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How Celebrity Endorsements Influence Our Purchasing Decisions

Article: http://www.guided-selling.org/impact-of-celebrity-endorsement-on-consumer-buying-behavior/

Balance Theory Definition from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_theory

Because we live in an era, where social media has become an inseparable part of our everyday lives, celebrities, people that we have no personal links to, in fact affect our lives immensely. It is a known fact that many world-famous celebrities have acquired enough power to have the society grant them permission to speak out and proclaim their stances, whatever the topic may be. In particular, celebrity endorsement has been affecting the consumer buying behavior for decades now. As Angela Sokolovska mentioned in “The Impact of Celebrity Endorsement on Consumer Buying Behavior,” there is a psychological factor in the attitude that people develop towards brands and products. Because we spend a lot of our time on social media, we encounter celebrities way more often than people did a decade ago. Over time, we develop personal and intimate connections with them (the feelings developed can be either favorable or not).  For that reason, different social media platforms are the primary tools companies use to promote their products. If said product was seen to be promoted or advertised by a celebrity, the person is more likely to develop a biased opinion about it based on his/her relation to the celebrity. Now, does this always hold? Does this mean that people always judge a product by relying solely on their opinion about the celebrity promoting said product?

This psychological dynamic is closely linked to the Balance Theory, proposed by Heider. According to the Balance Theory, relationships are said to be unbalanced if person P dislikes person O but likes object X, but then learns that object X was created by person O. Person P will tend to correct the imbalance by choosing of the several options. To apply this to a specific example, suppose person P is some healthy nutrition advocate who loved Beyoncé (person O). The healthy nutrition advocate finds out that Beyoncé promotes Pepsi, which is a carbonated drink and extremely bad for health. The system becomes unbalanced and in order to make it balanced, P has three options:

-Decide that Pepsi isn’t so bad after all

-Decide that Beyoncé isn’t as great as originally thought

-Conclude that Beyoncé couldn’t really have meant to promote Pepsi and there is another side to the story.

According to the Balance Theory, the healthy nutrition advocate will choose whatever option requires the least effort.

In conclusion, celebrities significantly affect different aspects of our lives. How that influences the decisions we make is strongly linked to and governed by the Theory of Balance.

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