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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.

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。

The paper aims to examine how employees influence their employer’s brand by applying Taylor’s (1999) six segment message strategy wheel in an employee influencer context.

The research uses a content analysis of employees’ public social media posts – including captions and images – to analyze the message strategies employees use to promote their employers.

While ego and social were popular message strategies in both the images and captions, the findings evidence the varying message strategies employees use in text-based versus image-based messages. Four “imagined audiences” of employee influencers are identified: current customers, prospective customers, current employees and prospective employees.

The research provides insight into how employees act as influencers in building their employer brand on social media.

A unique measurement tool is developed that can be used by companies and future researchers to decode employees’ online communications.

This research contributes to theory and practice in the following important ways. First, the research provides a modernization of an existing framework from an offline setting to an applied industry context in an online setting. Second, this research focuses on a subtype of social media influencer, the employee influencer, which is an underdeveloped area of research. Third, a unique measurement tool to analyze text-based and image-based social media data is developed that can be used by companies and future researchers to decode employees’ online communications.

Despite the increasing popularity of influencer marketing, there exists a lack of understanding of how content created by social media influencers stimulates the pre-purchase behaviour of followers. Based on the stimulus-organism-response framework, this paper aims to address this lacuna by examining how influencer-created content affects the willingness of followers to search for more information related to the posted product.

A cross-sectional research design uses a web-based questionnaire among Instagram users in Sri Lanka. Structural equation modelling with analysis of moment structures 27 and SPSS PROCESS macro are used for hypothesis testing.

Findings indicate that the commercial orientation of influencer-created content reduces follower trustworthiness towards them and the perceived credibility of the content. Mediation results demonstrate that the commercial orientation of influencer-created content negatively affects follower willingness to search for more information related to the posted product through trustworthiness and perceived credibility.

When adopting influencer marketing to stimulate information search behaviour, marketing practitioners should carefully examine the commercial orientation of the content of the messages posted by social media influencers to maintain high levels of follower trustworthiness towards the influencer and positive follower credibility perceptions of the message.

This paper adds to influencer marketing literature by demonstrating the underlying process through which the commercial orientation of influencer-created content impacts follower willingness to search for product-related information.

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.

Drawing on insights from social influence theory, the MAIN model of digital media affordances and the literature on the attention economy, this study aims to investigate how social media influencers’ community and content strategy contribute to follower engagement behavior in the presence of competition.

This study used a web-scraped data set of Instagram influencers. It measured community strategy using influencers’ number of followers, number of following and breadth of interest; content strategy using modality type and number of posts; competition using number of influencers operating in the same primary domain of interest; and follower engagement behavior using number of likes and comments. A negative binomial regression model was estimated to test the proposed hypotheses.

The findings reveal that elements of influencers’ community and content strategies, such as number of followers, modality type and number of posts, influence follower engagement behavior. Similarly, competition significantly influences follower engagement behavior both independently and by interacting with influencers’ community and content strategy.

The findings offer insight for brands to identify suitable influencers for partnerships. For instance, brands can judge influencers’ suitability for partnership based on how many followers they have, how many posts they share and how many competitors they have. Further, the findings offer insight for influencers on how they can drive follower engagement behavior by managing their social media community and content.

This study develops an integrated model of factors that determine follower engagement behavior for social media influencers. The findings emphasize influencers’ strategy as the primary driver of follower engagement behavior. Extant studies focus on followers’ motivation and perception to explain follower engagement behavior while the role of influencers’ strategy is underplayed.

As social media use rises, the impact of social media influencers on customer buying decisions increases, due to customers viewing influencers as ideal role models who they try to imitate. Nevertheless, this phenomenon is still under-researched. This study examined the impact of the imitation of influencers on customer buying intention toward endorsed products, which is mediated by social comparison, materialism and the fear of missing out (FOMO).

An online survey of 243 respondents was conducted via Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. This study employed structural equation modeling to test for direct and indirect effects among the constructs.

The results revealed that imitation of influencers has a significant impact on social comparison, materialism and FOMO, which affect buying intention toward endorsed products. The analysis results highlight the critical role of FOMO in explaining buying intention toward endorsed products in the context of social media influencers.

This study proposes a new theoretical model and empirically tests the power of influencers to affect consumer buying intention for endorsed products. It also explains the influencers' effects through FOMO, which have hardly been examined in earlier research although it is an important factor in understanding customer behavior. The implications are discussed for the academic literature and for online marketing strategies in marketing and advertising management.

The adoption of digitalization and sustainability is key phenomenon that has changed perception and behaviors of people recently. As there is a rising power of digital communication by social media platforms, there is higher interaction between people globally. In addition, consumers can influence each other to adopt new consumption pattern. At this point, this paper aims to examine the role of green women influencers on promoting sustainable consumption patterns via social media platforms.

This study employed qualitative research method. The study included four top-lists for green/sustainable social media influencers as a sample case. Then, the data were analyzed by descriptive content analysis. To determine the role of green women influencers in sustainable consumption, this study used classification and categorization technique through descriptive content analysis.

The study indicates that green women are seen as a primary social media influencer because of promoting sustainable consumption patterns in general. Especially, green women have more power to change consumption patterns via digital platforms. Green women social media influencers, who are micro-celebrities, share primary contents such as sustainable fashion, green foods, sustainable travel, sustainable lifestyle, conscious choices, green cosmetics and zero waste life to promote sustainable consumption patterns. Women social media influencers are much more effective than men influencers to transform society's consumption behaviors into sustainable consumption patterns.

The study provides some qualitative findings based on the selected four top-listed green social media influencers by different social media platforms. Future studies can find out different results based on different sample cases and employ quantitative research methodology.

The study suggests policymakers to cooperate with green women social media influencers to achieve sub-targets of 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Especially, it is suggested to cooperate with micro-celebrities or Internet celebrities to promote sustainable consumption patterns.

The study proves that women social media influencers have the essential role in promoting green/sustainable consumption patterns via digital platforms. In addition, green women influencers can guide their followers to adopt sustainable consumption patterns.

The emergence of social media has brought the influencer marketing landscape to an unprecedented level, where many ordinary people are turning into social media influencers. The study aims to construct and validate a model to yield strategic insights on the relevance of content curation, influencer–fans interaction and parasocial relationships development in fostering favorable endorsement outcomes (i.e. purchase intention).

The present study analyzes data from a survey of 411 consumers using partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to understand the net and combined effects of content attributes, interaction strategies and parasocial relationships on purchase intention.

PLS-SEM results reveal that content attributes (i.e. prestige and expertise) and interaction strategies (i.e. interactivity and self-disclosure) positively influence parasocial relationships, and in turn, lead to high purchase intention. Findings from fsQCA indicate six solutions with different combinations of content attributes, interaction strategies and parasocial relationships that sufficiently explain high purchase intention.

The present study demonstrates the roles of content attributes and interaction strategies in engendering parasocial relationship and the endorsement outcome (i.e. purchase intention) from both linear and non-linear (complexity) perspectives.