Marketing communications via celebrity endorsement: an integrative review

The purpose of this paper is to perform an integrative analysis, mapping the main areas of the celebrity endorsement literature of the last 20 years, offering a taxonomy of subject subareas and a research agenda for the topic.

The research was divided into two stages: the first was a systematic review of literature, and the second consisted on complementary information based on the generation and analysis of the maps elaborated by the VOSviewer software based on the data collected. The searches for the data occurred between the months of January and March of 2017.

The paper provides a decentralization framework in terms of authors regarding the celebrity endorsement. The country with the largest number of research works in the area is the USA; also, the paper reveals the most cited document, also the main journals about the theme, the main keywords, the main authors and their discussions. Thereafter, the paper presents tables containing the main author’s and respective theme inside celebrity endorsement.

One possible limitation of the research is that it was performed only in the Scopus database, and it may be suggested as future searches that other databases are included as well.

The results of this paper can serve as a facilitating guide for researchers and for managers that want to know more about the topic.

A categorization table was proposed containing the subthemes of celebrity endorsement that were discussed in the last 20 years and a list of their respective authors, including the following subjects: cultural comparison, congruence, adverse effects, efficacy and intention to purchase, marketing destinations, social media, models and reviews, multiple endorsements, social policy, values of brand/economic.