University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses April 2014 Taking It to The Streets: A Multimethod Investigation of Street Credibility and Consumer Affinityowar T d Street Credible Endorsers Delancy Howard Sterling Bennett University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Marketing Commons, Mass Communication Commons, and the Social Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Bennett, Delancy Howard Sterling, "Taking It to The Streets: A Multimethod Investigation of Street Credibility and Consumer Affinityowar T d Street Credible Endorsers" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 33. https://doi.org/10.7275/5474838.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/33 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TAKING IT TO THE STREETS: A MULTIMETHOD INVESTIGATION OF STREET CREDIBILITY AND CONSUMER AFFINITY TOWARD STREET CREDIBLE ENDORSERS A Dissertation Presented By DELANCY H.S. BENNETT Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2014 Isenberg School of Management © Copyright by Delancy H.S. Bennett 2014 All Rights Reserved TAKING IT TO THE STREETS: A MULTIMETHOD INVESTIGATION OF STREET CREDIBILITY AND CONSUMER AFFINITY TOWARD STREET CREDIBLE ENDORSERS A Dissertation Presented By DELANCY H.S. BENNETT Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________________ William Diamond, Chair ____________________________________________ Elizabeth Miller, Member ____________________________________________ Lisa Keller, Member ____________________________________________ Jerome Williams, Member ____________________________________________ George R. Milne, Director Doctoral Programs Isenberg School of Management DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my loving wife Nicole and our daughter Kaylee. Thank you for your love, patience, and understanding. I could not have done this without the two of you. Further, this dissertation is dedicated to my soon to be born son DJ who got to miss all this fun. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor Bill for all his mentoring and friendship. I would like to acknowledge my committee members, Liz, Lisa, and Jerome for their time and attention. I have learned more from each of you than you can possibly imagine. I would also like to thank my in-laws, Linda and Keith for their guidance as well as their enduring emotional and financial support. Further, I thank Brian Brown for believing in me, providing “actionable plans” and mentoring me through this entire process. To my numerous professors and advisors, I thank you for this opportunity and your investment in me. I would like to express my gratitude to the PhD project and its members, I promise to pay the balance forward. To my copy editors, Kay, Kathy, and Celia, thank you for your watchful eye and invaluable help. To Dorian, Chris, Phil, Kamala, and Cynara, thanks for all your help with the research in Harlem. To all my family and friends, old and new, and classmates thank you for your support, well wishes, and encouraging dinners, talks, walks, emails, and phone calls over the years. Finally, to Natalie, Ricky, Mom and Dad, thanks for watching out, we made it! v ABSTRACT TAKING IT TO THE STREETS: A MULTIMETHOD INVESTIGATION OF STREET CREDIBILITY AND CONSUMER AFFINITY TOWARD STREET CREDIBLE ENDORSERS FEBRUARY, 2014 DELANCY H.S. BENNETT, B.A., UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL M.B.A., WAKE FOREST UNIVERSTIY Ph.D. UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor William Diamond Celebrity endorsers are featured in 10 to 20 percent of commercials in the United States (Agrawal and Kamakura, 1995). While firms have invested significant capital in celebrity endorsers, they traditionally shy away from those who have been involved in illegal or immoral acts (Briggs, 2009; Creswell, 2008). However, the rules of endorser selection appear to be changing. Recently, a new type of endorser whose celebrity is built in part upon criminal activity or violent history has emerged. These celebrities, often rappers, successfully endorse major brands such as Vitamin Water and Chrysler. They are frequently described as having another form of credibility—street credibility (Spiegler, 1996). Patrick (2005) suggests that the street credible celebrities will replace athletes as the most important product endorsers. Therefore, it is important to determine the nature vi of street credibility, who has it, and how is it gained. As well, we need to understand how diverse consumer groups relate to these endorsers. The first essay of this dissertation develops a definition for the construct of street credibility, outlines its antecedents, and investigates its attraction to different consumer groups. To do so, existing ethnographic, anthropological and sociological studies regarding street culture (i.e. Bourgois, 2003; LeBlanc, 2003) are consulted. A modified form of grounded theory using “extant theory and ethnographic studies” is employed to build a foundation for this emerging construct (Burton, Cherlin, Winn, Estacion, and Holder-Taylor, 2009). Next, theoretical sampling (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) is used to select interview respondents in two U.S. communities. The first community represented inner-city consumers and the second represented consumers outside the inner city. The results from this study indicate that street credibility is based on one’s ability to thrive within the streets' culture of terror with street smarts and the creation of a tough persona. This form of credibility is increased as one gains financial, physical, and sexual power within street culture’s context. This study suggests that the inner-city consumers’ affinity toward the street credible celebrity is rooted in their similarity to the endorser while non- inner city consumers’ affinity is based on the celebrities' ability to evoke fantasy. A second set of in-depth interviews with respondents who were inner-city minorities, inner- city non-minorities, non-inner city minorities, and non-inner city non-minorities were conducted. The purpose of this study was to buttress the findings from the earlier studies, further delineate how diverse populations view street credibility, and to gain insight as to which products and brands are best represented by these endorsers. The findings here were in line with the previous interviews and also indicated that non-inner city minorities vii are attracted to these endorsers based on their shared histories as minorities. Additionally, in terms of product match, street credible celebrities were reported as being able to endorse non profits as well as low priced “street” themed or high price-premium products, but not those products that are mid-tier. This is due to these endorsers associations with origins of poverty and their consumption of high end products as a symbol of their success. The second essay of this dissertation provides a review of literature on endorser credibility, endorsers as reference group members and source persuasion. This essay then provides evidence that consumer affinity for the street credible endorser, in spite of his or her association with negative information, is inconsistent with the “traditional” models of credibility and endorser effectiveness. Building on McCracken’s (1989) Meaning Transfer Model, this essay posits that consumer affinity for the street credible endorser is based on the endorser’s meanings and uses. This is further delineated in a proposed model of “Relationship, Feelings and Fantasy and Experiential Consumption Model.” This model posits that consumer affinity for street credible endorsers is based on the endorser's ability to provide the consumer escape from the stress of daily life through transformational fantasy. Here, street credible endorser’s association with certain scandals authenticates their street credibility and in doing so adds to the fantasy these celebrities evoke. This model resolves the anomaly of affinity for endorsers tied to negative information. Moreover, this model answers Amos, Holmes, and Strutton’s (2008) call for research that provides insight into attraction to celebrities who are bankable endorsers despite their negative actions. viii The purpose of the third essay of this dissertation is to provide further understanding the role that fantasy plays in consumers' affinity for street credible endorsers. This is explored through the Relationships, Feelings, and Fantasy and Experiential Consumption Model as outlined in Essay 2. More specifically, this essay explores the relationship that consumers’ similarity to the endorser plays in street credible and traditionally credible endorsers' ability to evoke transportation and identity fantasy. As scale measures for neither the construct of street credibility nor that of fantasy, type has yet to be developed, a series of studies using Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis are first conducted. These studies yield two separate reliable and valid scales, one for each construct. Further, to test the validity of using existing brand personality scales