Factors Determine the Customer-Celebrity Relationship towards Perceived Celebrity Endorsements: Propositions to Hypothesize Future Studies in Sri Lankan Services Sector

Abstract

This paper has been developed as a conceptual paper by rationalizing the existing literature sources to build arguments on two main concepts namely Perceived Celebrity Endorsement and Customer-Celebrity Relationship. The niche of the study was to develop an argument to hypothesize variable relationships found in those two concepts referring to Sri Lankan services sector. It shows a higher degree of contribution in the practice of Celebrity Endorsements (CE) in the services branding context, but empirical knowledge is lack to investigate how CE works in services sector branding perspectives. Accordingly, research problem has been justified in par with knowledge and practice gap how it has been referred in different studies. Researcher has built the argument based on four research propositions as suggesting to hypothesize the conceptual framework for the future studies to investigate how Consumer-Celebrity Relationship (CCR) is determined by Celebrity Worship Motives that would impact to Perceived Celebrity Endorsement (PCE) subsequently. Further, it has suggested another proposition to test how far “Fantasy” could moderate the said relationship between CCR and PCE. It has concluded a navigation for the research methods to be used in par with suggested propositions given in the paper.