CELEBRITY ENDORSMENT – PERCEPTION BY PROSPECTIVE EMPLOYEES (FMCG SECTOR) Rushina Singhi 1, Ch. Abhinav Guptha 2, Anshul Jain 3 Assistant Professor of Amity Business School, Amity University Noida U. P Student of Amity Business School, Amity University Noida U.
P Student of Amity Business School, Amity University Noida U. P 1 rushina. singhi@yahoo. co. in 2coolabhi405@gmail. com, 3 anshuljain01@gmail.
com, ABSTRACT Celebrity endorsement, undoubtedly an essential and effective tool for attracting masses towards the product or a service and it becomes more crucial when we consider FMCG to be concentrated sector.FMCG sector has used the tool of celebrity endorsement to convey its product usage, quality and existence, but it tends to set a personality to the brand through which its customers can visualize. This paper illustrates the varying intensity of attractiveness of their brand towards its prospective employees due to the celebrity they have chosen to promote them. Interestingly it has been found that celebrity endorsement deeply influence the prospective employee with reference to FMCG sector. Keywords: Celebrity endorsement, Employees attractiveness, FMCG brand personality, Prospective employees perception . INTRODUCTION Brand is a word which every corporate wants to be associated with its name, and whole corporate management strives hard to reach to a position where they can locate their brand with other niche brands existing.
Corporate brand in the FMCG sector is a very essential tool to do profitable business and sustain in the market. FMCG sector revolves around masses and capture masses celebrity endorsement is a key as celebrity has a power to elevate the brand and attract masses for the product.Celebrity endorsement does their job in attracting customer, but celebrity endorsement creates a brand image which would amend the interests and perception of the prospective employees and job seekers. Prospective employees are given highest importance in very corporate as they build the future of the company and their selection is considered as a crucial stage of recruitment.
Attracting job seekers for the company has become a herculean task for human resource department and they tend to attract job seekers of highest qualification and possessing appropriate personality.To get the right person applying for the position, company has to attract many job seekers. Brands like Google, IBM, and BMW are some of the favorites for the job seekers due to their brand name and various other reasons but in the FMCG sector the key to the success is appropriate staff. FMCG is a dynamic sector with huge competition and for success attracting the right employee would be vital, even necessary. Employee with right mindset and professional attitude would work wonders for the company and would prove profitable to the company for ever.
2. LITERATURE REVIEWAttracting and selection of prospective employees has been a topic of research for many eminent researchers and they have contributed valuable information in attracting the prospective employees and about its importance for the company’s existence, with the suggestions which would revolutionize the recruitment process. Even though there is ample amount of literature about the prospective employees and celebrity endorsement, but there is on much work which explains the acute relation which exists between the prospective employees and celebrity endorsement of FMCG sector.Many researchers have suggested different methods and their analysis for attracting applicants for a job such as Daniel B.
Turban and Daniel W. Greening (1997) have explained that corporate social performance has its part in attracting many applicants for the company. Moulik M. Zaveri and Rajendra Mulye have introduced a new concept of “job seeker ethnocentrism” which explains that job seeker would attracted towards the company of his origins and even suggested that a company’s brand equity and corporate image play a very important role in attracting the prospective employees.Filip Lievens, Greet Van Hoye and Bert Schreurs (2005) in association with the Belgium military have explained that organizational attributes and familiarity to be most important aspects of perception to the prospective employees who tend to attract towards the organization and they suggested that image audit and image management would be helpful for the company to attract many qualified applicants for a job. Khurram Shahzad (2011) and his associates have conducted tests and concluded that brand image of a articular company can deeply motivate a job seeker in many aspects and suggested that organization should be focusing on their branding to make more qualified people to apply for their company.
Helle C. A. Andersen (2008) have done a research on Norwegian business students and used “Statoil Hydro” company as an example to support his findings that many new job seekers would love to apply for a company which has a rich CSR (corporate social responsibility) work in its background with an amount of job security and recognition and claimed that to attract talented employees companies have to have a good amount of CSR. Babar Yaqub and Dr.Muhammad Aslam Khan (2011) have given a paper which examines the views of the students and their perspective towards the potential employers who would offer those jobs.
They found that students attract towards a company by the skill enhancing and learning opportunities it provides to its employees including its brand image. Dr. Puja Khatri (2006) in her paper discussed about many risks and returns through celebrity endorsements and clearly explained that it would help in building a brand image and quick connections to the audiences which is a combination of many potential customers and talented prospective employees.Even though endorsements involve risks it would create a credibility and attractiveness towards the company or organization within a short period of time.
An article given by Saurabh Katyal says that celebrity association with a product or with a brand would multiply the value of its intangible assets like brand equity and goodwill, by enhancing its attractiveness in the masses. Writer has even suggested that endorsement would even connect the audience demographically and psycho graphically with brand.Randstand Canada in its digital journal contributes has discussed about some very important findings about the psychology of the job seekers which are following: * Pleasant work atmosphere, salary, security, good work balance and interesting job content are the factors which would affect the prospective employees. * If gender is considered as subject then men would prefer a job with innovation, image and good management on the contrary women would prefer culture, balance and job satisfaction. Young aged job seekers would prefer progression with global mobility but old aged employees would seek for comfort and stability.
* Highly educated job seekers would like to join a organization with strong image but a low educated job seeker would look for stable job. These findings interestingly converge themselves to the brand image where a celebrity endorsement is highly associated and suggest us that celebrity endorsement for brand especially for a brand which is associated whit masses like FMCG brands would deeply affect the intentions of prospective employees. . OBJECTIVES OF STUDY This paper is intended to find a relation between the celebrity endorsements in the FMCG sector and their affect on the actions and the intentions of the prospective employees of the company. This study would clear the affect of brand image which has been built by endorsing a celebrity and decisions of the job seekers and their attractions towards major FMCG companies like Dabur, HUL, Proctor & Gamble, ITC and Reckitt Benckiser by considering their personality and image. 4.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGYTo get a real picture about the scenario and the FMCG companies a sample of 153 people have been chosen as study participants and data was collected via a self administered questionnaire. Questionnaire is composed of close ended questions and attitude of the participants towards the leading FMCG brands and their products was inquired and they were associated demographically for further assessment. All the participants were divided into three different strata depending on various characteristics. The division was on the basis of age, sex and occupation to have a more representative and comprehensive sample.This division also enhanced the generalization factor of research which is very important. The data analysis was done to draw out conclusions from data by descriptive analysis as the transformation of raw data into a form that will make them easy to understand and interpret, and then draw conclusions out of it.
The data analysis in this case was done by first showing and placing the data in sample frequency distribution of members against the possible responses given in the questions. These responses were placed in the graphs and charts which were both bar charts and pie charts for different responses.All the participants were made aware of research intentions and design by an introduction. Findings have been treated with the utmost confidentiality. No source, whether individual or organization was or will be correlated with specific findings or comments attributed without the express permission of the originator or organization. 5.
DATA ANALYSIS Analysis of data was extensively made to know the attraction attributes of the prospective employees by constructing the bar graph for the frequencies of the response given to the categories like: * Growth perspective Learning opportunities * Values and culture * Attractive compensation * Conductive work environment * Location * Social recognition * Technology * Innovation Interpretation for this attributes have been done by the frequency of the responses given by the participants and it seen that maximum of all participants think these attributes are very important for their future job and FMCG companies would constantly try to establish these qualities in their corporate brand and personality.A pie chart was prepared to know about the choice of the participant to work for a big and stable brand, and it was known that from the pie chart that maximum participants prefer to work for a big brand in the future and some of them are not able to take a decision. Figure 1 After analyzing the attributes which would govern the brand image of a FMCG corporate among the prospective employees, now we need to analyze the personality and connect the result with brand ambassador which they use for their products.For this exercise brands like Dabur, HUL, Procter & Gamble, ITC, Reckitt Benckiser were chosen and participants were asked to rate them on the basis of their sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, ruggedness of the brand.
It was found that celebrity endorsed has highly contributed to build a image for the FMCG corporate. Figure 2 Dabur was best known as a very sincere firm for its product value and it has been even considered competent by the prospective employees.Even though excitement and sophistication were chosen but they are negligible when compared with other attributes. Figure 3 When asked for the Procter and Gamble it was rated as very competent FMCG firm by the prospective employees and considered that an ample amount of excitement is also present in the firm’s personality. Figure 4 Hindustan Unilever Ltd is one of the most used brands by the Indians and as per the view of the prospective employees it is brand which is very exciting and competent in nature in their products and other attributes which contribute to its personalityFigure 5 ITC is a brand which has shown its existence over 100 years in various industries but its personality is rated as a fine composition of excitement, competence and sophistication by the prospective employees considering only its FMCG sector and products. Figure 6 Reckitt Benckiser is also having a personality which is attributed by the traits of sincerity and competence and this amalgamation is added with little excitement and certain amount of ruggedness in the view of prospective employees.
BRAND| CELEBRITY ENDORSED| PERSONALITY| DABUR| AMITABH BACCHAN, M. S DHONI| Sincerity|PROCTER & GAMBLE| SALMAN KHAN, PRACHI DESAI| Competence | HUL| PRIYANKA CHOPRA, SUSHMITA SEN| Competence, excitement| ITC| SHAH RUKH KHAN| Competence, excitement, sophistication| RECKITT BENCKISER| KATRINA KAIF, HUSSAIN| Sincerity, competence| Table 1 All the views given by the prospective employees when summarized and matched with their brand ambassadors or the celebrities who are associated with their brand or dominant products, the above Table 1 is formed and the analysis can be drawn through comparing the personality of the celebrity and brand personality given by the prospective employees.Through this analysis it can be concluded that celebrity endorsed with the product highly contribute to shape the brand image and personality to organization, by the response given by the participants above characteristics were drawn for the corresponding brands and there is clear connection between the responses and the celebrity associated with the brand. 5.
1 T-TEST Null Hypothesis (H0): There is no significant relationship between the personality of a celebrity endorser and the personality of the product endorser.A T-test was conducted on for analyzing the statement “Personality of the celebrity, spokes character or cartoon character is reflected in the brand endorsed by them” with a 5% level of significance and by using Table 2 and Table 3 the null hypothesis is denied. The result showcase that there is a significant relationship between brand personality and celebrity associated with it. ONE-SAMPLE STATISTICS | N| Mean| Std. Deviation| Std. Error Mean| Personality of the celebrity or cartoon character is reflected in the brand endorsed by them.
| 153| 2. 03| 0. 993| 0. 080| Table 2 ONE- SAMPLE TEST | Test Value = 3| | t| df| Sig. 2-tailed)| Mean difference| 95% confidence interval of the difference| | | | | | lower| upper| Personality of the celebrity or cartoon character is reflected in the brand endorsed by them. | -12.
130| 152| . 000| -. 974| -1. 13| -.
82| Table 3 6. CONLUSION This detailed study about the relation between celebrity and brand image is highly correlated with each other and dominate the intentions and responses of the prospective employees towards the organization. These findings would provide us a evidence about the attractiveness of the company while recruiting the employees for its products through the celebrity endorsed for the product.The conclusions of this study would be providing a strong support to the Indian FMCG sector that celebrity or the cartoon which is associated with the brand or its products deeply motivate the future job seekers and tend to define the degree of attractiveness for employee talent towards the organization. 7.
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