How does celebrity endorsements influence consumer behavior in fast fashion industry?

1. Introduction
The fashion industry has come a long way over the past two decades. In the early years, big players such as Marks & Spencer offered a relatively straightforward fashion retail choice. However, with the lower cost of starting a retail outlet, the market has become more crowded since then.

So called fast fashion retailers, are by no means the only one who succeeded and grew over the past years. Overall, the fast fashion retailers experienced a greater growth compared to the fashion industry as a whole (Cachon and Swinney, 2011). Such retailers are now ubiquitous and spotting a person on the streets who does not wear at least one fast fashion clothing item is rare. The key point to success lies in their business model; making the trends available to everyone.

The rapid global changes have restructured the way fashion retailers do business. In today’s competitive market, using celebrity endorser to promote brands on television is a fairly common practice (Erdogan et al. 2001). Celebrity endorsements is believed to help consumers remember the message of the advertisement and the brand name the celebrity is endorsing. This creates the personality of a brand because when a celebrity is paired with a brand, this image helps shape the image of that brand in the minds of consumers (Argrawal & Kamakura, 1995).

Celebrity endorsement is a new strategy in brand selling that affect the lifestyle of consumers. Hence, the selected company for undertaking this research study is H&M. H&M was first founded by Erling Perddonin Swedin in 1947, and has developed rapidly in the global fashion industry and apparel market due to its unique concept, business model and ability to provide fashionable designs at affordable prices.

2.2 Research Aim