Software-Based Brand Ambassador Selection--A Celebrity-Branding Assessment Framework in Action

摘要

Premium consumer product manufacturers are frequently cooperating with celebrities as brand ambassadors today for generating PR leverage, enhancing an emotional brand appeal and creating unique customer experiences. In this context, the selection of the right celebrity brand ambassador is crucial. The related decision-making process involves the strategic evaluation of celebrities and the subsequent selection of brand ambassadors, which are human-centric, knowledge-intensive tasks. Therefore, these are frequently performed in a rather informal way. While celebrity endorsement has been extensively studied in the literature, a more formal, process-oriented approach for brand ambassador selection as basis for an appropriate decision support system is still lacking. Therefore, in this paper a celebrity branding assessment framework is proposed. On the basis of the framework, a celebrity evaluation software tool is developed and evaluated. The evaluation verifies the feasibility of the proposed approach. However, the implementation of brand-specific adaptations reveals to be essential.