In social media marketing, celebrity endorsement is a widely used strategy. Luxury brands use their social media accounts to post pictures of celebrities using their products. However, they would be confronted with the dilemma of whether to standardize or localize their celebrity endorsers for different markets. This dilemma of whether to standardize or adapt their advertisements to the local market has been haunting luxury brands for a long time. This paper examines the effectiveness of localized celebrity endorsements for luxury brands on Chinese social media. We analyze whether Chinese celebrity endorsers could trigger more social media interactions and enhance perceived brand luxury than Western celebrity endorsers, based on an analysis of online big data and two experiments. We also explore when localized celebrity endorsement is most effective, focusing on the moderating role of patriotism. The results suggest that localized (vs. standardized) celebrity endorsements lead to more social media interactions. Using localized (standardized) celebrity endorsements enhance the perceived brand luxury for people with high (low) patriotism.

In social media marketing, celebrity endorsement is a widely used strategy (McCormick, 2016). Luxury brands use their social media accounts to post pictures of celebrities using their products. However, they are confronted with the dilemma of whether to standardize or localize their celebrity endorsers for different markets. This dilemma of whether to adapt their advertisements to local market has been haunting luxury brands for a long time. Some researchers suggest that standardized advertising could help to maintain a uniform and consistent brand image (Duncan and Ramaprasad, 1995), and create a strong global brand identity, which is often associated with the perception of prestige and leads to higher purchase intention (de Pelsmacker et al. 2018); other studies find that considerable adaptation is required for brands to meet local needs and tastes (Gilmore, 2003; Okazaki et al., 2006), because cultural norms and values are powerful forces shaping consumer perceptions and behaviors (Nwankwo et al., 2014). Before the social media age, most luxury brands tend to stick to a standardized strategy when they advertise in mass media (e.g., magazines) in culturally different markets like China (Chen, 2008). Luxury brands with Western origins use much more standardized Western celebrity endorsers than localized non-Western celebrity endorsers in their magazine advertisements (Strebinger and Rusetski, 2016; Strebinger et al., 2018).