Marketing and the cultural production of celebrity in the era of media convergence

Celebrity endorsement research in the marketing literature has been over-reliant on an exogenous notion of celebrity as something produced outside of the marketing system, from which meanings can be transferred to brands within the marketing system. In fact, marketing has been deeply implicated in the constitution of celebrity since the dawn of Western consumer culture in the early part of the twentieth century. In the era of media convergence, there is a pressing need for researchers in marketing to re-evaluate the meta-assumptions around celebrity and its relation to marketing in the light of marketing's culturally constitutive role.