• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.49-60
• /
• 2023

This study endeavors to answer four research questions: (a) Who are the celebrities? (b) How popular are they? (c) What do they post on social media platforms? (d) How do their followers react to them? Following quantitative methods, this study analyzes the top 195 Facebook celebrities of Bangladesh and their 9,441 Facebook posts' interactions. The result suggests that actors, music-related celebrities, and sports stars are the most popular celebrities. While male celebrities have a higher frequency, female celebrities have higher average followers than their male counterparts. Celebrities mostly share photos on Facebook, perhaps to recreate their public images and provide regular updates to their followers. The followers also engage the most in photos with affection and surprise reactions. Their reactions to celebrities' Facebook content are highly positive. Some strengths and limitations of this study are also discussed.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.20 no.10
• /
• pp.284-295
• /
• 2019

Celebrities form a dominant culture of one era and are cultivating influence to lead new fashion. Domestic women celebrities attending Seoul Fashion Week build their image as a fashion leader by exposing their own fashion aesthetics to the public. This promotes PR and sales of the brand of fashion designers in the collection. This study considers the fashion trends of women celebrities by analyzing the fashion style of women celebrities in Seoul Collection over the recent five years. The results of this study on contents analysis are as follows. First, straight silhouettes, achromatic colors, and an absence of a pattern or decoration comprised a high proportion. Celebrities preferred a modern and minimal style. Second, they preferred a feminine style that shows traditional feminine beauty through slim and princess silhouettes, one-piece dress or skirts, soft materials, and decorations with ruffles. In addition, as a matching jacket on one-piece dresses also appeared, it showed that celebrities attempted to change the chic feminine style with masculine beauty. Third, boxy silhouettes, multi-color mixed with colorful colors, graphic or lettering patterns, glittering materials and lots of details comprised a high proportion. This means celebrities pursue a maximal style that reveals their strong presence as fashion leaders.

• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.101-116
• /
• 2014

In the year 2013, Warren Buffett was named one of the most influential people of the year by TIME magazine. When people are exposed to such news, they show strong interest in who the influential people are and how those people became so successful. Likewise, people show strong attachment to other prominent figures as well. This social phenomenon indicates that people perceive well-known persona like business leaders, TV stars or sports stars etc. as human brands of intangible assets. As the role of these human brands is becoming more important, people tend to develop stronger attachment toward them. Another notable modern social phenomenon is people's pursuit of life-satisfaction and social well-being. People desire to increase their quality of life by having quality time with family and friends, and also by building attachment towards celebrities, sports stars, and so on. The main objective of this study is to examine how attachment toward human brands affects quality of life. While existing studies on human brands examined antecedents of attachment, e.g., some needs fulfillment such as A-R-C needs (autonomy, relatedness and competence needs) fulfillment, this study focuses on the outcome variables of attachment, e.g., how attachment toward human brands affects stress relief and life satisfaction through self-efficacy. Based on previous research, we divided human brands into two types: heroes and celebrities. Heroes are defined as people who have considerable and lasting importance on both societal and individual levels, and celebrities are defined as people who are well-known but have little or no short-term impact on society and individual levels. This study focuses on how attachment toward each type of human brands, celebrities and heroes, affects the quality of life or well-being. This study focuses on three important outcome variables; stress relief, life satisfaction, and self-efficacy, (three variables) which have been recently gaining importance, especially in the domain of positive psychology. Major findings from the present study show that although celebrities draw attachment from people by providing fun and entertainment or providing stress relief, they have weak influences on the wellbeing or efficacy of individuals at a deeper level. In contrast, attachment toward heroes helps people live better by providing meaning and positively influencing life satisfaction through self-efficacy (Frankl 1997). These results are consistent with the main tenet of 'positive psychology' which seeks "to find and nurture genius and talent and to make normal life more fulfilling" (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000). Considering the fact that certain celebrities are perceived as heroes to some, we can conclude that celebrities can become heroes if they provide meaning and value to the lives of people. This study contributes to the research stream of human brands since the most current leading research (e.g., Thomson 2006) indicated the need to look at the resulting effect of attachment on life satisfaction through self-efficacy. Another important contribution is that we empirically documented the different effects of celebrities and heroes. As expected, this study shows that heroes more deeply influence the lives of individuals in the long term while celebrities do so rather shallowly in the short term. The issues of the influence of heroes on the individuals' lives need to be further investigated in relation with the perspective of positive psychology.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
• /
• v.43 no.4
• /
• pp.549-561
• /
• 2019

This study investigated the impact of appearance pressure from celebrities' social media upon internalization of mesomorphic ideal and muscularity dissatisfaction and the moderating role of time spent on social media in the relationships among variables in a sample of young Korean men (N=247). Those men who regularly participate in physical activities more than three times a week were included in our sample. Structural equation modeling analysis revealed that celebrities' social media pressure directly influenced both internalization and muscularity dissatisfaction, and internalization predicted muscularity dissatisfaction. A significant mediating effect of internalization in the relationships between celebrities' social media pressure and muscularity dissatisfaction was found. However, the moderating effect of time spent on social media was not found. The present results highlight the significant and negative effects of celebrities' social media on male's body image perception. By comparing the results of this study to previous studies, we can anticipate that the effects of social media on users' body image concerns can differ between male and female in the matter of time spent on social media. Implications of the study results and suggestions for future studies are discussed.

• International Journal of Costume and Fashion
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.1-17
• /
• 2015

This paper examines the contemporary relationship between fashion brands and celebrities. Noting the historic role of celebrities in fashion and their current prevalence in the industry, the paper moves beyond discussion of the motives and effectiveness of celebrity endorsement, and instead explores its nature and practice in the fashion sector. The paper proposes a new definition of celebrity endorsement in fashion, offers a classification of celebrities involved in fashion brand endorsement, and presents a typology examining the contemporary means by which a fashion brand may collaborate with celebrities. The typology is defined in context of the nature, length and cost to the brand of the relationship between it and the celebrity. The methodology uses secondary sources and qualitative primary research in an exploratory agenda in order to propose conclusions and suggest ideas for further research.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.30 no.1
• /
• pp.143-165
• /
• 2020

The rapid growth of economic transactions generated by live streaming broadcasts ("LSB") has created opportunities for retailers to increase sales. However, little is known about what impact LSB celebrities have on customers and what causes LSB celebrities to become famous. This study aimed to fill this gap by studying the economics of LSBs. This study was conducted through a para-social relationship and attractiveness theory framework. Consequently, social and task attraction were assumed to be the antecedents of the para-social relationship that induced purchase intention. This study examined the impact of relationship rewards, self-disclosure, affective interactivity, informative interactivity, and the amount of information provided on purchase intentions through LSB. Celebrities can use the results of this study to enhance their appeal to fans and promote customers' purchase on e-commerce. This study contributed to the IS field by investigate the impact of para-social relationship on the online shopping context.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
• /
• v.26 no.5
• /
• pp.777-792
• /
• 2018

As social media has become a part of daily life, new types of online opinion leaders are emerging, and in turn, changes in traditional fashion leaders and leadership are expected. Considering such changes, this study attempted to reexamine fashion leader types and influence characteristics from the perspective of college students as fashion followers. Students were asked to write an essay identifying their fashion leader and how and why they were influenced by him or her. Sixty essays entitled "My Fashion Leader" were collected and content-analyzed. A total of 78 fashion leaders were identified and categorized into four types including celebrities, social media influencers, friends/family/acquaintances, and people seen on the street in order of frequency. Influence characteristics of the identified fashion leaders included superiority, role model, similarity, and familiarity. Similarity was observed across all types of fashion leaders, while superiority and familiarity were identified for celebrities and friends/family/acquaintances, respectively. The results imply that celebrities, mostly those from the TV, movie, and music industries, are still important as fashion leaders in society regardless of their communication style, while friends/family/acquaintances as opinion leaders within a consumer group are important to provide information, advice, and help. However, social media influencers between the two groups are expanding the influence.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.13 no.8
• /
• pp.72-82
• /
• 2013

The present study explored types of Twitter-mediated communication and emotional responses of Twitter users toward celebrities. Three perspectives of para-social interactions, information hub, and fandom were proposed as communication types on Twitter. Celebrities were classified by entertainer, politician, specialist, and blogger. Communication patterns according to each category of celebrities were analyzed. The patterns of emotional responses, which represents the use of emoticons and emotional expressions were also analyzed. The results show that the type of para-social interactions was frequently accepted for the interactions with politicians and specialists, while fandom style was salient for the entertainers. For the power bloggers, the users tend to adopt the type of information hub interaction. The use of emotions and emotional expressions were most frequent in case of fandom style communication and the messages to the entertainers. Implications were further discussed.

• Management & Information Systems Review
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.249-270
• /
• 2012

The purposes of this research are suggesting the needs of further studies about human brand by analysing the antecedents and consequents of brand attachments to celebrities in Korean Wave and marketing implications. In especially, this study uses attachment as a one of important marketing performance factor that may be a appropriate word in person to person relations. Research conclusions show the trust is more important factor to brand attachment than competence and self congruity. And there is no direct effect of competence to brand attachment. This is partially because emotional evaluation of consumers is much important than rational evaluation when they are making relationships with celebrities. Second, as similar with past studies, higher attachments lead to higher buying intention toward products that celebrities endorse, next entertainment products they record or play, extension products, and country image.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
• /
• v.23 no.5
• /
• pp.559-575
• /
• 2021

The popularity of K-pop, the development of diverse media and communications, and rapid globalization are increasing consumers' attachment to celebrities. These celebrities, called "Human brand", have a growing impact on consumers. However, research on idol celebrities has been conducted mainly on teenagers. Furthermore, there are limits to the studies on consumers' attachment to idol celebrities who do not advertise specific products and intention to purchase products which are not advertised but related to the idol human brand. Therefore, this study has been conducted on 301 out of 400 adult women in their twenties to forties in Korea to examine the relationship between the characteristics of the idol human brand, attachment to the idol human brand, desire to imitate the idol human brand, desire to identify with the idol human brand and its fandom community, and the effect on purchase intention. For the statistical analysis, SPSS and AMOS were used. The study found that the characteristics of the idol human brand which are trust, professionality, social attractiveness, and physical attractiveness positively influenced attachment to the idol human brand. The attachment to the idol human brand positively affected the imitation desire toward the idol human brand, and the identification desire with the idol human brand, and to identify with its fandom community. Additionally, the desire to imitate and to identify with the idol human brand and its fandom community positively affected the intention. Furthermore, the relationships between all variables were found to have a significant mediating effect.