Influence of sport celebrity endorsement on basketball players purchase decision

This research describes the main factors affecting consumers' attitudes towards the endorser, advertisement and brand. The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of sports celebrities endorsing sports and non-sports brands. This study has valuable results to brand managers' for famous brand sponsorship and provides companies information that maximizes strategic goals and return on investment. This study used professional basketball players from Turkey to evaluate the factors that affects basketball players‟ purchase decision. There are 350 questionnaires applied to male and female basketball players. An important finding of the study shows that factors determined before the questionnaire such as prestige, self-esteem, credibility, attractiveness and uniqueness have significant affect on basketball players purchase decisions. This study also shows that almost every basketball player has a role model celebrity endorser and even they don‟t like the products or the services that brand sells, they still intend to purchase the products or the services represent by the celebrity endorsers. Some of the basketball players believe that using the products that represent by their favorite celebrity endorser brings them luck. The feedbacks from questionnaire prove that factors like quality, comfort and design are also affective on basketball players purchase decision. Keywords: sport celebrity, brand, basketball, prestige, self-esteem, credibility, advertisement, attractiveness, uniqueness