Influence of Celebrity Endorsers and Brands Image of Repurchase Intention is mediated by Product Quality of Scarlett Indonesia

This research was conducted to find out how the influence exerted by Celebrity endorsements and brands Image on the intensity of repurchasing, through mediation by Product Quality at Brand Scarlett Indonesia. Currently, Celebrity Endorsers are considered more able to attract customers, especially at the age of teenagers and adults. This is due to the rise of social media platforms which are currently more loved by the public than print media or digital media such as radio and television. By conducting the PLS-SEM test on 100 teenagers who have known and or used Scarlett's products at least 1 time, it was found that product quality can mediate the influence of celebrity. Endorsement of Repurchase Intention , while the mediating role of Product Quality on Brand influence Image for Repurchase Intention not found. Celebrities Endorsement has no direct effect on Repurchase Intention , while Brand Image and Product Quality have a significant positive effect on Repurchase Intention .


INTRODUCTION
Competition in the business world is now starting to look increasingly competitive in order to gain market share which was dominating at the time.Various ways are used by entrepreneurs so that their business can achieve the maximum profit continuously.The company is believed to have to form a positive image, which will have an impact on public acceptance of the products it produces.Placing a good brand image repeatedly will have a strong impact on consumers which results in an even greater intention to buy (Musay, 2013).Brand image ( Brand Image ) is consumer sentiment towards a product brand resulting from information collected through experience using the product (Kotler and Keller, 2012).According to Tjiptono (2011), Brand Image is a set of individual perceptual connections to a brand from time to time, as a result of direct or indirect interaction with the brand.The indicators used to measure brand image are adopted from Kotler and Keller (2016), namely the superiority of the association, the strength of the association, and the uniqueness of the brand association.Because of the importance of a positive image from the public for a product, today's entrepreneurs are also increasingly competing to be able to give a good impression to the public regarding the products or brands they create.
To create a positive image to attract public interest, companies are required to always be unique and up to date in their product marketing strategy.One marketing method that is currently happening and is considered successful in attracting consumer buying interest is by using endorsement services carried out by influencers with a large number of followers, both from artists and non-artist social media celebrities.Celebrities Endorsement is the use of sources as attractive figures in advertisements to strengthen the image of a brand in the minds of customers (Kotler and Keller, 2016).Phenomenon marketing using Celebrity Endorsement is considered to have a good impact on how consumers evaluate the brand of a company.According to Shimp, in ( Bustami, Nurhajati, & Wahono, 2020 ) the use of celebrities as endorsers is something that is favored by entrepreneurs because the message conveyed will be more interesting, because celebrities who are popular will be easier to remember and can be noticed.
Celebrities Endorsement is an endorsement from a celebrity who has agreed to have his name included on a product in return for financial compensation ( Shiffman and Kanuk, 2010 ).For some companies like Scarlett Indonesia, which are still relatively new, brand selection Ambassadors and endorsers of trusted and worldwide artists such as actors and boy bands from Korea, Jong-Ki Song, and most recently EXO, seem to be a breakthrough so that they can quickly become strong competitors for their predecessor skincare brands , even reaping profits.larger than other well-known brands such as Vaseline, Vitaline, Nivea, and others based on sales data for August 2021 ( Azizah and Fikriyah, 2023 ).Celebrity figure Endorsers who are better known to the public are believed to be able to provide greater influence and memory to consumers (Kotler and Keller, 2012: 485).
The rise of Korean culture and art in Indonesia, as well as the large number of fans of Korean celebrities in Indonesia, have influenced Indonesian people's buying interest in the products used by the celebrities they like.Not only in Indonesia, some Korean celebrities are even said to be able to cause a product to run out in an instant globally.This clearly illustrates how much influence is exerted by the selection of Celebrities The right endorser of people's buying interest.The next task of the marketing team is how to make the next buyer decide to become a customer.One thing that can be done by the company is to offer good quality products, so that buyers think that the products provided can be trusted.
Purchase intention is a type of decision making that studies the reasons a consumer buys a particular brand (Shah et al., 2012), while Repurchase Intention refers to the customer's intensity in buying something repeatedly.Repurchase Intention is a determinant of behavior which is defined as "the strength of one's intention to display certain behaviors (Fishbein andAjzen, 1975 in Tandon et al., 2020).Kotler et al. (2016), explained that repurchase intention appears after several evaluation processes.In this process, someone will make several choices of products to be purchased based on brand and intention.Repurchase Intention is the main income for the company, which leads to increased revenue because loyal customers tend to pay premium prices, increase profits, and increase shareholder value (Bindroo et al., 2016).However, according to Tjiptono (2015), Repurchase Intention is solely related to the habit of buying the same brand repeatedly.There are 3 indicator items used to measure Repurchase Intention , adopted from research by Fang et al., 2014and Tandon et al., 2020. Kumar et al. (2014), found that quality and price are very important things that can influence a person's buying habits in cosmetic products.More specifically, Anute et al. (2015), said that most people prefer quality as the most important factor in deciding to buy cosmetics.These findings prove how big the role of Product Quality is in influencing a person in making a decision to make a purchase or decide to buy a cosmetic product repeatedly.
Product quality is the extent to which a product can meet the needs of the intended consumer (Kotler and Armstrong, 2012).Assauri (2010) also defines product quality as the level of a product's ability to meet consumer expectations regarding its function, so that consumers feel their hopes and desires for the product are fulfilled.If a product can meet customer expectations, the customer will feel happy and will consider that the product will be acceptable and even of high quality (Alhedhaif, 2016).According to Kotler and Armstrong (2010), product quality is a key element that can bring customer value to market offers, and is the main factor in assessing purchase intention (Faisal-E-Alam, 2020).The quality of a product plays an important role in considering purchase intentions, given that purchase intentions are now more complex and significant (Madahi and Sukati, 2012).Referring to Kharim (2011), product quality is defined as suitability for use, or suitability for needs.
Several previous studies have shown that product quality positively influences product image, purchase decisions, and repurchase intentions (Cuong, 2021).Similar results were found by Rizki et al. (2021), who found a positive and significant effect of Product Quality on repurchase intention.
Scarlet is a beauty product brand from Indonesia which was founded in 2017 by celebrity Felicya Angelista.This company focuses on body care products such as skin brightening, body care, and hair.Scarlett has a vision to become the world's leading beauty company with quality products that are safe for the skin.So far, Scarlett Indonesia has been known as one of the most popular beauty product brands in Indonesia.The marketing strategy they used at the start of the launch was to collaborate with artists and influencers in Endorsements to market their products.In recent years, Scarlett Indonesia has adopted a brand ambassador program ( Brand Ambassador ) local and international artists such as artists from South Korea in marketing their products, which is why they are currently wellknown as one of the companies that provide products that are of very good quality and continue to innovate so that they exist and excel in the beauty product industry.

METHOD
This study used a purposive sampling method to collect 100 respondents.Respondents who are used as samples must at least know one of Scarlett's products, or have used Scarlett's products at least once.purposive sampling is a non-probability sampling method by submitting several conditions needed according to the research objectives.This study used a 5 Likert scale questionnaire distributed to people who live in Purwokerto who have heard of and or have used Scarlett's products at least 1 time, to measure the indicators of each variable, then testing the effect of each variable will be carried out using the PLS-SEM method with the help of the SmartPLS application.3.In testing using the Partial Least Square (PLS) method, there are 2 stages, namely Outer model testing to test indicators of the latent variables, then Inner model testing to test the relationship between latent constructs.According to Ghozali and Latan (2015), the hypothesis will be accepted if the t-statistic value is > 1.96 with a p-value <0.05 (α=5).
In this study, there are 3 exogenous variables, namely Celebrity Endorsement , Brand Image , and product quality as mediating variables, which will be tested for its effect on 1 endogenous variable, namely Repurchase Intention . of the four latent variables, the researcher proposes 5 hypotheses, namely H1: Celebrity Endorsement has a significant positive effect on Repurchase Intention ; H2: Brands Image has a significant positive effect on Repurchase Intention ; H3: Product quality has a significant positive effect on Repurchase Intention ; H4: Product Quality can mediate Celebrity influence Endorsement of Repurchase Intention ; and H5: Product Quality can mediate Brand influence Image of Repurchase Intention .

FINDING AND DISCUSSION
PLS-SEM testing using SmartPLS results in testing the outer model and inner model.In the outer model test , the results obtained for all indicators were stated to be valid (table 1) because the outer loading value was > 0.5 (Ghozali, 2015), and each indicator has been used appropriately in measuring its latent as evidenced by the largest indicator cross section value right on the intended latent ( table 2).In the reliability test, the results show that the model used in this study is declared reliable (Table 3) and is evidenced by the composite reliability and Cronbach's Alpha values > 0.7, and the AVE value > 0.5 for each variable (Hair et al., 2011;Ghozali, 2015 ).

Structural Model Analysis
On Table 4 shows that product quality is influenced by celebrity Endorsements and Brands Image is 74%, while Repurchase Intention is influenced by Celebrity Endorsement , Brand Image , and Product Quality by 70%.As for the rest, influenced by other variables outside this study.Looking at these results, referring to Chin's classification (1998), these values indicate that this model is included in the strong substantial.
Furthermore, in testing the hypothesis (Table 5), it can be seen that Hypothesis 1 in this study was rejected, meaning that there was no influence exerted directly by Celebrity Endorsement of Repurchase Intention .This is evidenced by the T-statistic value of 1.301 <1.96 and the p-value of 0.194 > 0.05.There is no direct influence from Celebrity Endorsement of Repurchase Intention indicates that whoever the celebrity a company uses to describe their product to consumers does not cause a significant change in consumer intention to repurchase the brand .Consumers may be interested in buying products advertised by celebrities they like, but they will not make repeat purchases just because they are advertised by their idols.It's different if the Endorsement celebrity is followed by a good Product Quality.It can be seen in hypothesis 4, the test results show that Celebrity Endorsement has a significant positive effect on Repurchase Intention when the effect is mediated by Product Quality.This is indicated by the original sample having a positive value (0.326) accompanied by a T-Statistic value of 3.519 > 1.96, and a p-value of 0.00 <0.05.These results prove that Repurchase Intention is created through a selection and evaluation process (Kotler et al., 2016), and will make a repurchase if they feel their needs and expectations are fulfilled (Assauri, 2010).
Unlike Celebrities Endorsement , Brand Image shows a significant positive direct effect on Repurchase Intention (Hypothesis 2).This is indicated by the positive original sample value (0.367) accompanied by a T-statistic value of 3.710 > and a p-value of 0.00 <0.05.These results mean that the better and more positive the image attached to a brand , the higher the consumer who intends to make repeated purchases of the brand .As Mussay (2013) said that the better the image of a brand, the more it is remembered by consumers, causing the intention to buy the brand to be even greater.Even a good image can make consumers think that the brand is of high quality.However, even though Hypothesis 3 is accepted (original sample 0.406, T-Statistic 3.714 > 1.96, p-value 0.00 <0.05), which means that there is a significant positive effect of Product Quality on Repurchase Intention , there is no direct effect of brand image on Product Quality cause Product Quality does not play a role in mediating Brand influence Image of Repurchase Intention .That is, even without product quality that can meet consumer expectations, a good image of a brand that has been attached will increase consumer intentions to repurchase the brand.Likewise, when the image of a brand is bad according to consumers, regardless of the quality offered by the brand, the consumer's intention to repurchase the brand will be even lower.

CONCLUSION
Based on the data obtained from the respondents, it was found that of the 5 hypotheses proposed, there were 2 hypotheses which were rejected, namely Celebrity Endorsement has no direct effect on Repurchase Intention , and Hypothesis 2, namely Product Quality cannot mediate the influence of Brand Image of Repurchase Intention .As for the other hypotheses, from the test results it was found that Brand Image directly has a significant positive influence on Repurchase Intention , while Product Quality does not play a role in connecting the two.On the other hand, Celebrity though Endorsements do not have a direct effect on Repurchase Intention , but the role played by Product Quality makes Celebrity endorsements have a significant positive effect on Repurchase Intention through Product Quality.This means, the more positive the effect given by Celebrity Endorsement , if supported by good product quality, consumer intention to repurchase Scarlett products will also be higher.
Most of Scarlett's consumers, especially those in Purwokerto, are women.Some consumers who claim to have never bought Scarlett products say they will try to buy Scarlett products because of brand selection Ambassadors and endorsements from their celebrity idols, however, will not repurchase if the product doesn't suit their skin.Meanwhile, some of the other respondents who claimed to have used Scarlett's skincare before said they would buy Scarlett again in the future because they felt the benefits they got were what they wanted.Regardless of who recommends Scarlett, those who have felt superiority and satisfaction after using Scarlett say they will make repeat purchases.Tjiptono, F. (2015).Marketing Strategy, 4th Edition, Andi Offset, Yogyakarta.Tjiptono, F. (2016).Service, Quality & satisfaction.Yogyakarta.Andi.Service Marketing (Principles, Application, Research).Yogyakarta.Tjiptono, F. & Anastasia, D. (2016).Essence and Application Marketing, Andi Offset, Yogyakarta

Figure
Figure 1: Path Analysis