Introduction

Showing friendly, kind, and warm endorsers in advertisement is a common strategy for companies attempting to appeal to their customers on an emotional level. However, these companies may have systematically overlooked one important factor, the perceptual fluency of celebrity recognition. According to the perceptual fluency literature (Lee & Labroo 2004; Winkielman et al. 2012), information that is consistent with one’s existing knowledge is more easily to be processed. Unlike previous endorsement research, this study explored novel pathways of celebrity recognition and examined how the perceptual fluency of the celebrity will impact celebrity endorsement. This study aimed to answer two questions:

•  Does perceptual fluency of the celebrity affect how a viewer reacts to an advertisement on the metrics that advertisers care about?
•  If perceptual fluency of the celebrity does have an effect, how can advertisers enhance the fluency when creating print advertisements?

The current study undertook two studies that provided evidence for the perceptual fluency effect of a celebrity’s physical image on consumers’ recall and attitude towards the endorsement.