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Recent literature identifies the importance of influencer-brand fit, a congruence between the narrative of the social media influencer (SMI) and the branded product being reviewed, on purchase intentions. In creating brand-related content, SMIs can post content that can be either sponsored by the brand or unsponsored. This research merges these literature streams to examine how influencer-brand fit impacts purchase decisions and whether sponsorship status moderates this relationship.

Using a 2 (poor vs good influencer-brand fit) × 2 (sponsored vs unsponsored post) experimental design (n = 198), the relationship between influencer-brand fit and purchase intention, the mediating role of SMI trust and the moderating role of perceived sponsorship are tested. The PROCESS macro was used to analyze direct and indirect paths.

The results demonstrate that influencer trust mediates the relationship between influencer-brand fit and purchase intention, highlighting the importance of a congruent influencer and brand image in both increasing influencer trust and purchase intentions. Surprisingly, despite the reductions in purchase intentions from conducting a poor-fitting review, purchase intentions are the same between a poor-fitting unsponsored review and a good fitting sponsored review.

Decision-makers of both corporations and SMI personal brands should consider influencer-brand fit when selecting SMI partners to sponsor and brands to work with, respectively, and should aim for good fit between both parties. SMIs should avoid conducting sponsored, poor-fitting product reviews to limit reductions in trust. Influencers seeking to branch out of their area of expertise can initially consider unsponsored content before venturing into sponsored partnerships. Companies seeking to widen their reach through poor-fitting SMIs should consider alternative strategies to sponsorship.

As sponsored content is common, it is necessary to merge the influencer-brand fit and influencer sponsorship literature. Additionally, this study considers the mediating role of influencer trust, an important variable in predicating purchase intentions as well as helping SMI grow their audience.

This study aims to investigate the mediating role of attachment to social media influencer between authenticity and enjoyment and then travel intention while watching social media influencer video.

This study used the survey approach to collect responses from respondents who have watched the social media influencer video. Partial least squares structural equation modeling technique was applied for the data analysis.

The results indicated that authenticities positively impact tourist attachment to social media influencer, enjoyment and hence visit intention. Attachment to social media influencer mediates the relationships between authenticities and enjoyment.

This study proposes and examines the role of attachment to social media influencers as a mediator between authenticities and tourist responses, which provided meaningful theoretical and practical insights for the future research on social media influencers.

本研究旨在调查网络红人依赖在真实性和享受之间的中介作用, 以及在观看网络红人视频时的旅行意愿。

本研究采用问卷调查方法, 收集观看网络红人视频的受访者的回答, 使用PLS结构方程模型技术进行数据分析。

结果表明, 真实性对游客对网络红人的依赖、享受和参观意愿具有积极影响。网络红人依赖在真实性和享受之间起到中介作用。

本研究提出并检验了网络红人依赖作为真实性和游客反应之间的中介角色, 为未来关于网络红人的研究提供了有意义的理论和实践基础。

This study aims to empirically test how sponsored video customization (i.e. the degree to which a sponsored video is customized for a sponsoring brand) affects video shares differently depending on influencer characteristics (i.e. mega influencer and expert influencer) and brand characteristics (i.e. brand establishment and product involvement).

This study uses a unique real-world data set that combines coded variables (e.g. customization) and objective video performance (e.g. sharing) of 365 sponsored videos to test the hypotheses. A negative binomial model is used to analyze the data set.

This study finds that the effect of video customization on video shares varies across contexts. Video customization positively affects shares if they are made for well-established brands and high-involvement products but negatively influences shares if they are produced by mega and expert influencers.

This study extends the influencer marketing literature by focusing on a new media modality – sponsored video. Drawing on the multiple inference model and the persuasion knowledge theory, this study teases out different conditions under which video customization is more or less likely to foster audience engagement, which both influencers and brands care about. The chosen research setting may limit the generalizability of the findings of this study.

The findings suggest that mega and expert influencers need to consider if their endorsement would backfire on a highly customized video. Brands that aim to engage customers with highly-customized videos should gauge their decision by taking into consideration their years of establishment and product involvement. For video-sharing platforms, especially those that are planning to expand their businesses to include “matching-making services” for brands and influencers, the findings provide theory-based guidance on optimizing such matches.

This paper fulfills an urgent research need to study how brands and influencers should produce sponsored videos to achieve optimal outcomes.

Despite the fact this is already known over how sports spectators interpret sponsorship content, less is known about participants’ sentiments toward sponsors, which are sometimes crucial to the survival of participation sporting events. Various researchers have examined at how spectators recognize or recall sponsors, but very few have explored it from the viewpoint of sport participants. This research portrays a shift in focus from spectator-based to participant-based marketing by studying the differences over how participants and spectators perceive sport sponsorship, recognizing the current knowledge gap regarding the process of sponsorship in participant-based sports. Sponsorship previous research has focused on the effectiveness of sport sponsorships utilizing variables such sponsor recognition, desire to sponsors’ products and anticipated sponsorship advantages (Koronios and Dimitropoulos, 2020). The examination of sport sponsorship from the standpoint of the sport spectator is something that many of the past studies have in common. The application of past research analysing sport sponsorship from a distinct perspective: that of the sport participant, distinguishes the present study. In addition, the present study explores the distinctions in sponsorship effectiveness between spectators and participants, a topic which hasn't been addressed at before in sponsorship literature.

This study depicts a move away from spectator-based to participant-based marketing, utilizing contemporary implicit physiological variables to measure participants’ and spectators’ awareness of and attitude toward sponsors, and it proposes a model of their purchase intentions toward real sponsors of a martial event. A total of 1,332 questionnaires were collected and analysed.

Factors such as sport involvement, social media use, sincerity and beliefs of sponsorship were found to have a significant effect on purchase intention of spectators and participants. And crucial differences in the significance of various antecedent factors between spectators and participants were detected in the formation of positive purchase and word-of-mouth intentions.

This paper gives prominence to contemporary methodological advances in the field of implicit social cognition and their relevance to sponsorship. This is the first sponsorship research which examines the effectiveness of sponsorship variables under the implicit–explicit variables dichotomy.

By acknowledging the importance of micro-influencers and all decision-making process stages, this study aims to explore the impact of perceived influencer’s credibility, impacted by the sponsorship absenteeism, on problem recognition, information search, alternative evaluation, purchase and post-purchase. Additionally, the authors investigate the moderating role of trust level on the researched relationships.

This study focuses on 111 young Croatian consumers of cosmetic products. The authors analysed data with confirmatory factor and regression analyses.

This study reveals positive relationships between micro-influencers’ perceived credibility and all decision-making phases. The research results also show that the lack of sponsorship positively influences perceived credibility. Furthermore, results indicate that the trust level is an essential moderator for the relationships between perceived credibility and sponsorship and information search and buying stages.

Limitations include the convenience sampling method and data collection at one point while also focusing on consumers from one country.

This study provides practical implications for companies outlining the marketing activities that should be considered in all stages of the decision-making process while recognising the attractiveness of micro-influencers for the buying experience.

This study fills gaps in the literature on micro-influencers credibility in general and particularly in the cosmetics industry. In addition, the study fills the gaps in the literature considering the impact of perceived micro-influencer credibility on all five decision-making process stages.

This paper aims to understand the opportunities and challenges to engage emerging adult gamers (aged 18–25) in adopting healthier diet behaviours through online games and related platforms such as esports and streaming. The study uses a socio-ecological approach to understand influences and suggests approaches to changing behaviours.

Purposive and convenience sampling were used to identify (n = 13) online gaming industry professionals and emerging adult (EA) gamers for interview. Qualitative thematic analysis of data using NVivo was undertaken.

Bi-directional influences were found that are potentially impacting EA diet behaviours. Food industry advertising and sponsorships were identified as dominant influences within the behavioural ecology, using microcelebrities and esports events to target EAs. The study identifies a need for social marketers to engage EA gamers in healthful behaviours through interventions across various levels of the behavioural ecology, including those upstream with industry and potential government regulation, to promote better health and balance food marketing. It also identifies future research avenues for engaging gamers in good health.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the impact of the gaming behavioural ecology on EA diet behaviour. It identifies new channels that social marketers can use to engage EAs, who are difficult to reach through more traditional marketing channels.

This study aims to reveal the knowledge structure of social media influencer marketing literature by performing science mapping analysis through a state-of-the-art bibliometric approach to determine the current and future trends. Social media influencer marketing is one of the most effective approaches to presenting a brand and offering value to consumers via social media.

This study evaluates the knowledge structure to uncover the emerging trends and future predictions in social media influencer marketing through bibliographic coupling and co-word analysis. In total, 917 journal publications were retrieved from the Web of Science database and analyzed using VOSviewer software.

The central theme in social media influencer marketing reflects digital engagement between influencers and followers and communication between influencers and followers. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

This study unleashes the knowledge structure according to the fundamental literature of social media influencer marketing and the underlying themes related to the phenomenon.

Food marketing has long been recognized to influence food preferences, consumption and health, yet little is known about the nature and extent of food marketing to young adults – especially with respect to their real-world encounters with food marketing and the appeals they find persuasive. This study aims to engage young adults to explore the persuasive power of food marketing and its platforms of exposure.

Participatory research with 45 young adults, who used a specially designed mobile app to capture the food marketing they encountered for seven days, including information on brand, product, platform and “power” (i.e. the specific techniques that made the advertisement persuasive).

A total of 618 ads were captured for analysis. Results revealed the dominance of digital platforms (especially Instagram, comprising 43% of ads), fast food and beverage brands (48% of ads) and the top persuasive techniques of visual style, special offer and theme.

This study uniquely draws from framing theory to advance the notions of selection and salience to understand food marketing power. It is the first study of its kind to provide a comprehensive look at the platforms and persuasive techniques of food marketing to adults as selected, captured and tagged by participants. It provides timely insights into young adults and food marketing to adults, including where it is encountered, the (generally unhealthy) brands and products promoted and how it is made meaningful.

The rise of social media has led to the emergence of influencers and influencer marketing (IM) domains, which have become important areas of academic inquiry. However, despite its prominence as an area for study, several significant challenges must be addressed. One significant challenge involves identifying, assessing and recommending social media influencers (SMIs). This study proposes a semantic network model capable of measuring an influencer's performance on specific topics or subjects to address this issue. This study can assist managers in identifying suitable SMIs based on their estimated reach.

Data from popular YouTube influencers and publicly available performance measures (views and likes) are extracted. Second, the titles of the past videos made by the influencer are used to develop a semantic network connecting all the videos to other videos based on similarity measures. Third, the nearest neighbor approach extracts the neighbors of the target title video. Finally, based on the set of neighbors, a range prediction is made for the views and likes of the target video with the influencer.

The results show that the model can predict an accurate range of views and likes based on the suggested video titles and the content creator, with 69–78% accuracy across different influencers on YouTube.

The current study introduces a novel and innovative approach that exploits the textual association between a SMI's previous content to forecast the outcome of their future content. Although the findings are encouraging, this research recognizes various constraints that upcoming researchers may tackle. Forecasting views of posts concerning novel subjects and precisely adjusting video view counts based on their age constitute two primary limitations of this study.

Managers interested in hiring influencers can employ the suggested approach to evaluate an influencer's potential performance on a specific topic. This research aids managers in making informed decisions regarding influencer selection, utilizing data-based metrics that are simple to comprehend and explain.

The study contributes to outreach evaluation and better estimating the impact of SMIs using a novel semantic network approach.

Prior research has advanced several explanations for social media influencers' (SMIs’) success in the burgeoning computer-mediated marketing environments but leaves one key topic unexplored: the moderating role of SMIs in service failure and recovery strategies.

Drawing on a social constructivist perspective and an inductive approach, 59 in-depth interviews were conducted with millennials from three European countries (Italy, France and the United Kingdom). Building on social influence theory and commitment-trust theory, this study conceptualises four distinct pathways unifying SMIs' efforts in the service failure recovery process.

The emergent model illustrates how source credibility and message content moderate service failure severity and speed of recovery. The insights gained from this study model contribute to research on the pivotal uniqueness of SMIs in service failure recovery processes and offer practical explanations of variations in the implementation of influencer marketing. This study examines a perspective of SMIs that considers the cycle of their influence on customers through service failure and recovery.

The study suggests that negative reactions towards service failure and recovery are reduced if customers have a relationship with influencers prior to the service failure and recovery compared with the reactions of customers who do not have a relationship with the influencer.