Abstract
The 21st century has seen a vast revolution, characterized by the development of better management and operation techniques. Business organizations have come up with better marketing techniques to widen their market share and customer base. Celebrity endorsement has emerged to be an effective marketing strategy that has widely been used by different business organizations. Endorsement entails the use of names and personalities of the celebrities in advertisements for company products and services that such individuals might not be necessarily experts. With due regard to the increase in celebrity endorsement practices in advertising, the purpose of this paper was to investigate the impact and usefulness of celebrity endorsement in communication management, brand management and analyze the correlating factors that are critical to the success or failure of the celebrity endorsements deal. It was equally important for the study to evaluate the impact of celebrity endorsement and its influence on consumer behaviour as far as it pertains to brand preferences. The study entailed the use of a quantitative approach that was carried out through a fully structured questionnaire; one for the customers and the other for medium and large-size business enterprises managers. The study was carried out in Kenya and, therefore, targeted customers and organizations in Kenya as well. An ordinal weighted scale was used in coding the data obtained from the questionnaire. The findings clearly show that celebrity endorsement remains a useful and strategic marketing tool.
