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When A Celebrity is Tied to Immoral Behavior: Consumer Reactions to Michael

Jackson and Kobe Bryant

Article  in  Advances in consumer research. Association for Consumer Research (U.S.) · January 2005

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When A Celebrity is Tied to Immoral Behavior: Consumer Reactions to Michael Jackson and
Kobe Bryant
Allison R. Johnson, University of Southern California
EXTENDED ABSTRACT
When a celebrity’s identity is linked to implications of im-
moral behavior, the reactions of consumers to the celebrity will
determine whether their careers can continue to generate profits in
the entertainment industry or as endorsers. However, the reactions
of consumers tend to vary, from absolute belief in the celebrity’s
innocence to absolute belief in his guilt. For example, reactions to
the recent charges against Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant
illustrate the widely varied reactions of consumers. In the case of
Michael Jackson, the media coverage emphasizes the reactions of
his ardent fans who believe he is absolutely innocent, in implicit
contrast with others who believe that he is probably guilty of the
charges against him. Similarly, the media coverage suggests that
many people believe Kobe Bryant is innocent of the charges that
were made against him. However, many of the companies who had
used him as an endorser are not taking the risk that their products
will become associated with a man perceived as a rapist in the minds
of some of their consumers.
Social Identity Theory suggests that consumers’ level of
identification with celebrities like Michael Jackson and Kobe
Bryant may help predict the way they react to such situations. I
propose that consumers who are strongly identified with a celebrity
are less likely to react negatively than consumers with a lower level
of identification. Fans who have only a low level of identification
with the celebrity may be unlikely to continue to buy merchandise
endorsed or produced by the celebrity, whereas those who are
strongly identified may continue purchasing the celebrity’s prod-
ucts because they believe in his innocence.
Social Identity Theory describes the causes and consequences
of identification with individuals and with groups (Brewer &
Gardner, 1996; Tajfel & Turner, 1985), and has been used in
marketing to describe consumers’ identification (e.g. Bhattacharya
& Sen, 2003). Identification describes the effect of a relationship on
definitions of identity, and occurs when a relationship becomes
relevant to identity (Reed, 2002). Consumers who identify with the
celebrity would define their identities in part based on being a fan
of the celebrity. Strength of identification depends on the impor-
tance of being a fan of the celebrity to the consumer’s identity.
Being a fan of the celebrity is an important part of strongly
identified consumers’ identity. However, consumers can also have
a relatively weak identification with the celebrity, if the celebrity
has become somewhat relevant to their identities but is not very
important to them. For example, a consumer might be weakly
identified if he or she had been a fan of the celebrity in the past.
The strength of consumers’ identification is expected to pre-
dict reactions to the charges against the celebrity. Strongly identi-
fied consumers are expected to believe in the celebrity’s innocence,
whereas people who are have a relatively weak identification with
the celebrity are expected to be more likely to believe that he is
guilty. As a result, weakly identified consumers are expected to be
less willing to purchase or recommend the celebrity’s products than
are strongly identified consumers. In addition, emotions are ex-
pected to indicate consumers’ feelings about themselves based on
their connection to the celebrity following the accusations of
immoral behavior.
I conducted an online survey to investigate the relationship
between strength of identification and the reactions of consumers
100
when celebrities have been linked to charges of immoral behavior.
Consumers were recruited to describe their reactions to the accusa-
tions of immoral behavior against Kobe Bryant and Michael Jack-
son. The reactions of consumers with a relatively weak level of
identification were found to be more negative for Michael Jackson
than for Kobe Bryant. Consumers who were weakly identified with
Michael Jackson were less likely to be willing to purchase and
recommend his products than were consumers weakly identified
with Kobe Bryant. However, strongly identified consumers were
no less likely to purchase and recommend Michael Jackson’s
products than were consumers strongly identified with Kobe Bryant.
Strongly identified consumers were more likely to believe that
Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant were innocent than were weakly
identified consumers. Strongly identified consumers were also
more likely to be willing to purchase and recommend the celebrity’s
products. In addition, strength of identification was found to predict
emotional reactions. Strongly identified consumers were more
likely to feel proud of being a fan, while weakly identified consum-
ers were more likely to feel guilty and ashamed of being connected
to the celebrity in any way. The results of this study indicate that
strength of identification plays a role in shaping consumers’ reac-
tions to such celebrity scandals, and that Social Identity Theory can
help to predict consumers’ reactions to immoral behavior.
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Advances in Consumer Research
Volume 32, © 2005
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