Trust plays a major role in generating relationships between consumers and brands. Because of trust, consumers' belief that the brand has qualities that make it unique, competent, consistent, and honest. In the last few years, several researchers have explored trust within the context of brand management (Delgado, et al. 2006; Soh et al., 2009). However, thorough analysis of literature reveals that there are still wider gaps, which need to be explored further. Recent trends, based on the decrease of level of trust in the context of brand management, also give emphasis to explore trust in more details (Lantieri et al., 2007). One of the areas within brand management context, where trust can be explored further is of celebrity endorsement. A similar construct to trust i.e. trustworthiness, although, has been an area of interest for many researchers, but previous literature reveals that both trust and trustworthiness are two different contexts, both with different meanings and conceptual characteristics (Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Mayer et al., 1995; Delgado et al., 2006; Soh et al., 2009). Trust is defined as a willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the person or trustor (Mayer et al., 1995; Morgan and Hunt, 1994). This definition of trust suggests that people do not only belief on the source (or celebrity), but also show their confidence and willingness to use that knowledge (appeared from the celebrity) as the basis of their actions (Morrow et al., 2004, Soh et al., 2009). Trustworthiness, on the other hand, refers to the honesty, dependability and trustworthy of the source (Erdogan, 2010). These definitions explain that trust is based on all the three cognitive, emotional and behavioral dimensions (Lewis and Weigert, 1985; McAllister, 1995). Trust is cognition based in that we choose whom we trust, in which respect and under what circumstances, and we base the choice on what we take to be good reasons, constituting evidence of trustworthiness (McAllister, 1995). Trust is also affective based. Affective based trust is generated on the basis of feelings generated by the level of care and concern, the partner demonstrates (Marrow et al., 2004; Johnson et al., 2005). There is a third component of trust, behavioural dimension of trust, which is constituted by the actions that flow from both cognitive and affective trust, and can be described as consequence of, both, cognitive and affective trusts (Johnson and Grayson, 2005). Trustworthiness, on the other hand, is only based on the cognitive dimension of trust and fails to cover the real meanings (infact, trust in all other contexts like psychology, sociology, social psychology and in business studies is studied based on both two dimensions). Researchers have, further, argued that trust between two parties is not only build on cognitive trust or on partner's reputation, but is also build on the basis of affective trust or feelings, generated by the level of care and concern (or benevolence), which the opposite partner shows. These feelings give rise to the perceived strength of the relationship between partners and are truly important in the context of 'business to consumer' marketing, where contractual agreements (compare to other contexts, like, business to business and interorganizational context) are less, and main source of trust is based on the good-will or benevolence, generated by the informant or celebrity (Johnson-George and Swap, 1982; Johnson and Grayson, 2005). These gaps and confusions give rise to conduct a research and explore trust, further, within the context of celebrity endorsement. Therefore, an exploratory research would be conducted and a celebrity-trust scale would be formed. This scale would, then, be used to examine the influence of celebrity-trust and its both two dimensions on advertising credibility, brand credibility, brand equity and, on performance and reputation of the firm. Findings from this study would help researchers and practitioners to clearly understand meanings of trust within celebrity endorsement context.
