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This paper aims to investigate the significance of academic accusations of magical practice towards marketing communication, asking what might motivate such accusations and what meaning they have for marketing's relationship with persuasion.

The paper examines the ways in which four distinguished scholars (Raymond Williams, Judith Williamson, Sut Jhally, and Stephen Brown) have accused marketing of either sharing its transformative power with the social effect of magic or in some way offering a metaphorical parallel with the manner in which magic works to cast a glamour over the “reality” of the world. The paper outlines a rhetorical understanding of magic and uses it to construct a reading of these accusations which focuses around a discomfort with the pursuit of persuasion. The analysis is then extended to contemporary marketing theory, particularly the communicative aspects of service-dominant logic and the broader service perspective.

The argument is advanced that understandings of marketing as “magical” are largely dependent upon a prejudicial view of the role of persuasion and rhetorical technique in mass media marketing communication. The paper demonstrates that this view of persuasion has also become manifest in the contemporary service perspective and limits the “dialogue” approach to marketing communication.

The paper warns against the counter-productive demonisation of persuasion in contemporary marketing theory and seeks to highlight the manner in which accusations of magic have been used to deflect clear debate around the place of persuasion in marketing communication.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the type of disclosure used by social media influencers on consumer evaluations of influencer transparency, product performance expectations and how those factors ultimately influence purchase intentions.

An experiment was conducted with 321 participants recruited from MTurk to test a moderated serial-mediation model.

The results indicate that when consumers become cognizant that an influencer’s branded promotional post may have been motivated by an underlying financial relationship, they evaluate the influencer as significantly less transparent if a more ambiguous disclosure is used relative to a clearer disclosure. Transparency perceptions of the influencer impact consumers’ perceptions of product efficacy as well as purchase intentions.

Social media influencers are rapidly emerging as a popular marketing tool for brand managers, but consumer response to this form of promotion is not well understood. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate how the type of endorsement disclosure used by a social media influencer impacts consumer perception of influencer transparency, product efficacy and purchase intentions. Further, this research demonstrates the applicability of the persuasion knowledge model in the domain of influencer marketing.

This research aims to examine the moderating role of consumers’ persuasion knowledge (PK) on the persuasive effect of combined advertising and publicity within the same medium. The synergistic effect experienced when two messages are thus combined is reversed for readers with high PK who are first exposed to publicity then to advertising. Believability of the message is found to be a mediator within this context.

Based on a review of the appropriate literatures on PK and integrated marketing communication (IMC), this paper tests the hypotheses using two experimental studies.

The results of two experiments show that publicity-then-advertising yields poorer persuasion than advertising-then-publicity, especially under a high PK condition. The reduced synergistic effect of combinations of advertising and publicity is found especially when consumers activate temporary PK and/or when they have chronically high PK. A mediator for a decrease in the synergistic effect of combinations of advertising and publicity, believability, is examined.

This study contains significant managerial implications for marketing communicators about how to most effectively combine and coordinate publicity and advertising in the implementation of an IMC strategy.

Other than making a contribution to the IMCs’ literature, this research extends understanding of the power of PK within an IMC framework. The research contributes yet another extension to the original PK model of Friestad and Wright (1994) by suggesting an underlying theoretical mechanism to explain how PK works in the IMC domain.

This study aims to examine the ability of the social influence heuristics framework to capture skillful and creative social media influencer (SMI) marketing in long-form video content on YouTube for influencer-owned brands and products.

The theoretical lens was a framework of seven evidence-based social influence heuristics (reciprocity, social proof, consistency, scarcity, liking, authority and unity). For the methodological lens, a qualitative case study approach was applied to a purposeful sample of 6 SMIs and 15 videos on YouTube.

The evidence shows that self-promotional influencer marketing in long-form video content is relatable to all seven heuristics and shows signs of high elaboration, innovativeness and skillfulness.

The study reveals that a heuristic-based account of self-promotional influencer marketing in long-form video content can greatly contribute to the understanding of how various well-established marketing concepts (e.g. source attractivity) might be expressed in real-world communications and behaviors. Based on this improved, in-depth understanding, current research efforts, such as experimental studies using one video with a more or less arbitrary influencer and pre-post measure, are advised to explore research questions via designs that account for the observed subtle and complex nature of real-world influencer marketing in long-form video content.

This structured account of skillful and creative marketing can be used as educational and instructive material for influencer marketing practitioners to enhance their creativity, for consumers to increase their marketing literacy and for policymakers to rethink policies for influencer marketing.

Prior research has created a body of knowledge on influencer marketing. However, a conceptual disconnect has hampered the advancement of the field. The social influence heuristics framework is a highly functional conceptual bridge that links the qualitative and quantitative evidence and will advance the understanding of influencer marketing more effectively.

This paper offers an ethical analysis of visual representation that provides criteria for and sheds light on the appropriateness dimension of marketing communications. It provides a theoretically informed framework for recognizing and understanding ethical issues in visual representation.

An interdisciplinary conceptual review and analysis focuses on four representational conventions, synthesizing ethical concerns, to provide a broader context for recognizing and understanding ethical issues in marketing representation: face‐ism, idealization, exoticization and exclusion. This framework is discussed and applied to marketing communications.

It argues that valuations of communication appropriateness must be informed by an awareness of the ethical relationship between marketing representations and identity. It is no longer satisfactory to associate advertising solely with persuasion, rather advertising must be seen as a representational system, with pedagogical as well as strategic functions. We conclude by discussing the theoretical, research, and managerial implications that arise from an ethics of visual representation.

Urges moving beyond an advertising=persuasion model to encompass representation and culture in marketing communication studies. Contributes to understanding the ethical implications of marketing communication. Challenges marketers and researchers to broaden their conception of marketing communication to one more consistent with an image economy.

This paper aims to investigate an integrated, holistic assessment of the characteristics by which consumers judge non-sponsored product review video (PRV) source, message and medium components as credible, and how these are linked to personal values for a deeper understanding of multidimensional credibility assessments of PRVs.

Employing a means-end approach, the authors draw on credibility theory and the persuasion knowledge model to analyse data from 21 in-depth semi-structured laddering interviews.

First, the authors demonstrate distinctive contributions of the video modality towards PRV credibility assessments and the interplay between specific PRV characteristics, cognitive and socio-emotional consequences, and personal values in an ongoing process of credibility assessment. Second, high persuasion knowledge creates awareness of the potential phoniness of the market, revealing a dark side to PRV use even in non-sponsored PRV seemingly created and shared as an act of benevolent concern between consumers.

This paper focused on the credibility of non-sponsored PRVs, future studies might investigate motivations and attributes by which users judge sponsored reviews. Also, the roles of specific product categories and existing brand trust on PRVs credibility provide avenues for further research.

This research offers practical implications for reviewers and brand managers to leverage the unique informational values of video by focusing on the interplay between credibility attributes and customer values.

This work advances credibility theory in the PRV context by examining how non-sponsored PRVs are evaluated as credible, by highlighting consumer persuasion knowledge and scepticism and including the holistic effects of the interplay between source, message and video format characteristics and by linking these to consumers’ goals and values.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of rhetorical and narrative strategies in the foundational text of Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic. The author argues that the success of Vargo and Lusch's (2004a) paper in establishing the foundational premises of the new S-D Logic is greatly aided by their persuasive use of classical rhetorical techniques of word choice, metaphor, and framing as well as the careful construction of a narrative that is guaranteed to be attractive to their audience.

The author uses techniques of rhetorical and narrative analysis to closely examine some of the principle argument in the foundational text of S-D Logic.

The author finds that Vargo and Lusch (2004a) make use of a powerful narrative of redemption in which marketing is seen to be saved from a potentially destructive internal struggle by a revelatory shift in perspective. The choice of key framing terms such as “logic”, “evolution”, and “paradigm” is found to have an important rhetorical effect in supporting this persuasive narrative and helping to cast it in a scientifically “inevitable” light.

The findings speak to the vital role played in academic marketing, and in the successful promulgation of a new movement within the academic marketing community, of persuasive language and narrative.

This study aims to formulate a new framework for identifying deception in consumer reviews through the lens of interpersonal deception theory (IDT) and the persuasion knowledge model (PKM). It evaluates variables contributing to consumer intentions to purchase after reading deceptive reviews and proposes deception identification cues to be incorporated into the interpersonal communication theoretical framework.

The first study is qualitative and quantitative, based on sentiment and lexical analysis of 1,000 consumer reviews. The second study uses the US national consumer survey with a partial least squares partial least squares-structural equation modeling and a process-based mediation–moderation analysis.

This study shows deceptive characteristics that cannot be dissimulated by reviewing consumers that represent review legitimacy based on review valence, authenticity, formalism and analytical writing. The results also support the central role of consumer suspicion of an ulterior motive, with a direct and mediation effect regarding consumer emotions and intentions, including brand trust and purchase intentions.

This paper presents a new framework for identifying deception in consumer reviews based on IDT and PKM, adding new theoretical elements that help adapt these theories to written digital communication specificities. This study clarifies the role of suspicion in a deceptive communication context and shows the variables contributing to consumers’ purchase intention after reading deceptive reviews. The results also emphasize the benefits of lexical analysis in identifying deceptive characteristics of reviews.

Companies can consider the vulnerability of certain generations based on lower levels of suspicions and different linguistic cues to detect deception in reviews. Long-term, marketers can also implement deception identification practices as potential new business models and opportunities.

Policymakers and regulators need to consider critical deception cues and the differences in suspicion levels among segments of consumers in the formulation of preventative and deception management measures.

This study contributes to the literature by formulating a new framework for identifying deception in consumer reviews, adapted to the characteristics of written digital communication. This study emphasizes deception cues in electronic word-of-mouth and provides additional opportunities for theorizing deception in electronic communication.