Prioritizing factors influencing famous athlete's endorsement of sports products from customer's points of view

The current study aimed to prioritize and rank factors affecting famous athletes’ endorsement of sports products from customers’ points of view. The statistical population of the study consisted of all female and male customers in Shiraz buying Majid’s products endorsed by Ali Karimi. Considering the uncertain size of the statistical population, we determined the size of the sample through Cochran formula (N=185). Data collection instrument was Braunstein & Zhang’s endorsement questionnaire (2005), face and content validity of which were already verified by Rasuli et al. (2014) and its reliability was measured using Cronbach alpha (α=0.927). To analyze data, we employed descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation as well as inferential statistics like confirmatory factor analysis using LISREL, factor analysis-Varimax rotation and Friedman test. The results showed that among all components, likeable personality had the greatest importance with a load factor of 0.906 and components such as professional trustworthiness, source attractiveness, character style and the star power with a load factor of 0.705 had the least importance. Thus, identifying factors affecting customers’ purchase intention through athletic endorsement is of paramount importance for industrial organizations’ managers and athletes in order to invest and focus on them to attract more customers.