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PurposeThis study examines the role of celebrity credibility in fostering loyalty and long-term commitment toward the financial service provider (banking services in this study) through the development of trust in the service provider. The relationship combines the commitment-trust theory, the source credibility, and the meaning transfer model.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed model uses online survey data from 855 participants. The data are analyzed using structural equation modeling. The relationship between celebrity credibility, commitment, and loyalty to the service provider is explored, with trust in the service provider acting as a mediator. The profession and gender of celebrities are considered moderators.FindingsTrust in service providers partially mediates the relationship between celebrity credibility, customer loyalty, and commitment. Moderation results across multiple groups show that male and sports celebrities are more persuasive in expertise, and customers find women and movie stars to be more effective endorsers in the attractiveness dimension.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focuses only on banking services with data collected from a single country to examine a celebrity’s role as a spokesperson.Practical implicationsConsidering the benefits of having a well-known celebrity as a spokesperson for financial services like banking is intriguing. Given the unique characteristics and significant perceived risk associated with financial services, marketers may consider hiring celebrity endorsers to increase tangibility and reduce risk.Originality/valueThe results of this study may provide a deeper understanding of the combined effect of celebrity credibility and trust in financial service providers, which provides tangibility and helps establish a strong customer relationship.

The celebrity credibility scale developed by Singh and Banerjee [Singh, R. P., & Banerjee, N. (2018). A study on exploring the factors influencing celebrity endorsement credibility. Global Business Review, 19(2), 494–509.] which is validated in the Indian context with the addition of some items based on Indian culture and psychometric properties is further tested. The scale items are earlier tested in general terms without any reference to a celebrity. For this study, four major two-wheeler brands in India, which are endorsed by celebrities, are considered. The present study consists of 380 participants. This study tries to explore the influence of celebrity credibility on consumers’ brand attitude and advertisement attitude. Subsequently, the influence of brand attitude and advertisement attitude on consumers’ purchase intention is studied. The study reveals celebrity credibility has a significant influence on consumers’ attitude towards the brand and advertisement, also in the case of purchase intention; both brand attitude and advertisement attitude built on celebrity credibility has positive significant influence. The present study supports the celebrity credibility scale items of Singh and Banerjee (2018). The overall effect of celebrity credibility is positively significant with other constructs; this proves that the scale items are robust and relevant in clarifying celebrity credibility properly.

This study tries to explore the factors contributing to the source credibility of celebrities as brand endorsers and, subsequently, develops a conceptually integrated scale for the same in Indian perspective. To conduct an empirical investigation, a survey is conducted consisting of 432 participants. In this study, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) has been con-ducted. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in three factors or dimensions. All the indicators are strongly loaded into their respective construct. The Cronbach’s alpha, composite factor reliability and variance extracted measure for validity checks are found to be satisfactory. All pairs of inter-construct correlation are found to be positive and significant. The issue of multicollinearity did not bear a serious threat to the data. Common method effect of Harmen’s one-factor post hoc test result indicates that multidimensional three-factor model fits the data well than the one-factor model. These results are also invariant across different demographic profiles, namely, gender, educational qualification and age.

The impact of accounts receivables on the performance of salespersons is largely ignored in sales literature. However, in many sales contexts, managing customers' accounts receivables is directly managed by the salespeople, and therefore substantially impacts their sales performance. Towards such sales contexts, in this empirical study, we study the effect of customer account receivables and salespersons' customer orientation on their relationship orientation and customer-related performance. We further analyse the direct impact of relationship orientation on customer-related performance. Using survey-based data from 224 salespersons based out of India, we empirically test the proposed model using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Our findings suggest that accounts receivables from customers and salespersons ‘customer orientation strongly impact relationship building and also improves customer-related performance. The salespersons’ relationship orientation also partially mediates the relationship between customer account receivables and customer-related performance. Therefore, this study provides much-required evidence to establish the salience of salesforce appropriately managing customers' account receivables so that its impact on their sales performance customer relationships are not adversely affected.