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Although the broad concept of celebrity endorsement is not new, the popularity of its Social Media version skyrocketed over the last several years, being exploited even by notorious and top-tier companies. A substantial body of academic research approached the traditional celebrities’ endorsement, leaving rather unstudied the impact of digital celebrities’ endorsement power. Aiming at reducing the literature gap, the present study investigated the audience’s attitude towards online endorsement that includes famous vloggers (a category of digital celebrities) and its effect on future behaviors. In this sense, a conceptual model was tested using the structural equation modeling technique in the context of a primary research. The results unveiled that the perceived characteristics of the celebrity reflect on the overall attitude towards the vlogger. Despite influencing the attitude towards endorsed products, video content, product recommendation and engagement on source’s Social Media channel, the attitude towards the celebrity didn’t have a direct effect on purchase intention. The attitude towards the video content affected the attitude towards the product and both were shown to have a positive influence on purchase intention and recommendation. Yet, only the first one reflected on actions concerning celebrity’s online platform.

The current paper used content analysis to examine 50 commercials featuring the most internationally visited cities in the world as of 2019. It analyzed the components, scenes, and frames used to create the projected image of an attractive tourism destination, appealing to tourists from all walks of life. Regardless of the region to which the city belongs, most promotional videos used items from all the significant dimensions identified: natural resources; atmosphere of the place; culture, history, art; tourist infrastructure; entertainment resources; shopping resources; social environment; other resources. Overall, the most common frames identified were outdoor sports activities, historical and archeological buildings, and restaurants, and fine dining. In contrast, the least common frames were tourist information center, smart city aspects, and awards and distinctions. The analysis shows that most Asia and the Pacific, and European cities choose frames depicting historical and archeological buildings, while cities in the Americas, and the Middle East and Africa go for frames depicting outdoor sports activities. From an affective perspective, the atmosphere of the place depicted for Asia and the Pacific, and American cities emphasizes inclusivity, European cities are relaxing, and for the Middle East and Africa is vibrancy. As a subcategory, inclusivity defined as racial, age, sexual and gender, religious, and disability related diversity, had the best representation for racial diversity in all the regions, sexual and gender, and age-related diversity were polarized by region, while religious diversity and disability-related diversity were the least visible.

The use of celebrities for endorsement activities is a well established part of the marketing communication strategy. Yet, the communication “playground” is changing as we witness significant changes in the channels used for information transmission (as digital dominate the traditional) and in the audience (as generations change, growing up in a digital world). More, removing the communications’ constraints of space and time, the Internet led to the emergence of a new type of celebrity that seems to surpass the traditional ones. In this context, research in the celebrities’ endorsement area is still of significant relevance. Although many studies focused on investigating the effect of celebrity endorsement over consumer attitudes and behaviour, only few examined how audience factors influence these relationships. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to establish the variations in attitudes towards celebrities endorsed advertisements, considering the consumers’ age, gender, income and celebrity-product fit importance. The findings revealed significant differences in attitudes based on consumers’ age, income and product-celebrity fit importance, yet no distinctiveness in case of gender.

The religious tourism phenomenon arouses the interest of many researchers and practitioners, but few concentrated on the non- religious motivation of religious travelers. Using a questionnaire based on the model, more than 1600 Orthodox people from Romania who visited a monastery in the last two years were asked to evaluate the non-religious purpose of their visits. The analytical results showed that visitors are mainly motivated by a self-actualization need, namely their desire to become better persons. The paper offers a basis for a new and alternative approach of religious travel and a better understanding of the target market of this special form of tourism gradually on the rise.