Browsing by Subject "Influencer marketing"

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Essays on emerging market actors on digital platforms
(2024-08) Niknejad Moghadam, Mahdi; Mahajan, Vijay, 1948-; Hohenberg, Sebastian; Henderson, Ty T.; Rao, Raghunath; Agarwal, Ashish
Across two essays in this dissertation, I study two emerging market actors that mainly operate on digital platforms: product leakers (i.e., individuals that are in touch with firm insiders and reveal information about new products on digital platforms before they are officially announced by the firm), and social media influencers (i.e., individuals that have a large number of followers on social media platforms and discuss different products and services to influence the consumers’ purchase decision). In the first essay, I investigate the impact the product leakers have on firm value. I draw on the findings of new product announcement literature and employ a unique sample of 1,245 new product leakages (NPLs) collected from blogs and the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) to show that these NPLs, despite their threatening nature, have a positive impact on firm value on average when they are published. In the second essay, I examine the impact of influencers' swearing on consumer engagement with their content. Utilizing a unique dataset comprising 43,982 videos from 200 gaming influencers active on a prominent video-sharing platform, I find that consumers react more negatively to content that contains more profanity, which leads to lower engagement for them. This finding contrasts with recent marketing literature suggesting that user-generated content (UGC) featuring profanity is more engaging to consumers. Collectively, these two essays offer novel insights into the interactions between market actors and firms. Firms continually seek collaboration opportunities with influencers while also striving to mitigate the occurrence of NPLs. My essays highlight the potential drawbacks of influencer marketing and suggest that NPLs may not be as detrimental as commonly perceived. Firms need to reevaluate their approach to both influencer marketing campaigns and product announcements in the age of social media in order to maximize the benefits they gain from their interactions with these two emerging market actors while minimizing the potential risks that these outside entities may pose to their brand reputation, competitive capabilities, and consumer trust.
Is your influence worth it? : an empirical model of Social Media Influencer Capital and its effect on influencer marketing
(2021-08-13) Sudarshan, Sabitha; Oh, Jeeyun; Eastin, Matthew S.; Devlin, Natalie Brown; Pounders, Kathrynn; Murthy, Dhiraj
Given the explosion of influencer marketing in general and the significant social impact of YouTube influencers in particular, this dissertation seeks to examine the nature of individual capital wielded by influencers. To this end, a construct of Social Media Influencer Capital (SMIC) is proposed, based on prior theoretical findings. Study 1 examines the construct using a three-factor structure of SMIC consisting of source credibility, opinion leadership, and brand involvement. Using the factor structure that emerges in Study 1, Study 2 utilizes this as a variable of interest and conducts a survey to examine the interaction effects of follower personality (based on the HEXACO scale) and brand (influencer) personality on perceived social media influencer capital, parasocial interaction, intention to follow, and intention to purchase. Four HEXACO traits in particular - Gentleness, Aesthetic Appreciation, Social Boldness and Inquisitiveness, had varying effects on consumer evaluations of SMIC and further marketing outcomes therein. As such, this research extends prior work on influencer studies, adds to the literature on HEXACO, and provides practical implications for marketers and social media influencers.
The efficacy of social media influencers in e-commerce in the context of sensory richness
(2021-05-05) Zhuo, Shuer; Eastin, Matthew S.
Emerging affordances of social media platforms and e-commerce interfaces have enticed brands, marketers, and social media influencers to employ rich media in hopes of engaging consumers with multisensory stimuli. Using Media Richness Theory, this study explores how media richness regarding sensory modalities in influencers’ product reviews affects decision confidence and behavioral intentions during online shopping. Further, the study investigates the interaction effects between media richness and motivation on consumers’ sensation of presence in e-commerce and the relationships among presence, attention, curiosity, search, decision confidence, and purchase intention. Results show that presence and search significantly predict decision confidence, which was found to have a positive association with purchase intention. Data also reveal that attention and curiosity are positively associated with presence and significantly predict search.
The impact of the humanness of AI influencers on the success of influencer marketing
(2022-05-09) Jang, Haneul; Wilcox, Gary B.
With the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and with the emerging trend of influencer marketing, AI influencers appear to be the new opportunity in the marketing industry. Yet, due to the lack of research on AI influencers, how to succeed with AI influencers and what makes them successful in influencer marketing remain unclear. The current thesis aims to give insights on how to leverage AI influencers in influencer marketing. Based on uncanny valley theory, Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) theory, and source credibility, the current study explores how the perceived humanness of AI influencers affect the success of influencer marketing
This video is sponsored : text and sentiment analysis of YouTube health-related vlog comments and brand endorsement effectiveness
(2020-12-11) Yang, Zihan, M.A.; Wilcox, Gary B.
With the rapid development of YouTube and social media influencers, influencer brand endorsements have received much industry and scholarly attention. For brand endorsements made by YouTube influencers, comments under videos provide a cue for measuring endorsement effectiveness. This thesis examines the comments of both sponsored and non-sponsored YouTube health-related vlogs, as well as consumers’ commenting behaviors under the vlogs and purchase intentions toward the endorsed products. Text and sentiment analysis and survey techniques are used to examine the linguistic style of comments, the commenting behaviors of consumers, and their purchase intentions. The analysis reveals that a narrative, external, and positive linguistic style is found in the comments of health-related vlogs, and consumers’ positive commenting behavior leads to higher purchase intentions of healthy products.