Ten years of evolving traditional versus non-traditional celebrity endorser study: review and synthesis

This paper aims to perform a comprehensive analysis, mapping the main areas of the endorser marketing literature of the last ten years and offering a classification of the subject and future research agenda. Despite the widespread use of endorsements in marketing to increase product awareness, the academic literature on this subject remains fragmented and insufficient. Endorsers' crucial role in advertising necessitates a comprehensive review of the current unfulfilled research. Regardless of expanding interest from academics and practitioners, there is a notable absence of comprehensive reviews describing the historical development and possible future trends of endorsers in marketing. In response, this work is the first to synthesize the existing body of knowledge regarding the role of traditional and non-traditional celebrity endorsers in the social media context. To fill this gap, this review used a systematic literature review and thematic analyses of 151 Scopus-indexed articles from 2014 to 2023. Based on this review, an integrative multidimensional framework is provided. This framework considers the causes, effects, and mediation for potential outcomes and the contextual factors that impact customers' behavior. As a result, this evaluation exposes essential trends in the article, author, nation, journal performance, and past, present, and future endorser research theme tendencies. Various research gaps are identified, and avenues for future research are proposed that reflect essential emerging areas and unexplored realms regarding the theory, methodology, and context framework.