A four-phase team project turning primary and secondary research into brand-level marketing-mix recommendations.
Consumer Behavior, WWU · Summer 2026 · Team Research Project
Full experimental design, codebook, and SPSS output live on the survey page. See Celebrity-Owned vs. Celebrity-Endorsed Brands →
Challenge
Tyler, the Creator doesn't endorse Golf Wang—he owns it. As more celebrities become founders rather than paid spokespeople, the line between influencer marketing and entrepreneurship has blurred. This report asked whether that distinction is meaningful to consumers at all: does founder ownership change trust or purchase behavior, or is it just a different label on the same persuasion mechanics research has documented for 20 years?
Method
29
sources synthesized
Lead
research design owner (of 4)
3
industries compared
4
research phases
Analysis
Tian and Li (2022) argue ownership isn't a separate category from endorsement but instead a far end of a single spectrum, with source credibility and celebrity-brand fit driving attitudes at every point along it. Our data backs up that ownership framing didn't move perceived quality or purchase intent, consistent with baseline trust in influencer recommendations sitting low and flat across the whole sample (M = 2.0–2.1 on a 5-point scale, 1 = Very Unlikely and 5 = Very Likely) regardless of condition. Past literature helps support and explains that the 65%/64% split in ad-image preference lines up with D'Ambrogio et al.'s (2023) 'vampire effect'—a celebrity's visual presence draws attention that can overshadow the product itself, more when ownership is salient. When given two ads for the same product: respondents who were told the celebrity owned the brand picked the celebrity-featuring ad 65% of the time, and when told the celebrity merely endorsed it, 64% picked the product-only ad instead. Lacap et al. (2024) frames this as a fan-loyalty-to-brand-loyalty pipeline unique to parasocial attachment, which matters because it means loyalty forged around a founder's persona doesn't automatically transfer if that founder exits or is replaced.
Ethical note
FTC disclosure rules were built for paid endorsement: a celebrity being compensated to promote someone else's product. Founder ownership doesn't clearly trigger the same obligation, even though our data shows consumers process both relationships identically. That gap between legal structure and consumer perception is the same shape as the disclosure question in deceptive pricing: the rule protects against the relationship that's easy to define, not the one that actually shapes behavior.
Takeaway
Ownership status doesn't alter the drivers of brand credibility — quality and source trust hold constant whether the celebrity is a paid endorser or the founder. It does alter which disclosure obligations apply under current FTC rules, despite no evidence consumers distinguish between the two relationships. Phase 3 tests this framework against Golf Wang, an actual founder-owned brand, to see whether it holds outside a survey context.