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Celebrities as human brands: aninvestigation of the effects ofpersonality and time on celebrities’appealRenaud Lunardoa, Olivier Gergaudb & Florine Livatc

a Marketing Department, KEDGE – Bordeaux Business School,Franceb Research Cluster for Creative Industries, Culture, Sport, KEDGE –Bordeaux Business School, CRED – Université de Paris II – PanthéonAssas, Francec Research Cluster for Creative Industries, Culture, Sport, KEDGE –Bordeaux Business School, FrancePublished online: 06 Feb 2015.

To cite this article: Renaud Lunardo, Olivier Gergaud & Florine Livat (2015): Celebrities as humanbrands: an investigation of the effects of personality and time on celebrities’ appeal, Journal ofMarketing Management, DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.2015.1008548

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2015.1008548

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Celebrities as human brands: an investigation of theeffects of personality and time on celebrities’ appeal

Renaud Lunardo, Marketing Department, KEDGE – BordeauxBusiness School, France

Olivier Gergaud, Research Cluster for Creative Industries, Culture,Sport, KEDGE – Bordeaux Business School, CRED – Universite deParis II – Pantheon Assas, France

Florine Livat, Research Cluster for Creative Industries, Culture, Sport,KEDGE – Bordeaux Business School, France

Abstract This article considers celebrities as brands and relies on the brandpersonality literature to investigate how celebrities’ personality impacts theirappeal. Celebrities’ appeal is analysed across different cultural fields (TV,music, sport and cinema) and over time. Using data gathered by Epoll MarketResearch about the perception of more than 3000 celebrities among the USpopulation, our results show that apart from rudeness, all dimensions ofpersonality have a positive impact on appeal. Interestingly, our results showthat the impact of personality dimensions varies across cultural fields. Finally,we provide a dynamic analysis of the evolution of appeal over time, which alsoexhibits different patterns (declining, inverted U-shape) across cultural fields.

Keywords brand personality; celebrity; appeal; TV; music; sport; cinema

Introduction

In the past decade, the number of people who are considered celebrities has been growing.Celebrities are present in many different fields, including entertainment, sports, science,politics (McCutcheon, Lange, & Houran, 2002) and have become central for consumers,with 75%of young adults exhibiting a strong attraction to a celebrity at some point in theirlives (Boon & Lomore, 2001; Flora, 2004).

Although celebrities enjoy fame and significant media coverage, they are notautomatically considered appealing by the audience. Some celebrities are indeedseen as more appealing than others. For instance, a 91-year-old actress Betty Whitehas been named for the third time America’s most appealing celebrity in 2013,1 whileParis Hilton was listed among the least appealing in 2011.2 Discovering what makes a

1http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/10/entertainment-us-celebrities-idUSBRE9390WM201304102http://www.epollresearch.com/marketing/E-Score%20Celebrity%20YE%202011%202012–03-12–02-cf.pdf

© 2015 Westburn Publishers Ltd.

Journal of Marketing Management, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2015.1008548

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celebrity appealing is thus of interest to celebrities, especially for those who use theirimage to launch their own branded products and make extra money (e.g., CelineDion or David Beckham launching a perfume). More than 1000 celebrity brandextensions were recorded over the 2004–2009 period (Johnson, 2009), and it maybe that the appeal of a celebrity impacts the success of a branded celebrity product,triggering the need to better understand what makes a celebrity appealing.

Surprisingly, despite the importance of the issue of appeal for celebrities, the questionremains unanswered as to what makes a celebrity appealing. What academics havedevoted attention to is mainly what makes a celebrity an appropriate endorser (e.g.,Agrawal & Kamakura, 1995; Erdogan, 1999; McCracken, 1989; Silvera &Austad, 2004; Tripp, Jensen, & Carlson, 1994). More recently, researchers haveinvestigated the valuation by consumers of some celebrities’ memorabilia3 (Newman,Diesendruck, & Bloom, 2011). However, despite a focus on such aspects pertaining tocelebrities, no marketing studies have investigated so far what makes a celebrityappealing.

To tackle this issue, this research relies on the literature that considers celebrities asbrands (Thomson, 2006). While some would say that celebrities are appealing simplybecause of their ‘presence’, their ‘charisma’, or something both natural and magicthat goes beyond rationality (Turner, 2014), this research draws on the brandpersonality literature (Aaker, 1997) and posits that what makes a celebrityappealing lies in her/his personality. As such, this research first aims to investigatethe extent to which the personality of celebrities – and more precisely whatdimension(s) of their personality – impacts their appeal. Importantly, thisinvestigation is conducted for celebrities from different cultural fields, namely TV,music, cinema and sports. In doing so, we answer Parmentier’s (2012) call formarketing research to understand the variability of contexts in which celebritiesachieve visibility.

The second question we address is whether celebrities’ appeal exhibits somesort of a ‘lifecycle’. For instance, some celebrities experience a decline in appeal,as exemplified by the American Idol judge Nicki Minaj or comic actor AndySamberg who in 2013 were among those whose public appeal declined most,according to the EPoll survey.4 To this regard, it remains to be determinedwhether such a decline can be observed for all celebrities or if the evolution ofappeal is field-specific. Thus, the second goal of this study is to adopt alongitudinal lens to examine the evolution of appeal over time. This dynamicperspective enables us to answer the question of whether a common pattern isobserved across different cultural fields or whether, on the contrary, the evolutionof appeal is field-specific.

The rest of the article is organised as follows. First, celebrity is conceptualised, andthe brand personality literature is reviewed to hypothesise the effects of personalitydimensions on celebrities’ appeal. The ‘lifecycle’ of appeal is also hypothesised.Second, empirical data collected from EPoll Market Research are described. Third,we present in detail the results, highlighting what makes celebrities appealing andhow appeal evolves over time and across cultural fields. Finally, results are discussed,and implications are proposed.

3http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/26/arts/auctions-celebrities-memorabilia.html4http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/celebrity-news/really-betty-white-named-americas-most-appealing-celebrity/article10982312/

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Theoretical background

Celebrity and celebrities

Although celebrities are widely addressed in the literature (e.g., Agrawal &Kamakura, 1995; Goldsmith, Lafferty, & Newell, 2000; Newman et al., 2011;Tanner & Maeng, 2012), what they embody is surprisingly rarely defined.Celebrities are here seen as part of the social elite who engage in the publicrelations machine of television and movie roles, special event appearances and talkshow and gossip magazine placements (McCracken, 1986). As such, celebrities areoften admired, especially by young consumers, who borrow from such celebrities fortheir identity construction (Boon & Lomore, 2001). They constitute inspirationalfigures and comparative referents and are sometimes considered heroes, providingthe high standards of achievement to which consumers aspire (Escalas &Bettman, 2003). This view of celebrities as heroes has received some support fromacademics (Bromnick & Swallow, 1999; O’Guinn, 1991), even showing thatcelebrities perform some of the functions of gods.

However, Shuart (2007) proposed a clear distinction between celebrities andheroes: being a celebrity derives from fame only, while being a hero implies specificqualities, such as being a distinguished person, admired for her/his ability, bravery ornoble quality. This view of celebrity is in line with that of Boorstin (1961), whoconsidered it to be a function of ‘well-knownness.’ This view of celebrity as afunction of fame is widely supported, with most research suggesting that it entailsbeing famous beyond a restricted field of endeavour (Gamson, 1994;McCracken, 1989; Turner, 2014).

However, seeing celebrity as only a function of well-knownness might not beappropriate. So what turns a famous person into a celebrity? The main explanationmight be ‘narrative’ (Escalas, 2004; Gabler, 2001). In other words, celebrity isconstructed largely via stories that appear in the mainstream media and that arereacted to by fans and end-consumers (Fournier, 2010). This importance of narrativesis consistent with Dyer’s (1998) view of stardom whereby ‘stardom is an image of theway stars live (…) that combines the spectacular with the everyday, the special withthe ordinary’ (p. 35). According to the author – who mainly focuses on film stars –celebrities are constructed as extraordinary or special, thanks to their talents, and yetat the same time like us, ‘ordinary’. Placing narratives at the core of the celebrityconstruction process implies that celebrities are produced not only by the mediaindustries but also by the audience (Dyer, 2004). For instance, regarding movie starsspecifically, Hollywood and related agencies control the stars’ films, their promotion,portraits, press releases and fan clubs, and also, thanks to connections with othermedia industries, information about them in newspapers, magazines, interviews, clipsand so on. All this control over the information supplied about the professional andpublic lives of stars ensures an appealing storytelling that contributes to theconstruction of celebrity.

The importance of narratives in the construction of celebrity is also consistent withthe view of Parmentier, Fischer, and Reuber (2013) who propose that celebrities mustdifferentiate themselves from other celebrities to get a clear positioning. Celebritiesmust establish points of differentiation and ‘standout’ from their competitors. Beingcovered by the media and having many aspects of their lives exposed to the widestaudience seem a relevant way of differentiating themselves from other celebrities.

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Due to mass media and an increased access to digital media, celebrity has become farmore attainable than movie stardom and is now achievable for ordinary people(McQuarrie, Miller, & Phillips, 2013). The above review of celebrity and theimportance of narratives suggest that celebrity must be disassociated fromreputations for beauty, talent or accomplishments (Gabler, 1998), as it no longerrequires any particular merit or ability (Gamson, 1994).

Celebrities as human brands

As suggested by Thomson (2006, p. 105), celebrities can be considered as humanbrands. For instance, Schroeder (2005) considers a celebrity like Andy Warhol as astunning example of ‘an artist as brand’. Also, Luo, Chen, Han, and Whan Park(2010) view movie stars as branded components of movies. Overall, what isacknowledged is that persons – which includes celebrities – who are the subject ofmarketing, interpersonal or inter-organisational communications can be referred to ashuman brands or person brands (Close, Moulard and Monroe, 2011; Parmentieret al., 2013).

Considering what precedes, the rationale behind this research is (1) that celebritiescan be considered as human brand (see Thomson, 2006) and thus (2) that a brandpersonality-based framework can be used to assess the impact of the celebrities’personality on their appeal. Drawing on the ‘Big Five’ human personality structure(Norman, 1963), the brand personality dimensions (Aaker, 1997) thus refer to ‘theset of human characteristics associated with a brand’ (Aaker, 1997, p. 347). As such,the brand personality includes the five dimensions of sincerity, excitement,competence, sophistication, and ruggedness.

Although considering human beings like celebrities as brands and then using thebrand personality literature to appraise the influence of the appeal of such humanbeings may be seen as a circulatory reasoning, we claim here that the personalitybrand literature is very well suited to investigating the effects of celebrities’personality. This claim builds on our appraisal of celebrities as brands, and thus ourappraisal of the personality of celebrity as a manufactured construct rather than ahuman construct. It also builds on previous research on anthropomorphism showingthat consumers tend to ascribe human-like characteristics to brands (Aggarwal &McGill, 2007). Since people tend to ascribe human characteristics to brands, andbecause celebrities are humans who may be considered as brands (Thomson, 2006),the brand personality literature that builds on the five-factor structure of humanpersonality (Goldberg, 1992) appears the most appealing framework.

Brand personality and celebrities’ personalities

The first dimension of brand personality identified by Aaker (1997) is sophistication.A sophisticated brand is one that is glamorous, charming or romantic. Applying thebrand personality to celebrities implies that a sophisticated celebrity would thus beone who is perceived as glamorous, charming or romantic. This dimension ofpersonality including glamour, charm and romanticism may be close – although notequal – to what some call physical attractiveness, which indeed correlates almostperfectly with these notions, such as desirability to date (0.97) or marry (0.93)(Cunningham, Barbee, & Pike, 1990). Associations with attractiveness arepredominantly positive in tone (Hamermesh & Biddle, 1994), with physical

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attractiveness stimulating attributions of desirable personality characteristics andlikeableness. For instance, individuals attribute more socially desirable personalitytraits, such as friendliness and interestingness, to more attractive individuals (Dion,Berscheid, & Walster, 1972). The positive effect of beauty goes beyond merepreference judgements to influence behaviour in a public goods game (Andreoni &Pétrie, 2008) and even in real world earned incomes (Gergaud, Ginsburgh, &Livat, 2012; Hamermesh & Biddle, 1994). This positive effect of physicalattractiveness is in line with the substantial body of literature showing a positiveeffect of physically attractive celebrities on advertising effectiveness (Baker &Churchill, 1977; Kahle & Homer, 1985). Overall, the argument outlined earliersuggests a positive effect of sophistication on celebrity appeal.

The second dimension of brand personality is sincerity, which represents theidea of being down-to-earth and honest. Considering sincerity as a sub-dimensionof trust (Crosby, Evans, & Cowles, 1990) and trust as exerting positive effects onaffect (e.g., Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001; Sung & Kim, 2010), individuals whoperceive celebrities as sincere may be likely to develop positive effect towardsthem and perceive them as appealing. Along with this view of positive effects ofsincerity, research in the consumer arena shows that when consumers perceive amarketing agent as insincere, with a highly accessible ulterior motive underlyinghis/her behaviour (e.g., a salesperson offering a compliment to a potentialcustomer before purchase), the effects of insincerity are resisted (Campbell &Kirmani, 2000). Also of importance, research on social judgement suggests thatpeople’s judgements of others fall into two areas, namely warmth and competence(Judd, James-Hawkins, Yzerhyt, & Kashima, 2005). These two emerge in variedcontexts, such as liked and disliked groups (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007) orromantic partner choices (Sinclair & Fehr, 2005). Since warmth judgementsinclude perceptions of sincerity (e.g., Aaker, 1997; Judd et al., 2005), andwarmth positively affects liking (Barger & Grandey, 2006), it may be likely thatsincerity exerts positive effects on appeal. In other words, celebrities perceived assincere may be considered more appealing than those perceived as insincere.

As people’s judgements fall into the area of competence, it is no surprise thatcompetence defines another dimension of brand personality (Aaker, 1997). Brandpersonality competence is captured by facets including traits of being reliable,intelligent and successful (Mæhle & Shneor, 2009) and suggests an effectivecapacity to get one’s own way (Cuddy et al., 2007). Recent work on fundamentalhuman needs suggests that if an object is responsive to a person’s needs forcompetence, intense attachment may result (Deci & Ryan, 2000). As such, brandsthat are perceived as competent and fulfilling consumers’ needs prompt moreattachment than brands perceived as incompetent (Thomson, 2006). Applied tocelebrities, this may suggest that those being perceived as competent may lead tomore attachment and higher appeal scores.

Brand personality also involves excitement, which connotes notions of energy andactivity. Research provides consistent support for the notion that excitement is acharacteristic that people value. For instance, research on mate selection suggests thatexcitement is one of the most desired characteristics (Buss & Barnes, 1986) andcontributes to unique experiences and interesting interactions (Li, Bailey, Kenrick, &Linsenmeier, 2002). Applied to people perception, these results suggest that the morepeople attribute excitement to a celebrity, the more the celebrity will be perceived asappealing.

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Finally, brand personality includes the dimension of ruggedness. Ruggednessrefers to notions of toughness and strength and is also indicative of a strictpersonality (Mæhle & Shneor, 2009). This dimension has not proven valid sincenot systematically detected in cross-national studies. For instance, in Spain andJapan, Aaker, Benet-Martinez, and Garolera (2001) did not find evidence for thisdimension and replaced it with peacefulness. The construct validity – that is, thedegree to which elements of its assessment instrument are relevant to andrepresentative of the targeted construct (Peter, 1981) – of the ruggednessdimension thus appears questionable. Considering this lack of validity, wefollowed the procedure of Aaker et al. (2001) and replaced the ruggednessdimension with one that appears close in content, rudeness. In accordance withthe original notions of a tough, strong and strict personality that were salient inthe dimension of ruggedness, rudeness in the social judgement literature refers toan insensitive behaviour enacted by a person who displays a lack of regard forothers (Pearson & Porath, 2005; Porath & Erez, 2007). These rude actions can beverbal or nonverbal and may include the violation of norms of mutual respect(e.g., sexist comments, racial slurs) (Porath, Macinnis, & Folkes, 2010). Examplesof rude behaviours from celebrities are common. For instance, Batman starChristian Bale is known for having made little girls cry.5 Actor Mel Gibson,having separated from his girlfriend, has been accused of breaking her frontteeth with a blow that glanced off her jaw and grazed the chin of their infantdaughter.6 The fairness and justice literatures clearly suggest that peoplewitnessing rudeness are affected when others are treated unfairly and maypunish perpetrators (Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1986; O’Gorman, Wilson,& Miller, 2005). Thus, we expect rudeness to deteriorate appeal scores ofcelebrities.

Overall, in view of what precedes we hypothesise the following:

Hypothesis 1: Appeal will be positively impacted by sophistication (H1a),sincerity (H1b), competence (H1c) and excitement (H1d),while it will be negatively impacted by perceived rude-ness (H1e).

Categorisation and celebrity appeal across cultural fields

As noted by Holmes (2004), celebrities can be found in very different fields such as, butnot limited to, TV, music, cinema and sports. Some celebrities even exert their talent inmore than one field (e.g., Jennifer Lopez who is known as both a singer and an actress).What is posited here is that the personality of a celebrity may affect his/her appealdifferently according to his/her cultural field. Research on categorisation suggests that atwo-step process may account for the determinants of celebrity appeal across culturalfields. Research shows that when people encounter a target person – like a celebrity –

within a social interaction episode, they first categorise the person on the basis ofsalient characteristics (e.g., sophistication) (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001; Macrae,

5http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2152796/Christian-Bales-publicist-claims-Batman-star-little-girls-sensational-new-book.html6http://news.moviefone.com/2010/06/29/mel-gibson-accused-of-beating-up-his-girlfriend/

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Bodenhausen, & Milne, 1995). The term category is used here to describe thewhole set of information that perceivers have in mind about various groups ofindividuals (e.g., Italians, doctors). Once this categorisation is made, featuresassociated with the category are activated, and the observer is likely to rely onthese category-based expectations when judging the target (Reinhard, Messner, &Sporer, 2006). For instance, in the case of political leaders, their appeal will dependon how much their personality fits with the context (Bem & Funder, 1978). As aresult, when judging a celebrity, people may first appraise his/her salient attributes –like sophistication, sincerity or rudeness – and then rate the importance of theseattributes depending on the field the celebrity belongs to. For instance, anindividual being exposed to a movie celebrity may first rate his/her sophisticationand will then consider this attribute according to its relevance to the fieldconsidered. Thus, the effects of sophistication, sincerity, competence, excitementand rudeness on celebrity appeal must be analysed across fields. This reasoning issupported by Parmentier et al. (2013) who posit that person brands must ‘fit in’with the expectations of the field. Celebrities must learn about and comply with thefield’s values. This suggests that a fit is required between the values that thecelebrity exhibits and the values the field expects. Personality is thus crucial inthat it may communicate about the celebrity’s values.

Specifically, it seems straightforward that sincerity, competence and excitementmay have a positive effect and rudeness a negative effect for celebrities of all fields.Specifically regarding sincerity, Dyer (2004) highlights its value arguing that ‘thereis a rhetoric of sincerity or authenticity, two qualities greatly prized in stars becausethey guarantee, respectively, that the star really means what he or she says, and thatthe star really is what she or he appears to be’ (p. 10). All celebrities, from those inthe cinema and TV industries to those in the sport and music industries, may thusgain in appeal if they are perceived sincere. Regarding competence – thedemonstration of the ability to perform well-productive activities valued withinthe field (Parmentier, 2012) – this dimension might as well have positive effectsaccording for celebrities of all fields. In a study of the soccer player David Beckham,Parmentier (2012) identifies competence as a main contributory factor to theemergence of a powerful human brand, thus suggesting that competence may be apowerful factor of appeal. Beyond the mere field of sport, such a dimension ofcompetence might explain the appeal of celebrities of other field. For instance, anactor who performs well in either blockbusters or movies with lower commercialsuccess might be recognised as competent, such competence leading to increases inhis/her appeal. Thus, competence is hypothesised to exert a positive impact forcelebrities from all fields. Turning now to excitement, as this dimension connotesthe valued notions of sociability, energy and activity, it may exert positive effectsindependently of the field. The same rationale applies for rudeness which, unlikeexcitement, is not valued and may exert negative effects on appeal for celebrities ofall fields.

However, it is here suggested that sophistication may exert different impacts onappeal according to the field under consideration. Sophistication refers to observableattributes like glamour, and charm, and it may be a personality dimension of interestfor celebrities who belong to a cultural field where observable cues are valued. Thisproposition finds some theoretical support in that the attractiveness of endorsers hasdifferent effects according to whether the brand is related to physical appearance. Forinstance, Kamins (1990) showed that for an attractiveness-related product, using a

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physically attractive celebrity significantly enhances attitude towards an ad, while ithas no effect for an attractiveness-unrelated product. Thus, since TV and cinema aretwo fields where observable cues might be particularly valued, sophistication is likelyto contribute to a celebrity’s appeal in these particular fields. However, this effectmay not hold for celebrities from the music and sport fields, where what mattersmore might be the notion of performance.

Considering the above, it is proposed that:

Hypothesis 2: Some determinants of appeal will vary according to the culturalfield (TV, music, sport, cinema). More specifically, whatever thecultural field, sincerity, competence, and excitement will exert apositive effect on appeal and rudeness will exert a negativeeffect (H2a). Sophistication will exert a lower positive effect inmusic and sports (H2b).

Celebrity appeal over time

Research suggests that over time, as heroes retire and disappear from the spotlight,their appeal begins to increase, even more than when they were performing(Shuart, 2007). Given that celebrities are often considered heroes (e.g., Bromnick& Swallow, 1999; Escalas & Bettman, 2003), their appeal might increase over time.However, heroes are quite different from regular celebrities in that a hero refers to‘one who succeeds’ while celebrities are just ’famous persons’ (Shuart, 2007, p. 128)with no condition of high performance required. Thus, the increase in the appeal ofheroes over time may not hold for all celebrities, who can be either successful orunsuccessful persons.

What is argued here is that the dilution or enhancement of appeal may depend onthe field of the celebrity, with the evolution of appeal over time following differentpatterns according to whether the celebrity is involved in the TV, music, sport orcinema industry. For instance, one may argue that the appeal of a famous athlete maydepend on his/her performance. Considering that physical abilities and performanceusually decrease over time, the appeal of athletes may thus decrease steadily overtime. On the contrary, this decline in appeal may not hold in music and cinema sinceperformance may not erode but rather remain stable or even increase withexperience.

Turning to the evolution of appeal of celebrities in the TV industry, research hasshowed that mere exposure to others can produce feelings of attraction (Moreland &Zajonc, 1982). The mere repeated exposure of social stimuli, such as names(Harrison, Tutone, & McFadgen, 1971) and photographs (Hamm, Baum, &Nikels, 1975), enhances subjects’ feelings of attraction towards the people thosestimuli refer to. Considering (1) this effect of mere exposure and (2) thecharacteristics of TV as a media form enhancing people’s exposure to celebrities,the appeal of TV celebrities is likely to increase over time. This hypothesis is in linewith what Luo et al. (2010) discovered, which was that regular exposure is neededfor the equity status of the celebrity not to erode over time.

Given the overall exposure of celebrities and the effect of mere exposure, theirappeal may increase over time, but more significantly in the TV industry, and not inthe sport industry. Thus, it is proposed that:

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Hypothesis 3: Overall, appeal will increase over time (H3a). More specifically,the appeal of TV celebrities (H3b) will increase over time, whileappeal will remain stable for music (H3c) and movie (H3d)celebrities and will decrease for sport celebrities (H3e).

Empirical study

Data

Our data are based on surveys conducted by Epoll Market Research, a firm based inLos Angeles, California, that launched its first panel in 1997. Epoll has an onlineproprietary panel used for E-Score Celebrity surveys and more generally to assess theimage of culture-related people or brands. To become a member and be given theright to judge celebrities, respondents must register on the Epoll website and providecontact information as well as demographic data (see Epoll.com for recruitment andpanel management information). Today, two hundred and fifty thousand ‘judges’ areregistered in the United States, making the panel nationally representative in terms ofethnic background (African American, Asian, Caucasian, Latin American, Native,Other), income groups, gender, marital status, regions (South, North East,Midwest, West, South), education, age (for 13-year-old at least), type ofemployment (part time, homemaker, full time, seeking for a job, retired, notemployed) and type of activity (accounting, etc.). Importantly, any panel member(i.e., judge) cannot ask to participate in some research but is contacted by Epoll. Themarket research company monitors how frequently respondents are recruited as wellas the length of the survey and makes sure that no judge evaluates more than 25celebrities during a single survey. Rather, judges are randomly selected to participateand receive point incentives to reward their selection and participation in surveys.These points can be traded in for gift cards at major retailers. This quality policymakes Epoll a well-established market research company whose data are used by bothimportant actors from the media and entertainment industries (Forbes magazine forinstance) and academics (for instance, Tuten, 2005).

We now turn to the database used in this research. It contains 6175 celebrities, andeach has been assessed one or several times between 2003 and 2011. The assessmentprocedure works as follows. Each ‘survey’ that informs us about the popularity,appeal and potential determinants (see later) of a given celebrity at a given periodof time is administered to 1100 judges. However, the number of judges variessubstantially between celebrities as not all of them are known by all judges.7 Eachjudge is supposed to evaluate 25 celebrities. For each assessment, judges are asked tochoose as many attributes as (s)he wishes from a list of 46 (see Appendix A). In orderto eliminate the possible effect of the total number of judges, these numbers aretranslated into percentages. For instance, instead of giving the number of times judgeshave chosen the term ‘charming’ to evaluate George Clooney, the database reportsthat 43% of respondents judge George Clooney to be ‘charming’. Also, we decided todiscard aggregate judgements made by less than 100 judges. A high percentage is anindicator of the intensity with which each of these attributes is chosen by judges.

7Judges are invited to evaluate another celebrity when they declare they are not familiar withthe celebrity they are asked to judge.

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This research is based on each celebrity’s most recent survey available in the Epolldatabase. Focusing on the most recent survey allows us to control for the effect oftime on the intensity with which celebrities are judged appealing or not, all otherthings being equal. The resulting sample is made up of 3117 celebrities (one surveyper celebrity). The most frequent occupations found in the Epoll database are, indecreasing order, TV (39.17%), cinema (20.55%), music (14.94%) and sports(10.94%). The full list of occupations is found in Table 1.

Measures of personality and appeal

The five dimensions of personality were captured using multi-attribute (qualifyingterms) measures. For each measure, we based our decisions on two criteria, thecontent similarity and the empirical results of factor analyses. Also, we ensured thateach measure was unidimensional with single eigenvalues greater than 1 (Hair, Black,Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2005). Sophistication is captured by six attributes:‘beautiful’, ‘attractive’, ‘glamorous’, ‘sexy’, ‘stylish’ and ‘cute’ (α = .96). Sincerity iscompiled from five attributes: ‘trustworthy’, ‘sincere’, ‘good listener’,‘compassionate’ and ‘can identify with’ (α = .89). Competence is based upon threeattributes: ‘experienced’, ‘intelligent’ and ‘interesting’ (α = .81). Excitement ismeasured with the following three attributes: ‘exciting’, ‘dynamic’ and ‘goodenergy’ (α = .80). Last, the four attributes measuring rudeness are ‘mean’, ‘rude’,

Table 1 Number of celebrities – breakdown by cultural field.

Activities – Epoll N % Cum. Field %/field

Business person 41 1.3 13.07 Business 1.3

Film personality – actor 623 19.76 4.28 Cinema 2.55

Film producer/director 25 .79 41.07 Cinema

Fashion – designer 20 .63 18.97 Fashion 2.18

Fashion – model 49 1.55 2.52 Fashion

Comedian 123 3.9 18.33 LPA 4.31

Magician 5 .16 42.40 LPA

Stage performer 8 .25 6.83 LPA

Internet celebrity 3 .1 41.83 Media 1.14

Journalist 13 .41 42.25 Media

Radio personality 20 .63 6.58 Media

Musician 471 14.94 57.34 Music 14.94

Celebrity baby 7 .22 13.29 Other 1.14

First lady 8 .25 41.33 Other

Other 21 .67 58.01 Other

Politician 61 1.93 59.94 Politics 1.93

Athlete 345 1.94 1.94 Sport 12.49

Coach 36 1.14 14.43 Sport

Health & fitness expert 13 .41 41.74 Sport

TV personality 1225 38.85 99.68 TV 39.17

TV producer/director 7 .22 99.90 TV

TV screenwriter 3 .1 10.00 TV

Note: Cum., cumulative percentage; LPA, live performing arts.

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‘cold’ and ‘creepy’ (α = .87). For each dimension of personality, an index was formedfrom the mean of their respective attributes. These indexes will serve as variables andbe included in further analyses. Turning to appeal as the dependent variable, thesingle attribute ‘appealing’ was used. As for the other variables, this measurerepresents the percentage of judges who used this attribute to appraise a celebrity.

Discriminant validity was assessed following Fornell and Larcker (1981) whosuggest that for discriminant validity to be proven, the average variance extractedfor each construct must be higher than the squared correlation between thatconstruct and any other construct. All measures exhibit discriminant validity.Convergent validity is also supported as the average variance extracted clearlyexceeds .50 for all variables (Hair et al., 2005).

Table 2 provides a description of the various measures used in this analysis and oftheir psychometric properties. Table 3 provides evidence for the convergent anddiscriminant validities. Table 4 describes the data.

Estimation procedure

Our goal here is to model P, the proportion of survey respondents who considercelebrity i appealing as a function of a vector of explanatory variables X. This vector

Table 2 Description and psychometric properties of the measures of celebrities’personalities and appeal.

Personalitydimension Items Loadings

Extractedvariance (%) Eigenvalue Reliability (α)

Sophistication Beautiful .94 78.98 4.74 .96

Attractive .94

Glamorous .91

Sexy .92

Stylish .87

Cute .71

Sincerity Trustworthy .92 70.49 3.52 .89

Sincere .93

Good listener .82

Compassionate .85

Can identify with .61

Competence Experienced .83 74.60 2.24 .81

Intelligent .91

Interesting .83

Excitement Exciting .83 73.12 2.19 .80

Dynamic .90

Good energy .83

Rudeness Mean .92 76.01 3.04 .87

Rude .91

Cold .88

Creepy .75

Appeal Appealing – – – –

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includes the five dimensions of personality that were detected from the principalcomponent analysis conducted earlier (sophistication, sincerity, competence,excitement and rudeness), a set of occupation dummies, as well as a series of 17semester dummies that inform us about the number of semesters of presence ofcelebrity i in the Epoll database.

The usual linear regression models assume that data come from a normaldistribution with the mean related to its predictors (Y,N μ; φð Þ and μ ¼ Xβ).However, there are obvious occasions when a normal distribution is inappropriate.Proportions fall into this category as they are, by construction, constrained between 0and 1. Considering this, we followed Hardin and Hilbe (2007) and adopted ageneralized linear model (GLM) approach. This approach is a flexiblegeneralisation of ordinary least squares which is, among others, designed to modelhow the mean proportion relates to the set of explanatory variables (see Nelder &Wedderburn, 1972). In GLM, each outcome of the dependent variable is assumed tobe generated from a particular distribution in the exponential family8 (Y,P μ; φð Þ),and a link function provides the relationship between the linear predictor and themean of the distribution function (g μð Þ ¼ Xβ).

The expected proportion of appeal for celebrity i, p, may be modelled using abinomial distribution. There are several popular link functions for the binomialdistribution, the most popular being the canonical logit link: g pð Þ ¼ lnðp=ð1� pÞÞ.9

We first estimate the model on the full sample made up of 3117 survey celebrities.In this case, appeal scores are explained by the five dimensions of personality, and wealso control for time and occupation fixed-effects. We then estimate a series of four

Table 3 Squared correlations matrix.

Sophistication Sincerity Competence Excitement Rudeness

Sophistication .78

Sincerity .00 .70

Competence .06 .43 .74

Excitement .00 .05 .08 .73

Rudeness .09 .10 .03 .07 .76

Note: Average variance extracted appears in diagonal.

Table 4 Descriptive statistics (sample size: 3117 celebrities).

Variable Mean Standard deviation Minimum Maximum

Appeal score .5 .14 .03 .87

Sophistication 13.03 11.4 .17 52.83

Sincerity 8.44 4.72 .6 32.8

Competence 23.3 9.06 2 57

Excitement 15.55 5.55 1 57

Rudeness 3.64 4.62 0 44.5

8These include the binomial, gamma, inverse Gaussian, negative binomial, Poisson andGaussian distributions.9Alternative choices for the link function in the case of a binomial distribution include theprobit and complementary log-log functions.

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equations, for those occupations (or cultural fields) which account for more than10% of the total sample size as follows: TV (1235 celebrities), music (471 celebrities),sport (394 celebrities) and cinema (648 celebrities).These four regressions includetime fixed-effects. The large number of observations available allows us to usesemester dummies instead of year dummies for a better approximation of the effectof time on appeal. These coefficients, as well as their z-statistics, are given inAppendix A. Estimation results are presented in Table 5.

Table 5 GLM regression results for determinants of celebrity appeal.

Equation 1 Equation 2 Equation 3 Equation 4 Equation 5

All TV Music Sport Cinema

Sophistication .004*** .004*** .004*** .003 .004***

(1.231) (6.303) (3.865) (1.714) (5.426)

Sincerity .008*** .004 .020*** .012** .011***

(6.445) (1.848) (6.281) (2.650) (4.392)

Competence .010*** .008*** .016*** .008*** .013***

(13.800) (7.399) (7.116) (3.631) (1.606)

Excitement .019*** .018*** .015*** .016*** .022***

(21.459) (12.201) (7.082) (8.424) (1.810)

Rudeness −.034*** −.042*** −.026*** −.033*** −.034***(−26.503) (−16.126) (−9.854) (−13.512) (−1.054)

TV .069

(1.317)

LPA .161**

(2.914)

Media −.060(−.959)

Politics −.188**(−3.158)

Music −.018(-.341)

Sport −.034(−.638)

Cinema .131*

(2.515)

Fashion −.051(−.893)

Business −.147*(−2.383)

Time fixed-effects YES YES YES YES YES

Constant −.654*** −.487*** −.810*** −.591*** −.669***(−11.840) (−14.166) (−15.606) (−1.249) (−15.800)

No. of observations 3117 1235 471 394 648

Notes: Robust z-statistics in parentheses; ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05; GLM estimates are derivedusing a canonical logit link and a binomial distribution. ‘Other’ is the reference occupation here.

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Estimation results

Impact of the various personality traits on appeal

Equation (1) shows that sophistication (β = .004, t = 10.23, p < .001), sincerity(β = .008, t = 6.44, p < .001), competence (β = .010, t = 13.80, p < .001) andexcitement (β = .019, t = 21.46, p < .001) all exert a positive impact on appeal. Onthe contrary, and as expected, rudeness has a negative impact on appeal (β = −.034,t = 26.50, p < .001). These results are in line with H1a–H1e.

Effects of personality on appeal across fields (Hypothesis 2)

Equations (2)–(5) reveal that the effects of competence, excitement (positive) andrudeness (negative) are consistent across the four main fields, supporting H2a.Although not hypothesised, it is interesting to note that excitement gets the largesteffect for movie celebrities. The series of Wald tests presented in Table 6 forexcitement indeed indicates that the magnitude of this effect is significantly lowerfor musicians (χ2 = 5.52, p = .018) and athletes (χ2 = 4.72, p = .029). What thisresult suggests is that actors who exhibit an exciting personality in their movies maygain more appeal than exciting celebrities from other fields.

Also, while H2a hypothesised a positive effect of sincerity for movie personalities,our results show that this dimension has no significant impact on the level of appealof TV personalities (β = .004, t = 1.848, p > .05). H2a is thus not fully supported.

Focusing now on H2b and sophistication, its positive effect on appeal holds forTV personalities (β = .004, t = 6.303, p < .001), musicians (β = .004, t = 3.865,p < .001) and movie personalities (β = .004, t = 5.426, p < .001), but does not forfamous athletes (β = .003, t = 1.714, p > .05). Interestingly, and althoughunexpected, sophistication exerts a positive effect on appeal for musicians. Asshown in Table 6, the effect of sophistication does not vary significantly from onefield to another, leading to the conclusion that sophistication has a consistent positiveeffect on appeal across occupations. Considering this significant effect ofsophistication on appeal in the music industry, H2b is thus only partially supported.

Evolution of fame over time (Hypothesis 3)

We now turn to the analysis of celebrities’ appeal over time. We present the resultsfor the various coefficients and z-statistics obtained for the time dummies of the fiveequations estimated earlier. The coefficients and z-statistics for Equation (1) areplotted in Figure 1 and reported in Table 7. The first result of interest is that theevolution of appeal is not constant over time but clearly nonlinear. Appeal scores aresignificantly higher when the celebrity blooms and appears for the first time in theEpoll database. Then his/her fame starts decreasing for about 2 years and increasesagain after five semesters of presence in the database (which is a proxy for appearancein the media) (β = .00; Z = .23). Appeal scores are maximum at around 16 semesters(β = .13; Z = 5.91), or 7–8 years after their first appearance in the database. Overall,appeal scores exhibit a positive trend, which supports H3a.

The evolution of the phenomenon is nonlinear but varies substantially acrosscultural fields (see Table 7 and Figure 2). As hypothesised (H3b), the appeal of TVpersonalities increases steadily over time, and more specifically after 4 semesters(β = .03; Z = 1.07) and until 16 semesters (β = .18; Z = 4.52) of presence in the

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Table

6Wald

testsofequality

coefficients

across

culturalfields(occupations).

Nullhyp

othesis

Cinema=Music=Sport

=TV

TV=Music

TV=Sport

TV=Cinema

Music=Sport

Music=Cinema

Sport

=Cinema

Sophistica

tion

.74

.02

.59

.10

.61

.14

.35

(.864)

(.883)

(.440)

(.753)

(.434)

(.708)

(.554)

Since

rity

2.47**

19.25**

2.89***

5.21*

2.10

5.27*

.06

(.000)

(.000)

(.089)

(.022)

(.147)

(.021)

(.813)

Competence

14.01**

9.67**

.00

6.73**

6.20*

2.04

2.88***

(.002)

(.002)

(.969)

(.009)

(.012)

(.153)

(.089)

Excitement

7.15***

1.98

1.34

1.59

.09

5.52*

4.72*

(.067)

(.159)

(.247)

(.207)

(.758)

(.018)

(.029)

Rudeness

17.85**

17.73**

5.86*

3.12***

3.74***

3.49***

.07

(.000)

(.000)

(.015)

(.077)

(.053)

(.062)

(.797)

Note:**,*,

***H0is

rejectedatthe1%,5%

and10%

levels,resp

ectively.

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database. As expected, appeal scores of musicians appear quite stable over time,suggesting consistent tastes over time and supporting H3c. However, appeal scoresof movie personalities increase steadily over time, which goes against H3d. This isespecially true after 5 semesters (β = .00; Z = .01) and until 16 semesters (β = .20;Z = 6.25) of presence in the database. Finally, and in line with H3e, appeal scores ofathletes are found to decrease steadily over time (from semester 1 (β = .20;Z = 5.04) to semester 17 (β = −.04; Z = −.33)). This pattern is consistent withthe fact that physical ability deteriorates with age (Hoeymans, Feskens, Van Den Bos,& Kromhout, 1997).

Conclusion

The key findings of this research are threefold (Table 8). First, we identify theeffects of personality on celebrities’ appeal. Specifically, this research shows thatappeal is positively impacted by attributes that refer to sophistication, sincerity,competence and excitement. On the contrary, appeal reacts negatively toperceived rudeness. Second, while some personality traits exert a homogeneousinfluence across different occupations, some do not. For instance, sophistication isfound to have no effect for famous athletes, and sincerity is of no importance forTV personalities. Third, a longitudinal analysis reveals that appeal overallincreases over time but also that this trend is not homogeneous across fields.Our results indeed show that the appeal of TV and movie personalities tends toincrease over time, while this pattern does not hold for (1) famous musicians,whose scores tend to remain quite stable over time, and (2) athletes whose appealdecreases almost steadily over the course of time.

Figure 1 Evolution of the phenomenon over time (all observations).

0.0

5.1

.15

0 5 10 15 20

# of semesters in Epoll0

24

68

0 5 10 15 20

# of semesters in Epoll

Estimated coeff. Local polynomial reg. z-statistics Local polynomial reg.

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Table

7Appealscoresovertime(breakdownbyoccupation).

Equation1

Equation2

Equation3

Equation4

Equation5

Semester

β(appeal)

Z(appeal)

β(TV)

Z(TV)

β(m

usic)

Z(m

usic)

β(sport)

Z(sport)

β(cinema)

Z(cinema)

1.13***

5.15

.11

1.78

.11*

2.09

.20***

5.04

.08*

2.06

2.03

1.72

.07*

2.1

.06

1.49

.14

1.95

.03

1.03

3.04*

2.03

.09*

2.54

−.01

−.21

−.04

−.81

.08*

2.07

4.04*

2.53

.03

1.07

.04

1.06

.05

1.05

.05

1.42

5.00

.23

.04

1.62

.02

.59

.06

.56

.00

.01

6.04

1.81

.06

1.63

.04

.92

.06

1.56

.03

.79

7.09***

4.58

.11***

3.37

.06

1.81

−.00

−.13

.12**

3.03

8.07***

3.64

.09***

2.84

−.01

−.21

.10

1.61

.10**

2.75

9.08***

4.26

.10***

3.57

.09

1.64

.09**

2.79

.07

1.85

10

.10***

6.00

.12***

3.69

.10*

2.56

.09**

2.93

.12***

4.1

11

.08***

4.63

.11***

3.8

.04

1.28

.02

.6.10***

3.48

12

.10***

6.71

.14***

5.52

−.00

−.08

.05

1.19

.13***

4.92

13

.08***

4.95

.08***

3.33

.02

.57

.05

1.12

.14***

4.65

14

.11***

6.67

.16***

6.31

−.03

−.61

.03

.62

.17***

5.93

15

.12***

7.24

.13***

4.54

.04

1.2

−.02

−.46

.19***

7.11

16

.13***

5.91

.18***

4.52

.06

1.28

.00

.25

.20***

6.25

17

.09***

3.38

.16***

3.62

.07

1.76

−.04

−.33

.13***

3.6

n1235

471

394

648

Note:Robust

z-statisticsin

parenthese

s;***p

<0.001,**p<0.01,*p

<0.05.

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Theoretical implications

This research investigates what makes celebrities appealing and thus focused on thedeterminants of their appeal. By identifying four dimensions of personality as majorsources of appeal (namely sophistication, sincerity, competence and excitement), ourmodel contributes to the literature on celebrities in two ways. First, through ourinvestigation of the effects of personality on celebrities’ appeal, we contribute toprevious celebrity research dealing with celebritisation (Kerrigan, Brownlie, Hewer,& Daza-LeTouze, 2011), that is the phenomenon occurring ‘when the logic ofcelebrity is exploited as a mode of production in the service of economiccalculation and marketing ends’ (p. 1510). While previous research oncelebritisation is mainly qualitative in essence (e.g., Kerrigan et al., 2011;O’Guinn, 1991), our quantitative approach shows how four dimensions ofpersonality contribute to make a celebrity appealing. In doing so, we provide anovel understanding of how celebrities can enhance their appeal and better marketthemselves. Specifically, our results show that sophistication, sincerity, competenceand excitement can contribute to the building of appealing celebrities and thus to theprocess of celebritisation.

As previous literature focused primarily on documenting what could makecelebrities efficient endorsers (Erdogan, 1999), our second contribution lies in theidentification we provide of several personality dimensions that impact celebrities’

Figure 2 Evolution of the phenomenon over time (by category – z-statistics).

02

46

8

0 5 10 15 20

# of semesters in Epoll

–10

12

3

0 5 10 15 20

# of semesters in Epoll

–20

24

6

0 5 10 15 20

# of semesters in Epoll

12

34

56

0 5 10 15 20

# of semesters in Epoll

z-statistics (Cinema) Local polynomial reg. z-statistics (Music) Local polynomial reg.

z-statistics (Sport) Local polynomial reg. z-statistics (TV) Local polynomial reg.

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appeal. While attractiveness is considered the primary determinant of successfulendorses (Choi & Rifon, 2012; Kahle & Homer, 1985; Ohanian, 1990), we showthat attractiveness is not the only dimension of interest in selecting an endorser.Through our identification of other determinants of appeal than the solely dimensionof attractiveness, we provide new theoretical insights into what makes potentialsuccessful endorsers. Precisely, considering their impact on appeal, the dimensionsof sincerity, competence and excitement might also represent attributes of interest forbrands in selecting endorsers. In this regard, further research is nevertheless neededto investigate the impact of these dimensions on the effectiveness of celebrityendorsement advertisements.

Managerial implications

Our research provides both celebrities and their managers with a better understandingof what makes them appealing and gives insight into strategies to enhance this sort ofimage capital. Our results suggest that some personality dimensions are more likely to

Table 8 Summary of the hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1

Hypothesis Independent variable Dependent variable Expected effect Result

a Sophistication Appeal Positive Confirmed

b Sincerity Positive Confirmed

c Competence Positive Confirmed

d Excitement Positive Confirmed

e Rudeness Negative Confirmed

Hypothesis 2

HypothesisIndependentvariable

Dependentvariable

Hypothesisedmoderating

field(s)

Expectedindependentvariable →dependent

variable effect Result

a Sincerity Appeal None Positive Rejected

Competence Positive Confirmed

Excitement Positive Confirmed

Rudeness Negative Confirmed

b Sophistication Appeal Music, sports Lower Partiallyconfirmed

Hypothesis 3

Hypothesis Time effect on appeal Field considered Result

a Positive – Confirmed

b Positive TV Confirmed

c None Music Confirmed

d None Movie Confirmed

e Negative Sport Rejected

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make celebrities appealing. The consistent positive effect of sophistication, sincerity,competence and excitement across fields suggests that celebrities can adopt differentstrategies to improve their appeal through one or more of these dimensions. Althoughsome dimensions may be easier (but also more costly) to improve than others, there aremany ways to look more attractive, more sincere (i.e., generous, compassionate, downto earth, etc.) or more exciting. For instance, sophistication can be enhanced throughboth natural methods – like training and diet – and artificial ones – like surgery – thatimprove physical attractiveness. Also, celebrities can increase their sophistication andtheir subsequent appeal through their associations with other sophisticated celebritiesthat they present themselves with. A celebrity presenting her/himself with asophisticated celebrity might indeed gain in appeal. Such a strategy might also proverelevant when applied to some places or some cultural phenomena which are alsoconsidered sophisticated. An actor experiencing a decline in his career might gain forinstance in presenting himself in a sophisticated sitcom, just as a singer could gain inappeal if he is present at a sophisticated festival. Clearly, agents, public relationsofficers, handlers and the media have an important role here in helping celebritieschoose the most appropriate and sophisticated people to be presented with or the bestplaces or shows to be seen in. Those choices will contribute to the sophistication ofcelebrities and the shaping of their story.

Turning to sincerity, many celebrities engage in behaviours that provide a deephuman view of their personality. They might engage in charitable behaviour, forinstance, which can help in being seen as full of sincerity, generosity and trust. Amongmany celebrities involved in charities, Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie has beenon field missions around the world for more than 10 years, meeting with refugees. In2003 she was the first recipient of the newly created Citizen of the World Awardgiven out by the United Nations Correspondents Association to those who have madea significant contribution for those who are in need around the world.10 It is verylikely that such charitable behaviour may help in making her seen as appealingthrough the sincerity dimension.

Conversely, some attributes have no effect, or even negative ones. Our resultsshow that perceived rudeness exerts a consistently negative effect on appeal acrossthe different fields considered here. This result is in line with previous examples ofactors who have exhibited rudeness on-set. For instance, after Christian Bale, thefamous actor who screamed at director of photography Shane Hurlbut on the set ofTerminator Salvation in July 2008.

11

He has also been arrested for an alleged verbalassault against his mother and sister.

12

These rude behaviours mean that he is nowviewed as a celebrity with an anger-management problem. Our results, as well as thisexample, suggest that celebrities must take care not to be perceived as rude. Althoughone option for celebrities who are known – or likely – to exhibit rude behaviourswould be to hide from the mass media to keep their rudeness from the audience, suchan option is clearly not recommended as visibility is crucial for gaining celebrity.Thus, a more relevant option would be to have an agent in charge of their image.Such public relations agents exist and could prove to be of great interest for

10https://www.looktothestars.org/celebrity/angelina-jolie11http://www.accesshollywood.com/updated-audio-recording-surfaces-reportedly-featuring-christian-bale-lashing-out-on-terminator-set_article_1337812http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2167062/Christian-Bales-mother-sister-reveal-really-happened-explosive-hotel-row–needs-stop-sulking-Batcave.html

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celebrities with behavioural problems. By defining the right image celebrities shouldpresent to their audience, they would thus help to maintain their appeal.

Importantly, as our results show that the effects of some attributes are of differentmagnitudes across fields, this suggests that celebrities might consider ways ofimproving their appeal, taking into consideration the specific features of their field.Also of importance are the effects of sophistication and sincerity, which are notsignificant for athletes and TV personalities, respectively. These results suggest thatcelebrities may thus consider exhibiting sophistication and sincerity, especially if theywork in other industries than these two.

However, it must be noted that the strategies chosen for celebrities to enhancetheir appeal must be undertaken in the light of any potential detriment to theirauthenticity. Consumers exhibit an increased focus on authenticity, looking forauthentic brands (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Grayson & Martinec, 2004). Sincecelebrities may be seen as brands, they must therefore keep in mind the potentiallydamaging impact that their quest for appeal may have on their authenticity. To beperceived as authentic, celebrities must remain unconventional and be seen to begoing against the mainstream (Thornton, 1996). Objects or brands that appearmotivated by commercial considerations lack authenticity (Holt, 2002). Thus,strategies that consist in switching from a well-established positioning to anotherone that may at first sight be considered more appeal-inducing might prove to beunwise if they are associated with commercial considerations and lead to a decreasein authenticity.

Turning to our dynamic model that examines how celebrities appeal varies overtime, the results show that appeal evolves differently over time and across fields.While the appeal of popular musicians remains stable over time, the appeal of TVandmovie stars increases steadily for 16 semesters while the appeal of prominent athletesdecreases steadily over the course of time. These results suggest two importantimplications. First, TV and movie stars have to be aware that their appeal is likelyto decrease in the long run, so they must face the fact that they need to find a way torenew their appeal. Considering the positive impact of sophistication, sincerity,competence and excitement for the appeal of celebrities in the cinema industry, itappears critical for those celebrities to work on these dimensions.

The second recommendation refers to the constant decrease in sport celebrities’appeal over time. This decrease implies that sport celebrities are more likely thanothers to lose their appeal in the long run. Considering the decrease in athleticperformance of the human body as it ages, one recommendation for athletes wouldbe to switch to another field where their appeal is not negatively affected by theirdeclining athletic performance. In so doing, sport celebrities may remain appealingon the basis of other personality dimensions like sophistication or sincerity. Thisseems all the more interesting for such celebrities since their years of training mayhave had positive effects on their sophistication, which is showed to exert positiveeffects on appeal.

Limitations and further research

Our research is not without limitations. First, our appeal measure was a single item.According to C-OAR-SE (Rossiter, 2002), when a concept is concrete – that is, itshould not be measured as being manifested or formed by other indirect concepts – itcan be measured with a single item. However, Freling, Crosno, and Henard (2011)

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suggest that appeal is not a concrete concept, but rather a complex one. Furtherresearch may thus benefit from assessing appeal through a multiple-item scale.

Second, our research relies on secondary data from an online poll. Such amethod has some limitations that need to be highlighted. First, the use of onlinepolls provides no guarantee that the measures needed to appraise our constructsare the most appropriate. Because such polls are often conducted solely for thepurposes of the agency and not for researchers, they sometimes do not provideacademics with the exact measures that are needed to appraise the construct(s)that are of interest for their study. A second limitation of such poll lies in thepotential lack of consideration of some variables of potential interest. Thus, it maybe the case that some important determinants of appeal have not been consideredhere. An interesting approach for further research would be to qualitativelyexplore the meaning of celebrity and its determinants. Collecting qualitativedata through interviews or ethnography may be helpful to highlight some othervariables of interest for a future quantitative data collection dealing with the issueof celebrity appeal (Holbrook & O’Shaughnessy, 1988; Thompson, Locander, &Pollio, 1989).

Also, it may be interesting to investigate the influence of personality not onlyacross but also inside cultural fields. Cultural fields may involve differentdisciplines with celebrities of distinct personalities. For instance, in the sportindustry, wrestlers or boxers might be seen as rude athletes, while golfers mightbe seen as sophisticated ones. Since celebrities must ‘fit in’ with the expectationsof their field and comply with the field’s values (Parmentier et al., 2013), it mightbe that rude wrestlers are considered appealing but rude golfers may not beconsidered so; also, sophisticated golfers may be perceived appealing, but rudegolfers may not. Thus, the personality dimensions may not only have differenteffects on appeal across fields but also within fields. An investigation ofpersonality effects among cultural fields may thus bring more nuanced resultsand be of great interest for further research on celebrity appeal.

Also, some differences might exist in the effect of personality and time betweenperforming celebrities (actors, singers, TV stars) and cultural celebrities (artists,politicians, chief executive officers, etc.). As the current sample is mainly composedof performing celebrities, these differences were not examined in this article andremain a promising area for further research. Another avenue of research would beworking on panel data to analyse more deeply the lifecycle of celebrities’ appeal. Ourdata from Epoll did not allow such a panel approach that requires collecting data fora given celebrity at different times. However, this represents a promising avenue forfurther research dealing with the appeal of celebrities over time.

Finally, because our secondary data were collected exclusively amongAmericans, the present research examines the determinants of appeal in aparticular cultural context. Relying on secondary data may present some pitfallsin cultural research (Atkinson & Brandolini, 2001). For instance, their use doesnot allow comparing the appeal of celebrities from different cultures, nor does itallow comparing how people from different cultures perceive the appeal of givencelebrities. Such a cultural approach may be of help to understand the appeal ofcelebrities. In line with McCracken (1989), it is likely that a given celebrity mayhave a different appeal depending on the cultural context of his/her professionalperformance. Hence, further research should address the effect of culture oncelebrities’ appeal.

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Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest associated with thisresearch.

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Appendix A

The 46 attributes used by Epoll Market Research for rating celebrities.

Activist, aggressive, approachable, articulate, attractive, beautiful, boring, can identify with,charming, classy, cold, compassionate, confident, creepy, cute, distinctive voice, down-to-earth,dynamic, emotional, exciting, experienced, funny, glamorous, good energy, good listener,handsome, impartial, influential, insincere, intelligent, interesting, intriguing, kooky/wacky,mean, over-exposed, physically-fit, rude, sexy, sincere, stylish, talented, trend-setter, trust-worthy, unique, versatile and warm.

About the authors

Renaud Lunardo is a professor of marketing at Kedge Business School in Bordeaux, France. Hisresearch mainly focuses on consumer perceptions, emotions and behaviour. His work has beenpublished in several journals, including International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journalof Business Research, European Journal of Marketing and Journal of Retailing and ConsumerServices.

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Corresponding author: Renaud Lunardo, Marketing Department, KEDGE – BordeauxBusiness School, 680 cours de la libération, Talence, 33405 France.

T +33 35 56 84 55 19E renaud.lunardo@kedgebs.com

Olivier Gergaud is a professor of Economics at Kedge-Bordeaux Business School (ResearchCluster for the Cultural Industries), in Bordeaux, France. His research areas are economics ofpro-social behaviour, behavioural finance, wine economics, cultural economics, sports econom-ics, labour economics, industrial organization and restaurants economics. He has publishedseveral papers in international journals such as Economic Journal, Journal of PortfolioManagement, Journal of Sports Economics, Journal of Wine Economics, Journal of CulturalEconomics, Economics Bulletin and in the Handbook of Sports and Lottery Markets(Handbooks in Finance – Elsevier).

Florine Livat is a professor of Economics at Kedge Business School (Research Cluster for theCultural Industries), in Bordeaux, France. Her field of research includes applied microeco-nomics and her works focus on markets in an information asymmetry context. She haspublished articles in several journals like Applied Economics Letters and Economics Bulletin.

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