Athletes as Product Endorsers: The Effect of Gender and Product Relatedness

By Thomas C. Boyd, Matthew D. Shank. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 2004

145 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although the use of athletes as endorsers is increasing, we know relatively little about how consumers perceive athlete endorsers and the factors that influence endorser effectiveness. In particular, we know little about how congruence—the "fit" between the product, the endorser and the consumer—influences consumer perceptions of the endorser. The authors report on a study that examines the effects of endorser gender, consumer gender, and the type of product advertised on consumer perceptions of endorser trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness. After viewing ads containing athlete endorsers for either milk or cross trainer shoes, subjects answered a battery of questions about their perceptions of the endorser. Findings show that regardless of product type, subjects rate endorsers of the same gender as more trustworthy. Also, women rate endorsers as more expert when there is a fit between the endorser and product (e.g., when the endorser uses the product in their sport) while men rate endorsers as more expert when there is not an endorser-product match. Other findings and implications are also discussed.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/efdd2ab393a49840ab322511221e4b84a8f134e4

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Gender Studies

1. Thilo Kunkel
2. Sangwon Na
3. J. Doyle

In Marketing

1. Thilo Kunkel
2. Sangwon Na
3. J. Doyle

Citations in the corpus

• Exploring athlete brand image development on social media: the role of signalling through source credibility (2020, result): “Previous studies further that the images of male and female athletes were perceived differently from message receivers (Ohanian, 1991), and there was a significant interaction effect between the athlete and consumer gender traits (Boyd & Shank, 2004).”
• Brand Personality in Sport: Dimension Analysis and General Scale Development (2010, unknown): “While the primary focus has been on the characteristics of athlete endorsers (Boyd & Shank, 2004; Braunstein & Zhang, 2005, 2007) and the conditions that facilitate the transfer of BPS between a brand and a sports event/team (Gwinner & Eaton, 1999; Musante, Milne, & McDonald, 1999), the conceptual…”
• To Catch a Tiger or Let Him Go: The Match-up Effect and Athlete Endorsers for Sport and Non-Sport Brands (2009, unknown): “Although Boyd and Shank (2004) found that the match-up between the endorser and the product resulted in higher perceived expertise, they used different athletes (tri-athletes versus Olympic stars) for their different product categories (cross-trainer shoes versus milk) and thus confounded the…”