Consumers' online brand endorsements: a study into intentions to endorse different types of brands

Advertisers increasingly motivate people to endorse brands as a tactic to overcome people’s resistance against traditional persuasion attempts. In the present paper we introduce the concept of consumer endorsement, which we define as people’s intentional public and positive affiliations with brands. Little is known yet about why people are willing to endorse brands. Therefore, we conducted an experiment to examine factors that affect people’s decisions to endorse brands. Suggesting that people strive to express their identities by publicly endorsing brands, we investigated to what extent brand symbolism and the public (vs. private) nature of an endorsement affected people’s intentions to endorse, and explored whether these effects differed between for-profit and nonprofit brands. Results indicate that people prefer to publicly affiliate with nonprofit brands, but prefer private affiliation with for-profit brands. Higher levels of brand symbolism enhanced people’s intention to endorse for-profit brands but not nonprofit brands.