Abstract

Previous academic research has focused on the effect of the celebrity on brands by examining their characteristics and their congruence with brands. The aim of this paper is to reveal the effect of psychological distance on self-concept and how it determines brand attachment. We additionally compare two types of celebrities to reveal the different consequence. We suggest that actual self-congruence (vs. ideal self-congruence) increases psychological proximity, leading to higher consumer-celebrity attachment and brand attachment. In particular, we argue that social media celebrities (vs. well-known celebrity) can decrease psychological distance with consumers and boost brand attachment. We detected participants’ familiarity with the celebrities and assigned them to different conditions to examine their self-concept, psychological distance, attachment to celebrities and brand attachment. Findings show that consumers’ actual self-congruence and ideal self-congruence negatively influences psychological distance. The less the psychological distance between celebrities and consumers, the higher the consumer-celebrity attachment and brand attachment. Furthermore, consumers perceive higher actual self-congruence and lower psychological distance with social media celebrities. Social media celebrities also present significant difference with well-known celebrities in emotional brand attachment. In terms of managerial implication, companies should highlight celebrity’s actual self and ideal self in order to diminish their psychological distance between consumers and celebrities. Moreover, if the brand advocates the actual self-image of target customers, partnering with social media celebrities would be a superior choice. This strategy would not only generate higher emotional attachment than using main stream celebrities, it would also save the brand on costly endorsement fees.