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1 – 10 of 472Fei Fan, Lin Fu and Qinghua Jiang
This study aims to examine how young consumers perceive the advertising effectiveness of endorsements by virtual idols and how endorsements by virtual idols differ from…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine how young consumers perceive the advertising effectiveness of endorsements by virtual idols and how endorsements by virtual idols differ from endorsements by real human celebrities such as traditional celebrities and online influencers.
Design/methodology/approach
An experimental study was conducted with 400 randomly selected young respondents in China in December 2022. A 3 × 2 factorial design was used to test how the type of celebrity endorser and level of product involvement influence the persuasiveness of advertising aimed at young adults. Among 400 respondents, the average age was 21.5 years. A total of 193 male and 207 female respondents participated in the experiment.
Findings
Young consumers find virtual idols, online influencers and traditional celebrities attractive. Although virtual idols are the least credible among the three types of celebrity endorsers, young consumers tend to be more convinced by their endorsements of products with low levels of consumer involvement than those with high levels of involvement. Among the three types of celebrity endorsements, young consumers find traditional celebrities the most effective. In addition, young consumers’ attitudes toward celebrity endorsers mediate the impact of celebrity endorsers’ attractiveness and credibility on their attitudes toward the advertisements. The perceived level of product involvement moderates the transfer of meaning from the attitude toward the celebrity endorsers to the attitude toward the advertisement.
Practical implications
First, when choosing celebrity endorsers to advertise products targeting young consumers, marketing communication practitioners should give priority to the endorsers’ perceived credibility, as young consumers have a variety of views about them that can significantly affect their attitudes toward the advertisement. Second, real human celebrity endorsers are more effective than virtual idols in celebrity endorsements. However, virtual idols may be suited for use in advertisements to promote products with low involvement levels, such as soft drinks.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first experimental study to attempt to analyze the effectiveness of virtual idols in advertising aimed at young consumers. This is also the first comparative study to introduce virtual idols as celebrity endorsers in product advertising and to compare their effectiveness with that of the two other types of commonly discussed celebrity endorsers, traditional celebrities and online influencers.
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Xuebing Dong, Hong Liu, Nannan Xi, Junyun Liao and Zhi Yang
This study explores whether and how four main factors of short-branded video content (content matching, information relevance, storytelling and emotionality) facilitate consumer…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores whether and how four main factors of short-branded video content (content matching, information relevance, storytelling and emotionality) facilitate consumer engagement (likes, comments and shares), as well as the moderating effect of the release time (morning, afternoon and evening) in such relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses Python to write programs to crawl relevant data information, such as consumer engagement and short video release time. It combines coding methods to empirically analyze the impact of short-branded video content characteristics on consumer engagement. A total of 10,240 Weibo short videos (total duration: 238.645 h) from 122 well-known brands are utilized as research objects.
Findings
Empirical results show that the content characteristics of short videos significantly affected consumer engagement. Furthermore, the release time of videos significantly moderated the relationship between the emotionality of short videos and consumer engagement. Content released in the morning enhanced the positive impact of warmth, excitement and joy on consumer engagement, compared to that released in the afternoon.
Practical implications
The findings provide new insights for the dissemination of products and brand culture through short videos. The authors suggest that enterprises that use brand videos consider content matching, information relevance, storytelling and emotionality in their design.
Originality/value
From a broader perspective, this study constructs a new method for comprehensively evaluating short-branded video content, based on four dimensions (content matching, information relevance, storytelling and emotionality) and explores the value of these dimensions for creating social media marketing success, such as via consumer engagement.
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Ruibin Geng, Xi Chen and Shichao Wang
Endorsement marketing has been widely used to generate consumer attention, interest and purchase decisions among targeted audiences. Internet celebrities who become famous on the…
Abstract
Purpose
Endorsement marketing has been widely used to generate consumer attention, interest and purchase decisions among targeted audiences. Internet celebrities who become famous on the Internet are dependent on strategic intimacy to appeal to their followers. Our study aims to examine how multiple exposures to Internet celebrity endorsements influence consumers’ click and purchase decisions in the context of influencer marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a unique and representative dataset, the authors first model consumers’ choices for clicks and purchases with two panel fixed-effect logit models linking clicks and purchases with the frequency of exposure to Internet celebrity endorsement. To further control the endogeneity produced by the intercorrelation between the click and purchase models, the authors also adopt the two-stage Heckman probit structure to jointly estimate the two models using Maximum Likelihood Estimation. Robustness checks confirm the effectiveness of the models.
Findings
The results suggest that Internet celebrity endorsement plays a significant role in bringing referral traffic to e-commerce sites but is less helpful in affecting conversion to sales. The impact of repetitive Internet celebrity endorsements on consumers’ click decisions is U-shaped, but the role of Internet celebrities as online retailers will “shape-flip” this relationship to a negative linear relation.
Originality/value
Our study is the first to investigate the repetitive exposure effect of Internet celebrity endorsement. The results show a contradictory pattern with a wear-out effect of repetition in the advertising literature. This is the first study to show how the endorsing self, which is a common business model in influencer marketing, moderates the effectiveness of influencer marketing.
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Mudit Gera, Dharminder Kumar Batra and Vinod Kumar
This paper aims to understand the scholarly contributions to mobile advertising by analyzing the publishing trend from 2001 to 2022 from the documents indexed in the Scopus…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to understand the scholarly contributions to mobile advertising by analyzing the publishing trend from 2001 to 2022 from the documents indexed in the Scopus database.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 348 documents were selected for analysis published between 2001 and 2022. The garnered data was examined using a bibliometric domain mapping analysis technique using computer-aided software R and VOSviewer and manually exploring the articles.
Findings
The results of this study discover the most prolific authors in the mobile advertising domain and other seminal works carried out by productive researchers in the field of mobile advertising. The journals in which most instrumental research studies have been published are also identified. Moreover, the co-citation, bibliometric coupling and co-occurrence analysis of literature are also carried out to draw themes concerning mobile advertising research that have been identified and categorized.
Research limitations/implications
This research analyzed a singular, exclusive database, “Scopus,” which limited the sectoral scope of publications. Since the present research uses bibliometric analysis, these studies cannot conduct sentiment analysis of the chosen studies.
Practical implications
Marketing professionals looking after technological advancements may use this study to understand the broad scope of mobile advertising applicability across diverse domains and discuss the trade-offs that may address significant bottlenecks in mobile advertising applications.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the latest attempts in recent times to understand the research work in mobile advertising using a bibliometric domain analysis approach.
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Theresa Macheka, Emmanuel Silva Quaye and Neo Ligaraba
Young consumers are increasingly using online reviews and celebrity influence to make purchase decisions. The purpose of this study is to ascertain the influence of online…
Abstract
Purpose
Young consumers are increasingly using online reviews and celebrity influence to make purchase decisions. The purpose of this study is to ascertain the influence of online customer reviews, celebrity influencer’s attractiveness, celebrity influencer’s credibility on female millennials’ purchase intention of beauty products.
Design/methodology/approach
To validate the research questions and hypotheses, data were obtained from young female consumers using an electronic self-administered survey questionnaire that was close ended. A total of 203 valid responses were obtained from which data were analysed by making use of structural equation modelling Mplus and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 28.
Findings
The obtained results showed that the seven hypotheses of the study were positive. However, two hypotheses were negative, namely, celebrity influencer attractiveness did not have a significant influence on the attitude of consumers; and brand loyalty was not significantly correlating with young female consumers’ purchase intention of beauty products.
Practical implications
Given that millennials are known to be active users of social media and often consult online peer product reviews, marketers and practitioners of beauty industry should improve the effectiveness and usability of beauty influencers and online reviews to attract female millennial consumers.
Originality/value
This research contributes to understanding young female consumers’ attitudes towards purchasing beauty products, especially the combined influence of group influence (online reviews) and media influence (celebrity beauty influencers) on such attitudes.
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Anshika Singh Tanwar, Harish Chaudhry and Manish Kumar Srivastava
This study aims to provide a holistic review of social media influencers (SMIs) research based on a unique approach of bibliometric analysis and content analysis between 2011 and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to provide a holistic review of social media influencers (SMIs) research based on a unique approach of bibliometric analysis and content analysis between 2011 and 2020. The review examines the main influential aspects, themes and research streams to identify research directions for the future.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample selection and data collection were done from the Scopus database. The sample dataset was refined based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria to determine the final dataset of 183 articles. The dataset was exported in the BibTeX format and then imported into the BiblioShiny app for bibliometric analysis. The content analysis was done following the theory-context-methodology framework.
Findings
The several findings of this study include (1) Co-word analysis of most used keywords; (2) Longitudinal thematic evolution; (3) The focus of the research papers as per the theory-context-methodology review protocol are persuasion knowledge model, fashion and beauty industries, Instagram and content analysis, respectively; and (4) The network analysis of the research studies is known as the co-citation analysis and depicts the intellectual structure in the domain. This analysis resulted in four clusters of the research streams from the literature and two emergent themes (Chen et al., 2010)
Originality/value
In general, the previous reviews in the area are either domain, method or theory-based. Thus, this study aims to complement and extend the existing literature by presenting the overall picture of the SMI research with the help of a unique combined approach and further highlighting the trends and future research directions based on the findings of this study.
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Jianfeng Guo, Xiaohan Yang, Sihang Yao, Fu Gu and Xuemei Zhang
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of positive-framed and negative-framed green advertising on pro-environmental WTP. This study also explores the impacts of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of positive-framed and negative-framed green advertising on pro-environmental WTP. This study also explores the impacts of regulatory focus, environmental concern and pleasant level on green advertising effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
Data are collected from a within-participant between-group online experiment in China. The generalized estimating equation (GEE) is employed to investigate the impact of green advertising on WTP. Grouped regression and mediation analyses are conducted to explore the influences of regulatory focus, environmental concern and pleasure on advertising efficacy.
Findings
The experimental outcomes indicate that green advertising significantly increases participants’ pro-environmental WTP, and negative-framed advertising is more effective than its positive-framed counterpart. Prevention focus heightens receptivity to green advertising, and the relation of environmental concern to advertising effectiveness is inverted U-shaped. Pleasure mediates the effect of green advertising on the WTP, and this mediating role is influenced by emotional intensity when advertising is negatively framed.
Originality/value
Evidence suggests that green advertising may propel pro-environmental WTP by raising environmental awareness, but such a relationship remains severely understudied. As such, this study pioneers in exploring the impact of different-framed green advertising on pro-environmental WTP, extending the concept of green advertising to environmental management. By considering the influences of regulatory focus, environmental concern and pleasure, this study raises practical implications for designing green advertisements, such as increasing the usage of visual elements.
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Shubhomoy Banerjee and S. Sreejesh
The study's primary purpose is to establish the direct and indirect roles of word-of-mouth communication (WOM) in initiating and maintaining consumer loyalty in the bottom of…
Abstract
Purpose
The study's primary purpose is to establish the direct and indirect roles of word-of-mouth communication (WOM) in initiating and maintaining consumer loyalty in the bottom of pyramid (BOP) markets in the Indian context. In addition, the study seeks to evaluate the conditions (viz. extent of media usage, brand distribution intensity and brand social connections) under which WOM leads to the initiation and maintenance of consumer brand loyalty.
Design/methodology/approach
The study hypotheses were formulated following the social identity theory. Later, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted among 898 rural BOP consumers. Structural equation modelling technique was applied to test the study hypotheses.
Findings
Results suggested a positive effect of WOM on brand credibility and self-brand connections-indicative of the initiation of strong cognitive and affective relationships respectively. Brand credibility and self-brand connections also mediated the paths between WOM and brand loyalty-indicative of the maintenance and continuation of strong affect-laden relationships. These indirect relationships were moderated by the extent of media usage, brand distribution intensity and brand social connections.
Originality/value
This is among the first studies that holistically evaluate the role of WOM in developing customer loyalty to rural BOP consumers against the backdrop of the systemic deficiencies in these markets.
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Padma Angmo and Rachna Mahajan
Virtual influencers (VIs), who are fictional characters, have gained popularity in recent years, particularly among Generation Z and millennials. With the hype surrounding VIs…
Abstract
Purpose
Virtual influencers (VIs), who are fictional characters, have gained popularity in recent years, particularly among Generation Z and millennials. With the hype surrounding VIs, more research is required. Thus, this study aims to examine how Gen Z members and millennials react to VIs used for marketing purposes.
Design/methodology/approach
This study follows an exploratory approach. The data were collected from 29 participants (14 male and 15 female) through two focus groups and semi-structured interviews.
Findings
The authors found that opinions about VIs were mixed, and two main themes emerged from the study: (1) challenges and potential and (2) decision-making and psychological aspects.
Originality/value
This study broadens the paradigm for analysing the efficacy of VIs. This emerging topic is of relevance for the marketing sector as well as for transdisciplinary research and practice.
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Manoraj Natarajan and Sridevi Periaiya
Consumer-perceived review attitude determines consumer overall information adoption and is a core part of consumer’s online-shopping. This study aims to focus on factors that…
Abstract
Purpose
Consumer-perceived review attitude determines consumer overall information adoption and is a core part of consumer’s online-shopping. This study aims to focus on factors that could influence consumer review attitude and can be used by marketers to shape individual information perception.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used the questionnaire method to collect data from online shoppers and the modelling of structural equations as an empirical approach to analyse the data.
Findings
The findings demonstrate that both systematic and heuristic cues impact the reviewer’s credibility and perceived website attitude differently, which, in turn, influence review attitude. Review characteristics, such as factuality, consistency and relevancy, have a positive relationship with reviewer credibility, while only review consistency and relevancy appears to have a relationship with review attitude. Website characteristics such as reputation, familiarity and social interactivity positively influence the website attitude, which positively influences review attitude. Apart from this, review skepticism has a significant negative relationship with review attitude.
Practical implications
This study could help to foster a positive attitude towards online reviews. Digital marketers need to motivate trusted reviewers to post consistent, fact-based reviews. Further improving the overall website reputation and interactivity could bring a positive attitude towards the reviews. Also, digital marketers must filter and avoid contradictory reviews or reviews that have a bipolar message and reviews expressing numerous emotions to enhance review relevance and consistency.
Originality/value
The current study addresses the need to understand the formation of consumer review attitude through both review and website characteristics using heuristic – systematic model. The paper captures the complex process undergone by the consumer to decipher review attitude and thereby extend the understanding of consumer information processing.
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