The impact of scandals on the use of athletes as endorsers

The goal of this research was to investigate the effect of a scandal on an athlete’s ability to successfully endorse a product, taking into account the type of product that was endorsed and the type of scandal that the athlete was involved in. An experiment was conducted with 158 participants who were distributed among six conditions, of different type of products (non-sport related and sport related) and type of scandals (no scandal, non-sport related and sport related). The results showed that attractiveness, expertise, trustworthiness and fit play an important role in determining endorsement effectiveness. However, product expertise could not ameliorate the effects of a scandal. Scandals negatively influence attractiveness and trustworthiness and in some cases also expertise. The latter happens when a scandal is related to the endorser’s expertise. Very severe scandals cannot be survived by an athlete and influence endorsement effectiveness in a very negative way. However, with less severe scandals that are not related to the endorser’s expertise it might be possible that expertise reduces the negative impact of a scandal, and that an athlete can successfully continue to endorse the product. Therefore the use of less severe scandals is a suggestion for further research. Since the results show that very severe scandals negatively influence endorsement effectiveness greatly, it is recommended to managers that they end the endorsement contract after the athlete is involved in a very severe scandal.