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Celebrity endorsement is common in the marketing communications context, especially in the Asian market. Thanks to the popularity of online DIY celebrities, many marketing communications practitioners have started to involve such celebrities in brand and product endorsement strategies. However, few existing studies have compared the endorsement persuasiveness of online DIY celebrity endorsers with traditional celebrity endorsers, particularly in the Asian market. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to fill the literature gap by examining how consumers perceive and evaluate online DIY and traditional celebrity endorsers.

In-depth personal interviews were conducted with 15 interviewees with a median age of 23. They were asked to report their overall evaluations and attitudes toward online DIY celebrity endorsers and traditional celebrity endorsers, and their respective endorsement strategies.

Although the popularity of online DIY celebrities is growing in China, they received a lower level of appreciation from interviewees than traditional celebrities. The persuasiveness of online DIY celebrity endorsers was not as effective as that of traditional celebrity endorsers. Interviewees even held an overall negative attitude toward online DIY celebrities and their endorsements. Interviewees perceived traditional celebrity endorsers more positively, and their endorsements to be more effective, than online DIY celebrity endorsers.

The small sample size may constrain any generalization to be drawn from the findings. Future studies are suggested using survey and experiment methodology to further test and compare the persuasiveness of online DIY and traditional celebrity endorsement.

We suggest communications practitioners continue to use traditional celebrities to improve overall brand image and enhance the target audience’s purchase intention as the exploratory study reveals that audiences have an overall positive experience with traditional celebrities, instead of online DIY celebrities. If online DIY celebrities are preferred in communications strategies, we suggest practitioners carefully select qualified online DIY celebrity endorsers based on image congruence between such online DIY celebrities and the product category in that audiences in the exploratory study are quite cautious when exposed to product endorsement messages from online DIY celebrities. Besides this, audiences have more confidence in product endorsement if there is a fit between online DIY celebrities’ expertise and the endorsed product type.

This is the first qualitative study on consumers’ perception of product endorsement at the level of online DIY and traditional celebrity endorsers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Online influencers are increasingly used by brands around the globe to establish brand communication. This study aims to investigate the characteristics of social media content in terms of presentation style and brand communication among online influencers in China. The authors identified how characteristics of social media posts influence young consumers’ engagement with the posts.

The authors analyzed 1,779 posts from the Sina Weibo accounts of ten top-ranked online influencers by combining traditional content analysis with Web data crawling of audience engagement with social media posts.

Online influencers in China more frequently used photos than videos to communicate with their social media audience. Altogether 8% and 6% of posts carried information about promotion and event, respectively. Posts with promotional incentives as well as event information were more likely to engage audiences. Altogether 22% of the sampled social media posts mentioned brands. Posts with brand information, however, were less likely to engage audiences. Furthermore, having long text is more effective than photos/images in generating likes from social media audiences.

Combining content analysis of social media posts and engagement analytics obtained via Web data crawling, this study is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, one of the first empirical studies to analyze influencer marketing and young consumers’ reactions to social media in China.

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 apply the Product Life Cycle (PLC) and Product Evolutionary Cycle (PEC) frameworks to the nicotine and tobacco market to predict the impact of television commercials for electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) on youth.

Surveys were administered over a three-year period to 417 alternative high school students from Southern California who had never used e-cigarettes, cigarettes or cigars at the baseline. Covariate-adjusted logistic regression causal mediation models were used to test competing hypotheses from the PLC and PEC frameworks.

Results support a refined version of the PEC framework where e-cigarette commercials increase the odds of e-cigarette use, which leads to subsequent use of competing products including cigarettes and cigars.

This investigation demonstrates the utility of frameworks that conceptualize youth-oriented marketing as a two-part process in which potential customers are first convinced to adopt a behavior and then enticed to use a specific product to enact the behavior.

Rising rates of nicotine and tobacco product use among youth may be partially attributable to e-cigarette commercials.

Regulations in the USA that permit television commercials for e-cigarettes but restrict the promotion of cigarettes and cigars have created an opportunity to study product adoption among youth consumers when one product has a strategic marketing advantage.

Often seen as a vulnerable group, tween girls fashioning themselves after adults have been a topic of significant concern. Public and academic discourse in the West has expressed worry that girls’ adult-like dressing may expose them to a range of physical, psychological and sexual harm. In most discussions on girls’ dressing, Western popular culture is also identified as one of the prevalent ways through which girls learn to how to fashion themselves after adults. It is claimed that Western television programmes, books and magazines encourage young girls to fashion themselves after adults at an earlier age. Recognising the importance of girls’ voices in their experiences of girlhood, this chapter draws exclusively on 12 focus groups, with 29 Singaporean girls aged 8–12. It finds that there are changing mediascapes in tween girls’ lives that have not been acknowledged. No longer predominantly watching television or browsing teen magazines, this chapter highlights how young Singaporean girls are now more likely to spend their time on the popular media platform YouTube. As girls gain mobility through their mobile communication devices, this chapter calls for a closer examination of YouTube in relation to girls’ dressing. Nonetheless, this chapter also acknowledges that while certain popular YouTube videos (re)produce highly narrow ideas of what a female should look or be like, it is not a simple issue of girls learning how to dress from their favourite YouTube stars. YouTubers also represented a lexicon of empowerment for some of the girls in this study.

This paper aims to assess retail shopping avenues for young consumers based on the type of guidance and assistance they pursue (social media vs professional service provider) in purchasing situations judged to be important. Young consumers consider themselves pet parents and pets represent an extension of self. Thus, pet-related products, by their importance, represent an excellent area of analysis for this inquiry.

Data collection was completed in a way that is contextually relevant and gives the results ecological validity with the assistance of a major supplier of pet food. A total of 470 Gen Z owners of small companion animals were obtained. The partial least squares structural equation modeling testing method is considered appropriate for the model analysis due to the structure and homogeneity of the sample and due to the precision of the method.

Results indicate that, in accordance with social media engagement (SME) theory, high SME elevated social commerce purchase intentions while professional advice seekers reported increased brick-and-mortar shopping. Thus, context-dependent, young consumers may purchase from brick-and-mortar sites.

This paper draws on SME and Advice Response Theory and proposes an original model explaining channel selection preferences for young consumers based on the type of advice sought for important purchasing decisions. The model represents a steppingstone to investigate the mechanism that translates information search sources into buying through different channels.