Influencer marketing initiatives require firms to select and incentivize online influencers to engage their followers on social media in an attempt to promote the firms’ offerings. However, limited ...research considers the costs of influencer marketing when evaluating these campaigns’ effectiveness, particularly from an engagement elasticity perspective. Moreover, it is unclear whether and how marketers could enhance influencer marketing effectiveness by strategically selecting influencers, targeting their followers, or managing content. This study draws on a communication model to examine how factors related to the sender of a message (influencer), the receiver of the message (influencer's followers), and the message itself (influencer's posts) determine influencer marketing effectiveness. The findings show that influencer originality, follower size, and sponsor salience enhance effectiveness, and posts that announce new product launches diminish it. Several tensions arise when firms select influencers and manage content: Influencer activity, follower–brand fit, and post positivity all exert inverted U-shaped moderating effects on influencer marketing effectiveness, suggesting that firms that adopt a balanced approach along these dimensions can achieve greater effectiveness. These novel insights offer important implications for marketers designing influencer marketing campaigns.
The growing presence of social media influencers (SMIs) is increasingly modulating consumer behaviour in the travel industry. Trust is a vitally important topic in influencer and tourism marketing ...and is responsible for creating and maintaining successful long-term relationships between organizations and consumers. This study uses customer journey theory to explain the impact of SMI trust on customer travel decision-making and focuses on evaluating the role of customer journey constructs (including desire, information search, evaluating alternatives, purchase decisions, satisfaction and experience sharing) in mediating the interrelation between SMI trust and the dimensions of customer journeys. Using Smart PLS to analyze the data collected, the results indicate that consumer trust in SMIs has a positive effect on each phase of travel decision-making. Moreover, each step of the decision-making journey mediates the trust effect on the next step, having a spillover effect on the whole journey, implying continuous SMI input. Tourism marketers are advised to use SMIs to increase and stimulate the desire to travel as clearly, a means by which consumers search for information about their next journey. Besides SMIs as a marketing tool, their trustworthiness serves as a highly important aspect to successfully influence tourists' destination decision making.
Online influencer marketing Leung, Fine F.; Gu, Flora F.; Palmatier, Robert W.
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,
03/2022, Volume:
50, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Online influencer marketing (OIM) has become an integral component of brands’ marketing strategies; however, marketers lack an adequate understanding of its scope, effectiveness, and potential ...threats. To fill this gap, this article first describes the phenomenon’s background, defines OIM, and delineates its unique features to set the conceptual boundaries for the new concept. Drawing insights from practitioner and consumer interviews, and in line with social capital theory, the authors propose that OIM can be understood as leveraging influencer resources (including follower networks, personal positioning, communication content, and follower trust) to enhance a firm’s marketing communication effectiveness. Six novel propositions illustrate the benefits and potential threats of OIM, which may spur progress toward a theory of OIM. Finally, this article outlines key strategies for effectively managing OIM and identifies important literature–practice gaps to suggest avenues for further research.
Social media influencers (SMIs) are increasingly being approached by brands to promote products, a practice commonly called influencer marketing. SMIs can take advantage of their influence to obtain ...personal rewards by entering into partnerships with brands. However, SMI followers value influencers' intrinsic motivations and noncommercial orientation. Thus, SMI–brand collaborations may result in tensions for SMIs' authenticity management. This research applies a qualitative approach based on SMI–brand partnership observations, SMI interviews, and a comparison of these data sources. Two authenticity management strategies emerged from the analysis: passionate and transparent authenticity. We articulate these strategies to propose a four-path framework that provides the first conceptualization of how SMIs can manage authenticity for themselves to resolve the tensions created by brand encroachment into their content. The results offer guidance for both SMIs and marketers on how to best partner with each other to build win–win relationships while protecting SMIs' authenticity.
While influencer marketing has been shown to be effective at promoting food low in nutritional value among children, it is less clear whether influencers can also be used to promote healthy ...nutrition. This article reports on the results of an experimental study on whether and how influencer marketing on Instagram can be deployed to stimulate healthy eating behavior among children. In particular, the study examines whether signaling a healthy, athletic lifestyle can affect children's healthy snack choice (i.e., choice of a snack high in nutritional value). To do so, a two (influencer lifestyle: sedentary versus athletic) by two (snack type: low in nutritional value versus high in nutritional value) between-subjects experiment was conducted among 190 children between eight and 12 years. The results show that promoting a sedentary lifestyle (compared to an athletic lifestyle) resulted in more children choosing the product high in nutritional value. In addition, the children chose a healthy snack more frequently when an influencer portraying a sedentary lifestyle (compared to an athletic lifestyle) promoted a product low in nutritional value. There were no significant interaction effects of influencer lifestyle and snack type on the evaluation of the influencer. However, the study did show that there was less admiration for the influencer when they portrayed a sedentary lifestyle versus an athletic lifestyle.
In the past few years, expenditure on influencer marketing has grown exponentially. The present study involves preliminary research to understand the mechanism by which influencer marketing affects ...consumers via social media. It proposes an integrated model-the social media influencer value model-to account for the roles of advertising value and source credibility. To test this model, we administered an online survey among social media users who followed at least one influencer. Partial least squares (PLS) path modeling results show that the informative value of influencer-generated content, influencer's trustworthiness, attractiveness, and similarity to the followers positively affect followers' trust in influencers' branded posts, which subsequently influence brand awareness and purchase intentions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
The widespread use of mobile internet and social media has driven the creation and development of the micro-marketing model. Micro-influencers utilize marketing techniques that have a small and ...highly targeted reach, which in turn affects the psychology and perception of the target population. In the process of micromarketing, a very important influencing factor is interpersonal relationships. Therefore, this paper takes interpersonal relationships as an entry point, analyzes several aspects of interpersonal relationships participation in micro-marketing, the current situation of interpersonal relationships among micro-influencers, and the influence of interpersonal relationships on marketing strategy, which is of great significance in exploring the influence of interpersonal relationships on micro-marketing from the perspective of social influence. The author analyzes some micro-marketing strategies on the Chinese social platform Red Booklet. The empirical study shows that the more interaction between micro-influencers and the target population, the stronger the influence on the target population; compared with unilateral promotion by celebrities, micro-influencers have a stronger influence on the target population.
At present, a significant share, up to 50% of the marketing budget, is spent on Internet and social media campaigns focusing on community involvement rather than mere content sharing. Social media ...sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram provide an open environment where teasers, behind-the-scenes content, polls, competitions, and content created by the user can be published daily, thus encouraging natural sharing. This research evaluates the changes that have occurred in cinema marketing techniques in the recent past due to social media and other emerging technologies. The research analyzes the use of short-form vertical video platforms like TikTok and Snapchat as marketing tools. Studios generate quick attention with mobile-friendly clips that are under 60 seconds long, resulting in circulation through hashtags and memes and collaboration with influencers. In this regard, the high value of social media influencers is considered because their apparent sincerity and emotional links with ardent followers can significantly increase the number of views and tickets bought. However, this carries risks such as losing control and the possibility of infection. Other emerging technologies, such as virtual, augmented, and artificial intelligence, are being analyzed as more engaging options. Finally, studying data-based individualized techniques is crucial for further development.
Social Media Influencers (SMIs) are active members of social networks who have a huge number of followers. Some studies have called them the opinion leaders of the age of social media. These people ...are likely to affect the different aspects of beliefs and/or behaviors of the people who follow them. The current study aimed to investigate the relationships between people’s partner choice criteria on the one hand, and the amount and type of attention they dedicated to influencers on the other hand. A survey was conducted to see if people who pay more or less attention to influencers perceived appearance, wealth, religiousness, culture, and personality as important criteria in their partners. The results showed that there were direct relationships between dedicating attention to influencers and perceiving wealth and appearance to be important. Moreover, there was a significant relationship between dedicating attention to influencers and religiousness but it was an indirect relationship.
Influencer marketing is the practice of compensating individuals for posting about a product or service on social media. Influencer marketing is on the rise, and many marketers now plan either to ...start using influencers or to increase their use of them in their media mixes. Despite such growth, relatively little strategic or academic insight exists that is specific to influencers. In this article, we describe the roots of influencer marketing and the many different types of influencers that now exist. We identify influencers’ three functional components: the audience, the endorser, and the social media manager. We then detail for each of these components the different sources of value influencers potentially offer marketers. We draw on relevant academic research to offer advice about how to leverage each component strategically. We close by describing how the interplay of these functional components makes influencers a potentially powerful—and undervalued—marketing tool.
