Psychological Alignment in Celebrity Endorsements: Evaluating Influencer Marketing Impact in the Luxury Hospitality Sector

Abstract In the highly competitive luxury hospitality sector, it is essential to understand the factors that influence consumers’ intentions to visit. This study purposes to examine the psychological internal relationships among celebrity, consumer, and hotel brand. The study also explores the effectiveness of social media influencers in determining consumers ‘ intentions to visit luxury hotel brands. Brand personality theory is employed to support personality congruency constructs. This study utilizes the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model and social media influencers (SMIs) to theorize for the conceptual framework. Using a quantitative research design, this research collects several 389 social media users who actively engage with celebrity influencers endorsing luxury hotels. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method is applied to evaluate the relationships among latent variables with second-, and third-order constructs measurement models. Psychological congruency demonstrates an essential role in forming a robust construction between consumers, celebrities, and endorsed luxury hotel brands. Consumers, who have an emotional attachment to a hotel brand, tend to positively develop relations on social media platforms, hence increasing the intentions to visit endorsed hotel brands. This research advances the knowledge of psychological congruency in the context of luxury branding and social media marketing, creating an innovative strategy for the interaction between consumer psychology and influencer endorsements. Practically, the explorations deliver criminal recommendations for luxury hotel managers to optimize their influencer marketing strategies.