Does founder-ownership framing change how consumers see an Instagram brand?
Marketing Research, WWU · Summer 2026 · Survey Experiment
Full experimental design, codebook, and SPSS output live on the survey page. See Celebrity-Owned vs. Celebrity-Endorsed Brands →
Challenge
Marketers increasingly build brands around a celebrity’s name, but ownership and endorsement are not the same signal. This study asked whether consumers perceive a celebrity-owned brand differently from a celebrity-endorsed one, and whether that difference moves purchase intent.
Method
2
conditions
16
item questionnaire
6
research objectives
70+
respondents
I built a screener, condition-specific cover letters, and a 16-item questionnaire mapped to product, price, service, channel, and promotion. It was fielded as two parallel Qualtrics instruments—one per ownership framing—so responses stayed cleanly comparable.
Analysis
In SPSS I compared the two conditions across each perceptual measure, using group comparisons to separate meaningful condition differences from ordinary sampling noise before interpreting any effect, and responses stayed cleanly comparable. 91 respondents started the survey; 70 completed it in full (40 ownership-framed, 30 endorsement-framed), and only completed responses were analyzed.
Takeaway
Ownership framing didn't move perceived quality or purchase intent—both were tested and came back statistically non-significant, with the numerical edge actually going to endorsement. The clearest pattern in the data was visual: ownership-framed consumers leaned toward celebrity-featuring ad imagery (64.9%), endorsement-framed consumers toward product-only imagery (64.0%)—the largest gap of any measure in the study. Ownership didn't sell the product harder, it changed what image sold it.