Children nowadays spend many hours online watching YouTube videos in which their favorite vloggers are playing games, unboxing toys, reviewing products, making jokes or just going about their daily ...activities. These vloggers regularly post attractive and entertaining content in the hope of building a large follower base. Although many of these vloggers are adults, the number of child vloggers is flourishing. The famous child vlogger Ryan of Ryan's World, for instance, has more than 19 million viewers and he is (at age seven) a social media influencer. The popularity of these vloggers incited advertisers to include them as a new marketing communication tool, also referred to as influencer marketing, in their marketing strategy. Accordingly, many influential vloggers now receive free products from brands in return for a mention in one of their videos and their other social media (e.g., TikTok or Instagram) and some are even paid to create a sponsored post or video and distribute it to their followers. This sponsored content appears to be highly influential and may affect young children's brand preferences. Given the limited advertising literacy skills (i.e., knowledge of advertising and skills to critically reflect on this advertising) of children under age 12, they are a vulnerable target group when it comes to persuasion. Therefore, caution is needed when implementing this marketing tactic to target them. However, research on how influencer marketing affects young children (under 12) is scarce and it is unclear how these young children can be empowered to critically cope with this fairly new form of persuasion. This paper therefore aims to shed light on why and how social media influencers have persuasive power over their young followers. The paper starts with providing insights into how and why social media influencers became a new source in advertising. We then discuss the few studies that have been conducted on influencer marketing among young children (under 12), based on a systematic literature review, and take these findings to formulate societal and policy implications and develop a future research agenda.
Collaborations between influencers and brands have become increasingly popular in recent years. Previous research has mainly focused on influencer marketing as a commercial action designed to enhance ...followers' perceptions and reactions toward promoted brands, ignoring the consequences of these promotional actions on influencers' credibility and their relationships with their followers. This research sheds light on the topic by exploring how influencers' promotional actions affect their credibility, and followers' attitudes and behavioral responses toward the influencer (i.e., to continue following, imitate, and recommend them to other users). A study addressed to the followers of a popular influencer was carried out to test the research model. The results showed that perceived influencer-product congruence positively affects followers' perceptions of the credibility of, and attitude toward, influencers, and negatively affects perceptions of paid communication. Followers' perceptions that influencers have been paid to take part in promotional activities harms their credibility; however, credibility is essential for generating positive attitudes toward the influencer. Finally, both perceived credibility and attitude foster positive behavioral responses toward the influencer; influencers must enhance these factors to retain their influencing capacity. This research provides managerial implications for influencers and brands that can help enhance followers’ experiences when exposed to promotions on social media.
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•Influencers' credibility is improved when they fit with the promoted product.•Ad recognition, which worsens influencers' credibility, is reduced in congruent campaigns.•Influencers' credibility is essential to generate positive attitudes toward them.•Both credibility and attitudes toward the influencer encourage positive behaviors toward the influencer.
This work examines the determinants of the success of influencer marketing on the youth-focused TikTok, the fastest growing social network. It analyses the effects of influencers' account ...characteristics (originality, quality, quantity and humor) on their followers' hedonic experience and perceived opinion leadership, and how these impact on their intentions to follow influencers’ accounts and advice. A survey of followers of a popular Spanish TikTok influencer showed that originality and opinion leadership play important roles and that, because TikTok is distinctive, humor increased the effectiveness of messages (through hedonic experience). Suggestions are made to advance the understanding of this novel phenomenon.
Through the lens of consumer engagement theory, this research develops a case study of U.K. vlogger and influencer Zoe Sugg. Findings suggest that YouTube vloggers’ implementation of interaction, ...rewards and information offers as audience engagement factors can be seen as contributing to their consumer engagement as personal brands on YouTube. This research bridges gaps regarding the application of consumer engagement theory to vlogging. It offers new directions for exploring audience experience with vloggers and similar social media creators from a perspective of obtaining consumer engagement.
Strategic social media influencer communication has become a major topic in strategic communication. However, despite the growing relevance of this new strategic communication instrument, research ...has paid only limited attention to elaborating its basic concepts. In this article, we adopt a strategic communication perspective to develop a conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication. Particularly, we draw on research findings that identify the external resources social media influencers contribute to organization-influencer cooperation. We use these findings to systematically develop functional definitions of social media influencers and of strategic social media influencer communication. We define social media influencers as third-party actors who have established a significant number of relevant relationships with a specific quality to and influence on organizational stakeholders through content production, content distribution, interaction, and personal appearance on the social web. Subsequently, we define strategic social media communication as the purposeful use of communication by organizations or social media influencers in which social media influencers are addressed or perform activities with strategic significance to organizational goals. We then situate these definitions within the broader framework of strategic communication by discussing related concepts and by describing the strategic action field that has emerged around strategic social media influencer communication.
Based upon narrative persuasion literature, we argue that each influencer post (consisted of both textual and visual information) is an exemplar of narratives in which there are the main character(s) ...and a storyline. To reveal the content strategies used by social media influencers, we adopted a combined use of machine learning-based topic analysis and deep learning-based image analysis in order to examine the content of captions and photos contained in Instagram influencer posts. These 7,745 posts were uploaded by the top ten young adult beauty and fashion social media influencers. Moreover, we explored how the influencer narratives impair the effectiveness of sponsorship disclosure by analyzing the disclosure language in each post as well as the engagement performances (i.e., number of likes, number of comments) of the post. Results provided empirical information regarding influencers' usage of persuasive narratives. Implications and future research directions were provided.
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•The concept of micro, macro and mega-influencers is adapted to the context of a small country.•The parasocial relationship moderates the effects of perceived popularity and perceived ...opinion leadership.•Micro and macro-influencers are both influenced by the parasocial moderation effect.
This study analyzes the effect of the parasocial relationship on the audience’s intention to adopt the recommendations of micro, macro and mega-influencers, considering the number of followers, perceived popularity and opinion leadership. A sample of 140 Portuguese social media influencers (SMIs) was classified into micro, macro or mega-influencers. 577 valid responses to a questionnaire were analyzed using Andrew Hayes’ macro PROCESS for SPSS. The findings suggest that the indirect effect between the number of followers and the intention to adopt SMIs’ recommendations is mediated by the perceived popularity and opinion leadership, and are moderated by the parasocial relationship. Significant differences are found between micro, macro and mega-influencers in terms of credibility, attractiveness and established relationship. The categorization into micro, macro and mega-influencers is adapted to the context of a small country. This paper provides relevant information on the process of SMI selection.
Social media offers a myriad of opportunities for entrepreneurial marketing strategies that leverage the power of communities, especially when they are combined with traditional approaches such as ...celebrity endorsement. The reach, frequency, and speed of communication on social media offer the ideal leverage for the drivers of entrepreneurial marketing. However, the rapid rate of change may threaten the effects of investments in entrepreneurial marketing on social media and they might become only short-lived. Employing structural equation modeling, we test the long-term effect of Facebook-based celebrity endorsement on purchase intention among 234 members of a Facebook fan community in a two-wave longitudinal design. We argue that this relationship is mediated by a sponsor's brand image and moderated by brand differentiation. This study is the first to investigate the long-term effects of entrepreneurial marketing on social media. We present the contributions and implications of our findings as they affect research and practice.
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how consumers respond to social media influencers that are created through artificial intelligence (AI) and compares effects to traditional (human) influencers.
...Design/methodology/approach
Across two empirical studies, the authors examine the efficacy of AI social media influencers. With Study 1, the authors establish baseline effects for AI influencers and investigate how social-psychological distance impacts consumer perceptions. The authors also investigate the role of an influencer’s agency – being autonomous or externally managed – to test the boundaries of the results and determine the interactive effects between influencer type and influencer agency. Study 2 acts as an extension and validation of Study 1, whereby the authors provide generalisability and overlay the role of need for uniqueness as a moderated mediator.
Findings
The authors show that there are similarities and differences in the ways in which consumers view AI and human influencers. Importantly, the authors find no difference in terms of intention to follow or personalisation. This suggests that consumers are equally open to follow an AI or human influencer, and they perceive the level of personalisation provided by either influencer type as similar. Furthermore, while an AI influencer is generally perceived as having lower source trust, they are more likely to evoke word-of-mouth intentions. In understanding these effects, the authors show that social distance mediates the relationship between influencer type and the outcomes the authors investigate. Results also show that AI influencers can have a greater effect on consumers who have a high need for uniqueness. Finally, the authors find that a lack of influencer agency has a detrimental effect.
Research limitations/implications
The studies investigate consumers’ general response to AI influencers within the context of Instagram, however, future research might examine consumers’ response to posts promoting specific products across a variety of category contexts and within different social media platforms.
Practical implications
The authors find that in some ways, an AI influencer can be as effective as a human influencer. Indeed, the authors suggest that there may be a spill-over effect from consumer experiences with other AI recommendation systems, meaning that consumers are open to AI influencer recommendations. However, the authors find consistent evidence that AI influencers are trusted less than traditional influencers, hence the authors caution brands from rushing to replace human influencers with their AI counterparts.
Originality/value
This paper offers novel insight into the increasingly prominent phenomenon of the AI influencer. Specifically, it takes initial steps towards developing understanding as to how consumers respond to AI influencers and contrast these effects with human influencers.
With social media becoming the primary channel for travelers to acquire travel-related information, tourism service providers are increasingly partnering with social media influencers (SMIs) as part ...of their digital marketing strategy. The present study investigates the effectiveness of SMIs by examining the role that two message factors—argument quality and sponsorship status—have on travelers’ perceptions of a hotel’s commitment to sustainability and their intention to stay at the hotel. Results from four studies show that when eco-friendly hotels sponsor SMIs, an attribute-value message is more effective than a simple recommendation message in influencing travelers’ perceptions and intentions. Given the latest Federal Trade Commission regulations regarding sponsorship disclosure practices, the findings offer valuable insights for tourism providers using SMIs. The study findings suggest that SMIs should create sponsored messages that provide rational and objective information about the hotel’s sustainability practices to stimulate travelers’ related cognitions and persuade them to patronize the hotel.
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