Briana Anderson - Cornell University

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In a related study, Lafferty and Goldsmith (1999) examined the effects of
endorser and corporate credibility on consumers’ attitude toward the brand, attitude
toward the ad, and purchase intentions. A 2 X 2 experiment (high versus low
corporate credibility and high versus low endorser credibility) between subjects design
was used. One hundred female students were shown 4 fictitious magazine
advertisements and were asked to evaluate the credibility of the endorser using
Ohanian’s (1990) endorser credibility scale and Newell’s’ (1993) corporate credibility
scale. Additionally, participants indicated their attitudes toward the brand and
advertisements as well as purchase intentions. The results of their experiment
indicated that both types of credibility influence attitude toward the ad and the brand,
but that corporate credibility alone has a significant influence on purchase intentions.
Additionally, endorser credibility has a greater influence on attitude toward the ad
while corporate credibility has a greater influence on attitude toward the brand and
purchase intentions indicating that people look more to the endorser credibility for
judgments about the ad and corporate credibility for judgments about the brand. In
this study, the effects of endorser and corporate credibility were independent and did
not interact.
Finally, Lafferty et al. (2002) propose a theory of the combined influence of
corporate and endorser credibility, shown in Figure 1.