The Impact of Brand Mascots on Brand Engagement: The Mediating Role of Egyptian Consumers’ Brand Attitudes

As organizations exist in a highly competitive market, they must differentiate their brand; Therefore, the use of mascots helps to develop friendships and relationships between consumers and the brand and to establish an engagement with it. So, the research aims to examine the effect of the characteristics of the brand mascots on the dimensions of Brand engagement (emotional, cognitive, and behavioral/social engagement). It also aims to investigate the role of adult Egyptian consumers' attitude towards the brand in the relationship between the characteristics of the brand mascots and the dimensions of brand engagement.
 An online survey list was employed to collect the primary data of the research variables from a sample of 447 adult Egyptian consumers over 16 years of age, to test the research hypotheses, 22.4% of whom were males, 77.6% were females. The data were analyzed using the SEM structural equation modeling using IBM AMOS v.22 and SPSS v.22 software.
The results of the research showed that there is a positive significant effect of the characteristics of the brand mascots, represented by the attractiveness of the animated character, and trustworthiness, on the dimensions of engagement with the brand, while there is no significant effect of the characteristic of nostalgia on the dimensions of brand engagement. It also found that consumers' brand attitude fully mediated the positive effect of trustworthiness on brand engagement dimensions, while the attitude partially mediated the effect of attractiveness on brand engagement dimensions.