Editor’s Introduction Zwass, Vladimir
International journal of electronic commerce,
10/2023, Volume:
27, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Corresponding to the continuing growth of e-commerce, our scholarly field offers increasingly more sophisticated analyses and advice on how to match the offerings with the customers and, beyond that, ...how to deploy customers’ knowledge in developing the products that will be wanted. The articles in the present issue of IJEC illustrate that.We have a sense of the world’s balance when those who do good do well. In the first article of the issue, Andrew S. Manikas, James R. Kroes, Shaunn Mattingly, and Garrett A. McBrayer study empirically the effects of the sellers’ emphasizing their corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the consumers’ purchasing decisions in online auctions. Indeed, multiple declarations of CSR and the use of related terminology in the offering descriptions do not always correspond to good actions, yet they are shown here to affect positively the item sales. Basing themselves in several relevant theories, the authors develop a research framework and formulate the hypotheses they go on to test empirically in the context of a popular auction platform. The offerers do well with CSR. This tells us that their customers support doing good. It remains to be hoped that the purchasers who appreciate those who do good do well as well.The next article continues the theme of the platforms relating to their customers more effectively. Yiru Wang, Yilong Zheng, and Xun Xu study the effects of the discrepancies between the information provided by the platforms regarding the featured offerings and the customers’ reviews of these offerings. Such discrepancies emerge owing to the differences in focus, discussed attributes, linguistic styles, and the attitudes formed by the background and experience. With the model-driven empirics stemming from a highly popular sharing-economy platform, the researchers find differentiated effects of various types of discrepancies between what the hosts say and what the customer reviews indicate. Nuanced and highly useful advice to the platforms emerges.Information disclosure by platforms is also the focus of the next article. The context and the methodology are, however, wholly different. Mengli Li and Li Wan deploy game theory to assess the aptness of the information disclosed by the platforms from the viewpoint of product returns. As is well known, product returns affect significantly the profitability of platforms and in extreme cases may lead to their demise. Naturally, they are also an expression of customer dissatisfaction. Unobvious results indicate that the extent of the information disclosure should be controlled and that the sales channel structure (wholesale versus agency) should be related to this disclosure.Co-creation of value by customers along with the producers has become a very significant component in product development and evolution. The customers constitute an unbounded source of knowledge and their experiences can complement what the producers know. Yet in most (but not all) cases they are “working for free.” Why? The motivations of customer co-creation are explored here by Zeynep Didem Nohutlu, Basil Englis, Aard Groen, and Efthymios Constantinides. Although the distinction between the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations is often tenuous (think of learning by participation in co-creation), the authors usefully rely on this dichotomy to come up with a relatively comprehensive analysis of user motivations and with a research agenda to support the future efforts.Social media influencers have entrenched themselves as a highly important (well, influential) component of online commerce. Here, Qian Hu, Zhao Pan, Yaobin Lu, and Bin Wang present a study of influencers’ impact on impulsive buying online. By establishing a parasocial relationship with their followers, influencers often form a strong emotional bond with them, thus curtailing deliberation in favor of impulsive decision making. The authors show that both heterophily (differences from the followers) and homophily (similarity to the followers) are dual channels to influence. They go further to identify the aspects of these differences and similarities in order to tease out their differential impact on the influencers’ role in impulse buying, and to offer both theoretical and pragmatic contributions.
Purpose
The importance of influencer marketing is constantly growing. However, little empirical research has examined influencers’ success requirements. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring ...whether the requirements of influencers’ attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness are relevant for online influencer campaigns. An entry-level luxury fashion brand is the focus of the experiment.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 288 participants completed an online survey evaluating the profiles of influencers who varied in terms of the three abovementioned requirements. The impacts of these requirements on brand image, brand satisfaction and brand trust as well as purchase intention and price premium were tested via structural equation modeling.
Findings
The results show that the most important requirement is trustworthiness, followed by attractiveness; surprisingly, the relevance of expertise is virtually nil.
Research limitations/implications
To date, practitioners are still struggling with the success requirements of influencer marketing. They have focused on traditional advertising models and numeric requirements such as the amount of followers. However, regarding merely these requirements can result in wrong decisions. Considering the two requirements, attractiveness and trustworthiness, in a stronger way can provide a remedy to this struggle. In future research, the relevance of the requirements in different involvement conditions and for non-attractiveness-related products might be investigated.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to explore the success requirements that are directly related to influencers (e.g. attractiveness) rather than numeric requirements of their profiles (e.g. page rank) and the impacts of those requirements on brand image, brand satisfaction and brand trust as well as purchase intention and price premium. It adapts the Source-Credibility Model for influencers and shows that its requirements interact in a unique way that is counterintuitive and different from other endorser types such as celebrities or salespersons.
•We introduce a new classification of influencers: informers and entertainers.•Influencer type affects the level of engagement with the endorsement.•Brand warmth and competence moderate the effect of ...influencer type on online sale.
This research introduces a novel classification for social media influencers, namely informers and entertainers, and examines the impact of influencer type on engagement and online sales. Our findings suggest that endorsements by influencers who take on an entertainer role attract more engagement (number of views, likes, and comments) than endorsements by influencers who are informers. Furthermore, drawing on an influencer–brand congruency theory, the moderating effect of brand stereotypes is examined. We show that informers (vs entertainers) generate more online sales when endorsing competent brands. Contrarily, when endorsing warm and warm-competent brands, there is no significant difference between the two types of influencers. This study reaffirms the importance of identifying and selecting “fitting” influencers for brands and informs advertisers about the way brand stereotypes moderate the effectiveness of influencer marketing.
Social media influencer (SMI) advertising is on the rise; however, extant theory regarding the determinants of SMI advertising effectiveness is undeveloped. The present research establishes when and ...how the type of SMI based on the number of followers influences SMI advertising effectiveness. Specifically, the findings of four experimental studies show that micro-influencers (those who have 10,000 to 100,000 followers) are more persuasive than mega-influencers (those who have more than 1 million followers) because endorsements by micro-influencers (versus mega-influencers) bestow higher perceptions of authenticity on the endorsed brand, which "rubs off" from the perceptions regarding influencer authenticity. However, this differential effect of SMI type through influencer and brand authenticity occurs only when the endorsed product is perceived as hedonic (as opposed to utilitarian) consumption. From a theoretical perspective, these findings extend prior research on how endorsements from different SMI types vary in terms of their persuasiveness, shed light on the underlying mechanism, and identify consumption type as an important boundary condition. From a practical perspective, we offer managerial implications for enhancing the effectiveness of SMI advertising strategies by taking into consideration SMI types, consumption contexts, and message framing styles.
Social Media Influencers (SMIs) are micro‐celebrities with large followings on social media platforms who engage consumers and hold the potential to promote customer‐brand relationships across ...different product categories. SMIs have an existing relationship of trust with consumers, and consumers seek out the content created by SMIs for valuable information and advice. This study explores the process of brand engagement between consumers and brands in the digital content marketing environment, specifically examining the research question: Do SMIs act as a route to brand engagement for their followers? The context for this study is the beauty community on YouTube; over 60,000 user comments were analyzed through automated text analysis. This study is among the first to provide empirical evidence that SMIs do act as a route to brand engagement through the three dimensions of cognitive processing, affection and activation.
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to identify the key components pertaining and governing a Computer-Generated Influencer’s (CGI’s) identity and explores and analyzes the ensuing relationship ...between the CGI and its digital environment.Design/methodology/approachThis study follows an exploratory approach using in-depth interviews of CGI followers. A total of 37 in-depth interviews were then analyzed using an inductive thematic approach to steer data coding.FindingsCGIs are considered as brand entities that have a combination of components under their overall perceived identity. This study encompasses the different relational dimensions, whether from a follower’s followers, CGI-follower’s, CGI–human influencer’s or CGI-endorsed brand’s perspective.Originality/valueThis research contributes a seminal work in the field of virtual influencers.
Prior examinations of relationship development and the leverage of trust among artificial intelligence (AI) influencers and followers have been few. This study employed complexity theory to ...understand the main causal recipes that can lead to high trust in AI influencers. Asymmetrical fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was used to explore the recipes that can drive high customer trust. Data were collected from 683 consumers who are familiar with AI influencers in Saudi Arabia. Our findings indicated that no single factor is sufficient to drive trust in influencers, but five causal recipes were explored for their power to secure high levels of trust in AI influencers. The findings revealed that a configuration of source attractiveness (i.e., physical attractiveness, homophily), source credibility (i.e., authenticity, expertise) and congruences (i.e., influencer, product, consumer) act as driver of consumers' trust in an AI influencer. These results are useful for practitioners since they provide new methods for boosting trust in AI influencers.
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•Complexity theory was employed to understand consumer trust towards AI influencers.•Data was collected and analysed using fsQCA.•Findings indicated that no single factor is sufficient to drive trust in influencers.•Five causal recipes were explored for their power to secure high scores of trust in AI influencers.
Media coverage of influencer marketing abounds with ethical questions about this emerging industry. Much of this coverage assumes influencers operate without an ethical framework and many social ...media personalities skirt around the edges of legal guidelines. Our study starts from the premise that influencer marketing is not inherently unethical but, rather, the ethical principles guiding production of sponsored content are not well understood. Through a case study of the travel and tourism media industry, our findings demonstrate that influencers use the concept of authenticity as an ethical framework when producing sponsored content. This ethics of authenticity is premised on two central tenets: being true to one's self and brand and being true to one's audience. This framework puts the influencers' brand identity and relationship with their audience at the forefront while simultaneously allowing them to profit from content designed to benefit brands and destinations.
