Culture and Communication: Effects of Cultural Values and Source Credibility in a Multicultural Society, Nigeria

Abstract

Coming from a psychological view of self concepts related theories: schemata and self construal, we investigated the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement in a multicultural society-African context. The study was to examine whether the celebrity endorsement strategy is effective in Africa culture as claimed in some studies. We used focus group discussions comprising people of different ethnic backgrounds in Nigeria. Findings indicate that celebrity endorsement is not effective in Nigeria cultural context and that African audience perceptions of source credibility are markedly different from the Western societies’. However, the study reveals that for celebrity endorsement effectiveness, cultural values play an important role. Recommendations for advertising managers and marketers are discussed as well as suggestions for future research.