EFFECTS OF GENDER OF THE CELEBRITY ON CONSUMER PURCHASE INTENTION OF PUBLIC UNIVERSITY STUDENTS.

Abstract

Celebrities are popular persons due to their physical attractiveness and trustworthiness to the people. Marketers use them for brand advocacy to their targeted consumers by enhancing awareness and credibility. Several previous researches have demonstrated that this as a promotion platform causes positive influence on purchase decision and intentions of many customers more so for new market entry brands.  As such, the present study examined the effect of Gender of celebrity on consumer purchase intention of public university students in Western Kenya and employed Proctor &Gamble’s Ariel detergent as the study object. The study was anchored on the source attractiveness model, and the dual entertainment model. All the 57,715 students of the public universities in Western Kenya, were targeted, this includes: Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Kibabii University, and Maseno University. The study used disproportionate stratified simple random sampling to sample 397 students of the three picked public Universities in Western Kenya, purposive sampling was utilized to sample three Ariel merchandisers promoting Ariel detergent in the three major towns in Western Kenya where the universities are located (Kakamega county, Bungoma county and Kisumu County). Data was then gathered through structured questionnaires and interview schedules. Reliability was tested using Cronbach (Alpha – ?) which found out that the tool was valid and reliable. Both descriptive (means, standard deviations and frequency distribution) and inferential analysis (Pearson correlation and linear regression models) were utilized. The investigation uncovered that gender of the Celebrity had a statistically significant influence on consumer purchase intentions of public university Students in Western Kenya; b= 0.415, p-value = 0.000 < 0.05. The study concluded that gender had significantly strong positive causal influence on the customer purchase intentions.

Keywords: Celebrity, Celebrity gender, Purchase Intentions, Perceived Relative Price