Busler’s Ph.D. thesis, Product Differentiation, Celebrity Endorsements and the Consumer’s Perception of Quality (2002), showed how he had used semantic differential  to assess consumer’s perceptions of the attributes of a product ad and the celebrity endorser.  Communication students can learn from it or adapt it in assessing advertisements. In this post, I explored how we might use Busler’s methodology to examine consumers’ perceptions of the credibility and relevance of the commercial on Alaxan FR, a pain reliever, and a world boxing champion (Manny Pacquiao) as a celebrity endorser.

A seven-point semantic differential scale can be used for each of these bipolar adjectives:

Example
Not effective  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  Effective

Concerning the credibility of the information received from the ad, I think it is:
Not credible – Very credible
Not believable – Believable
False -    True

Concerning how relevant the information in the ad would be to my buying decision, I think it is:
Not relevant – Relevant
Not important -    Important
Useless – Meaningful

Overall, I thought the Alaxan commercial was:
Ineffective – Effective
Uninformative – Informative
Dull – Interesting

I think Manny Pacquiao is:
Dishonest – Honest
Undependable – Dependable
Insincere – Sincere
Untrustworthy -    Trustworthy
Undependable -    Dependable
Unreliable – Reliable
Unqualified – Qualified
Not an expert -    Expert
Not knowledgeable – Knowledgeable

As an endorser for Alaxan I think Manny Pacquiao is:
Appropriate – Inappropriate
Ineffective – Effective