Search results

Public perceptions of the authenticity of social media influencers (SMIs) are a key driver of the latter's persuasiveness as brand endorsers. Despite its importance, no measurement scale currently exists for perceived authenticity of social media influencers (PASMIs). This prevents practitioners from effectively assessing consumers' perceptions of an influencer's authenticity prior to a potential partnership. To provide better guidance, this research develops and validates a scale of PASMI as well as examines the relationships between the underlying dimensions of the scale and key consumer behavior variables.

The current research consists of two studies: the first study constructs a scale; the second validates it. In Study 1, items were generated from existing scales as well as from qualitative responses. These items were revised based on feedback provided by an independent group of reviewers. Furthermore, an online survey was conducted to purify the items. In Study 2, the scale was validated with a new sample.

Results suggest that perceived SMI authenticity is a multidimensional construct consisting of sincerity, truthful endorsements, visibility, expertise and uniqueness. Each of the five dimensions has varying effects on consumers' evaluation of an SMI, willingness to follow an SMI, and intention to purchase products that SMIs recommend.

This research extends theoretical work on authenticity by developing and validating a scale as well as delving into the construct of perceived SMI authenticity. Practical implications are provided for marketers and SMIs.

AI-driven product recommendation chatbots have markedly reduced operating costs and increased sales for marketers. However, previous literature has paid little attention to the effects of the personality of e-commerce chatbots. This study aimed to examine the ways that the interplay between the chatbot's and the user's personality can increase favorable product attitudes and future intentions to use the chatbot. Based on prior literature, we specifically focused on the degree of extroversion of both chatbot and user.

A total of 291 individuals participated in this study. Two different versions of chatbot were created for this study (i.e. extroversion: high vs. low). Participants self-reported their degree of extroversion. The PROCESS macro Model 1 and Model 7 with the Johnson–Neyman technique were employed to test the hypotheses.

The results showed that the high extroversion chatbot elicited greater user satisfactions and perceptions of chatbot friendliness among users with a high level of extroversion. On the contrary, the low extroversion chatbot resulted in greater user satisfactions and perceived chatbot friendliness among users with a low level of extroversion. This study further found that user satisfactions and perceived chatbot friendliness mediated the effects of the chatbot on greater intentions to use the chatbot and more favorable product attitudes.

By showing the effects of matching the personality of the chatbot and user, this study revealed that similarity-attraction effects also apply to human–chatbot interaction in e-commerce. Future studies would benefit by investigating the similarity-attraction effects in different characteristics, such as appearance, opinion and preference. This study also provides useful information for e-commerce marketers and chatbot UX/UI designers.

This paper aims to analyse the adoption of fitness wearables by using the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). The study analyses the relative weights and causal combinations of antecedent variables on use and intention to use fitness wearables.

The study design involves two stages: first, from the perspective of variable-oriented analysis, a structural equation model is tested using partial least squares (PLS) technique on a sample of 176 adopters and a second sample of 187 non-adopters. Second, from the perspective of case-oriented analysis, a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) identifies causal combinations of variables that lead to use of wearables by adopters and intention to use by non-adopters.

PLS results show that performance expectancy and effort expectancy have high net effects on use and intention to use for adopters. FsQCA analysis shows that current users follow a streamlined path to adoption. High beliefs on performance expectancy and effort expectancy are the main influences of intention to use a fitness wearable for non-adopters. In contrast to adopters, non-adopters may follow a number of paths to intention to use through performance expectancy, effort expectancy or facilitating conditions. This insight was apparent only after analysing the data sets by using fsQCA.

For sake of parsimony, this paper tested UTAUT model instead of the more complex unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2.

Marketers in the fitness category can enhance use and intention to use by utilising not one but a combination of causal factors such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions. Wide societal deployment of wearables depends on performance and expectations.

The widespread use of mobile devices depends on performance expectancy and effort expectancy. To transit to a real knowledge economy, co-creation should occur at early stages of product development so that these expectations are shared and better products be developed.

This paper offers a nuanced understanding of fitness wearable adoption by analysing adopters and non-adopters through variable- and case-oriented techniques. It complements the one-linear-path perspective with a number of alternative causal combinations of variables that lead to use and intention to use fitness wearables. While the causal path for adopters is unique, there are a number of causal combinations of antecedents that lead to high intention to use in potential adopters.

Rooted in adult fear, adult authority aims to protect and control youth (Gannon, 2008; Valentine, 1997). Continuously negotiating for freedom, youth search for adult-free public spaces and are therefore extremely attracted to social networking sites (boyd, 2007, 2014). However, a significant portion of youth now includes adult authorities within their Facebook networks (Madden et al., 2013). Thus, this study explores how youth navigate familial- and educational-adult authorities across social networking sites in relation to their local peer culture.

Through semi-structured interviews, including youth-centered and participant-driven social media tours, 82 youth from the Northeast region of the United States of America (9–17 years of age; 43 females and 39 males) shared their lived experiences and perspectives about social media during the summer of 2013.

In their everyday lives, youth are subjected to the normative expectations emerging from peer culture, school, and family life. Within these different and at times conflicting normative schemas, youth’s social media use is subject to adult authority. In response, youth develop intricate ways to navigate adult authority across social networking sites.

Adult fear is powerful, but fragile to youth’s interpretation; networked publics are now regulated and youth’s ability to navigate then is based on their social location; and youth’s social media use must be contextualized to be holistically understood.

This study deployed a bibliometric analysis of 604 academic articles on celebrity endorsement collected from the Scopus database from January 1960 to August 2021 (the first published article dated back to 1976). This study integrated three bibliometric analyses: timeline visualization, co-citation cluster analysis, and historical direct citation analysis. This study conducted a qualitative review to further examine the obtained quantitative results.

This study reviewed the existing research on the celebrity endorsement domain. Based on a bibliometric review of existing literature, this study aimed to provide main theoretical roots and research trajectories and propose new research avenues concerning the theory, context, characteristics, and research methodologies adopted within the marketing discipline.

The findings revealed that the existing relevant research focused on celebrity endorsement in different periods. The main theoretical roots and research trajectories identified were developed under the influence of primary articles from co-citation analysis and historical direct citation.

Based on the quantitative bibliometric analysis and a qualitative literature review, this study has provided a comprehensive overview of the current stage of this domain. The study also has underscored an abundance of celebrity endorsement literature and revealed the research topics that require further investigations to theoretically and empirically advance the understanding of celebrity endorsement.

Some topics were recommended for further research within the theory, context, characteristics, and methodology aspects. Some practical examples and suggestions are also given in the study.

This study proposed a bibliometric overview of celebrity endorsement in the marketing discipline, especially based on timeline visualization, co-citation cluster analysis, and historical direct citation analysis. Furthermore, this study offered a research agenda for further studies in the marketing discipline.

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 examine what parents from across the USA know about online advertising/marketing tactics directed at children, their familiarity with these tactics and what they believe about the appropriateness of using these promotional methods to target children.

The online survey company Qualtrics was used to collect data from 500 parents in the USA. Parents had to have at least one child between the ages of 5 and 14 to participate. To ensure socio-economic diversity, half of the participants had an associate degree or more of schooling while the other half of participants had some college or less. Participants were given vignettes describing 11 different online advertising/marketing tactics and were asked how familiar they were with each tactic, whether they could identify the tactic by name, at what age they believed their child could understand the promotional intent of the tactic and the age that they thought it was ethical to use this tactic with children.

The results revealed that parents were only moderately familiar with many of these advertising/marketing tactics and had difficulty identifying most of them by name. In addition, parents reported that, on average, most 11-year-old children would understand the purpose of these marketing approaches and that it was ethical to target children with them.

The results of this exploratory study offer researchers some key insights into how American parents perceive online advertising that targets children.

The objective of this research is to explore factors that influence interns' satisfaction (is) toward the e-internship program, an alternate adopted by management institutes in lieu of the regular summer internship amidst the global pandemic, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

A cross-sectional research design with a self-reported questionnaire was conducted on business school (B-school) interns to rate the factors that contribute to their e-internship satisfaction. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the responses obtained from 203 B-school interns with a diverse demographic background belonging to a government university of North India. Convenience sampling was employed to get valid responses from interested respondents.

Results revealed that although all the four factors under consideration, faculty mentors' preparedness (FMP), industry mentors' preparedness (IMP), interns' readiness toward online internship and interns' Internet efficacy (IIE) are significantly related to IS, industry mentors' role was found to have a major impact on the IS. The study unravels that industry mentors' interaction has a potential role in the successful implementation of e-internships.

The study has implications for the university as well as the companies to ponder on factors that satisfy interns during the virtual internship and designing an effective internship program by having a collaborative approach.

There is a dearth of empirical studies on internships in general and e-internship in particular, so this study fills the gap and contributes to the existing literature and provides ways to satisfy B-school interns toward e-internship by addressing the key factors.

Quantitative objective studies on the problem of celebrity selection are lacking. Furthermore, existing research does not recognize the group decision-making nature and the possibility of customer involvement in celebrity or influencer selection for social media marketing. This study conceptualizes celebrity selection as a multi-attribute group decision-making problem while deriving the final ranking of celebrities/influencers using interactive and flexible criteria based on the value tradeoff approach. The article thus proposes and demonstrates a quantitative objective method of celebrity selection for a brand or campaign in an interactive manner incorporating customer's preferences as well.

Each decision-maker's preferences for celebrity selection criteria are objectively captured and converted into an overall group preference using a modified generalized fuzzy evaluation method (MGFEM). The final ranking of celebrities is then derived from an interactive and criteria-based value tradeoff approach using the flexible and interactive tradeoff method.

The approach gives a different ranking of celebrities for two campaigns based on group members' perceived importance of the selection criteria in different scenarios. This group includes decision-makers (DMs) from the brand, marketing communication agency and brand's customers. Further, each group member has an almost equal say in the decision-making based on fuzzy evaluation and an interactive and flexible value tradeoff approach to celebrity selection for receiving a rank order.

The approach uses secondary data on celebrities and hypothetical scenarios. Comparison with other methods is difficult, as no other study proposes a multi-criteria group decision-making approach to celebrity selection especially in a social media context.

This approach can help DMs make more informed, objective and effective decisions on celebrity selection for their brands or campaigns. It recognizes that there are multiple stakeholders, including the end customers, each of whose views is objectively considered in the aspects of group decision-making through a fuzzy evaluation method. Further, this study provides a selection mechanism for a given context of endorsement by objectively and interactively encapsulating stakeholder preferences.

This robust and holistic approach to celebrity selection can help DMs objectively make consensual decisions with partial or complete information. This quantitative approach contributes to the literature on selection mechanisms of influencers, celebrities, social media opinion leaders etc. by providing a methodological aid that encompasses aspects of interactive group decision-making for a given context. Moreover, this method is useful to DMs and stakeholders in understanding and incorporating the effect of nature or context of the brand and the campaign type in the selection of a celebrity or an influencer.