were 16 dummy variables for the 16 products
to control for the large differences in the inherent appeal of the
products (again see the results in Table 2). To simplify the
presentation of the findings, the regression results are shown in
Table 4 without the coefficients for the product dummies, although
these of course contributed to the substantial observed R2s. Also, since
the positive and negative hooks were dummy variables, these were
referenced against their neutral rating, so that the regression
coefficients in the hook model represent departures from neutral.
Further, the R2s are adjusted for the number of predictors, which was
larger in the hook model due to the hooks being counted as separate
predictor variables.
As the last column in the table reports, the hook model and the
linear model accounted for equal amounts of variance in the
dependent variable: R2adj = 41% for the hook model and R2adj = 43%
for the linear model (p N .10, n.s.). This finding of equivalence fully
supports H1.
Managers having only the results of the linear model would draw
two erroneous conclusions. Managers would conclude that there is a
slight positive effect for visibility or well-knownness, whereas the
hook model shows that this is really just a negative effect of the
celebrity being perceived as too little known. Even more important,
they would conclude that expertise has a large and only positive
(“more the better”) effect, whereas the hook model reveals two
opposing effects. Expertise was importantly demonstrated by the
Table 4
Comparison of the predictiveness of hook-coded presenter characteristics (scored − 1,
0, + 1) and linear characteristics (scored 1 to 7): standardized regression coefficients
(Betas) and percentage R2s (adjusted for number of predictors). Dependent variable:
product-corrected buying incidencea.
Regression Well- Expert Trust- Likable Role R2 %
model known user worthy model (adjusted)
Hooks
Positive .08 .11b .04 .05 .11b 40.9
Negative −.03 −.16b NA NA NA
Linear .08b .30b −.01 .01 .15b 42.8
NA = n too small to compute reliable regression coefficients for negative hooks.
a
Buying incidence with celebrity minus control group mean buying incidence for
product alone. Product dummy variables (results not shown) were also added as
predictors to additionally control for differences in inherent appeal between products.
b
p b .05, 2-tailed, by t-tests of the unstandardized regression coefficients differing
from their neutral categories for hooks and in the linear model from zero.
 J.R. Rossiter, A. Smidts / Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 874–879
hook model to be bidirectional (a “double-edged sword”) in that very
high perceived expertise persuades and very low perceived expertise
dissuades.
4. Discussion
The two most important findings differ from prior expectations.
The first important finding is how little effect the addition of a
celebrity presenter had on persuasion, even when there was a pre-
rated high fit of the presenter with the product. Looking back at
Table 2, even for the high-fit pairings (left-hand side of table) the
presenter's incremental persuasion effect in the successful cases
averaged only about 10% projected net sales increase. However, these
celebrity-product pairings were hypothetical in the experiment, and
actual celebrity advertisements undoubtedly would be much more
effective – primarily by drawing many more consumers' attention to
the advertised product (see Holman and Hecker, 1983; Rossiter and
Bellman, 2005; Rossiter and Percy, 1987, 1997).
The second important finding was the unexpected severity of the
negative effect – dissuasion – when a celebrity with low fit with the
product is hired. Low-fit pairings are not uncommon in the real world
when celebrities are hired for other reasons, such as ongoing
contractual obligations to the company or the CEO's whim. Classic
acknowledged failures of fit were comedian Bill Cosby for the
brokerage firm E.F. Hutton, British dramatic actor John Houseman
for McDonald's, Celine Dion for Chrysler, and Jennifer Lopez for Louis
Vuitton luggage. Looking back at Table 1 for low-fit pairings (left-hand
side of table) it can be seen that in no cases did significant persuasion
result and that severe dissuasion was much more likely, averaging
about 20% estimated loss of potential sales. In actual advertisements,
the massively increased attention effect that a well-known celebrity
produces would possibly offset the negative attitudinal effect.
However, the pairing is still likely to be unprofitable given the cost
of the celebrity.
Both of these important findings were detected only because of the
inclusion in the experiment of a product-only control condition.
Comparison of presenter effects with the product's appeal on its own
is a step rarely taken in presenter research, be it academic or applied.
Only two of the many previous academic studies of presenter effects
have included a product-alone control group (Friedman and Friedman,
1979 and Kanungo and Pang, 1973) and both found persuasion and
dissuasion, depending on the presenter. All other academic studies as
well as the available commercial market research studies (see Rossiter
and Percy, 1987, 1997) have tested alternative potential presenters only
against one another and therefore could not detect whether dissuasion
occurred for any or all of them. Thus, in presenter tests, a product-only
control group must be used so that dissuasion as well as persuasion can
be detected.
The original purpose of the study was to test the “hook”
conceptualization of presenter characteristics (Rossiter and Percy,
1987) against the conventional linear conceptualization (the concep-
tualization assumed in all other studies of presenters). As Molenaar
and Campbell (2009) explain, social science research must show that
879
aggregate processes correspond to individual-level processes (such as
“hooks”).
Multivariate regression analyses of the 16 specific celebrity-
product combinations yield hook findings for the presenter's
characteristics that closely confirmed the aggregate findings reported
here (detailed results available from the authors). Thus, hook theory is
remarkably well validated in this study. Hook theory predicts
persuasion equally as well as the conventional linear characteristics
theory despite its handicap of losing at least one-third of the possibly
attainable multivariate R2 due to trichotomization and dichotomiza-
tion of the predictors.
Perhaps the most important practical conclusion concerns the
expertise – the perceived user expertise – of celebrity presenters,
which marketing managers do not always regard as essential
(Erdogan et al., 2001). Klucharev et al. (2008), in a recent brain-
imaging study of celebrity-product associational pairings, reported a
large positive linear effect on persuasion for perceived expertise.
However, the present findings for the hook model qualify that finding.
Perceived expertise is bidirectional: a positive expertise hook
persuades whereas a negative expertise hook dissuades.
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