How Consumers Process Celebrity Transgressions: From a Moral Reasoning Perspective

In the context of celebrity endorsement, this study demonstrates that the ways in which consumers adopt moral reasoning strategies (i.e., rationalization, decoupling, coupling) are largely dependent on the severity (i.e., high vs. low) of celebrity transgressions and the degree to which they personally identify with the celebrity. The results of a between-subjects experiment (N = 144) indicate that the rationalization and decoupling strategies (but not coupling) mediate the effect of highly negative information about a celebrity on consumer attitudes to the celebrity and endorsed brand as well as on purchase intentions for the endorsed product. In addition, consumers who identify strongly as fans of the celebrity tend to activate the rationalization and decoupling strategies, whereas those with a low level of fan identification are more likely to adopt the moral coupling strategy to process and evaluate transgressive behaviors.