A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Gender Choice of Celebrities Endorsing Beauty Brands: An Abstract

According to the cosmetics industry report worldwide (Statista 2018), the annual growth rate of global cosmetic market has reached the highest number (5%) in the past ten years. Asia is the largest market, and its market share has grown from 31% to 37% from 2011 to 2017. Among them, China has the highest market value growth from 2014 to 2018. Most leading brands (L’Oréal, Unilever, P&G Co., and Estee Lauder Cos.) are speeding up their expansion into the Chinese market and frequently utilizing celebrity endorsement to pull up their sales (Winterich 2018). An emerging trend appears that male celebrities with soft masculinity are endorsing female-oriented beauty brands in Chinese market. The male idols, normally called “Xiaoxianrou” in Chinese Internet slang translated as “little fresh meat” in English. In contrast with the traditional “match-up” hypothesis supporting the effectiveness from the fit between the endorser and the endorsed product, the underlying mechanism of consumers’ response to the mismatch between product gender image and endorsing celebrity gender is yet to be enriched. Building on existing research on gender role representation and entertainment theory, we intend to identify a dual mediation model. The purpose of the study is to enrich the understanding of the gender-specific celebrity endorsement strategy by specifying the underlying mechanism of consumers’ response to cross-gender endorsements featuring male idols and cross-cultural differences in gender role attitudes. For practitioners, this study reveals both positive and negative outcomes of cross-gender celebrity endorsement and enriches brand managers’ understandings on leveraging the benefits of celebrity entertainment in their marketing strategy globally.