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Grounded in uses and gratifications (U&G) theory and relying on the congruence/incongruence approaches, the current research aims to contribute to the study of interactive marketing by measuring the effectiveness of social and personal sponsored post message appeals on consumer psychological and behavioral engagement. A conceptual framework is suggested.

Data were collected during a field experiment conducted on Facebook, consisting of two sponsored Facebook post campaigns, followed by a survey distributed to consumers who were exposed to the experiment.

A structural path model suggests that the congruence of the social message appeal of sponsored Facebook posts leads directly to psychological engagement that follows affective response. This path elevates an indirect effect toward behavioral engagement. Additionally, it was found that the incongruence of the personal message appeal of sponsored Facebook posts leads directly to behavioral engagement.

The novelty of the current research focuses on the unexplored subject of sponsored Facebook post message appeal effectiveness. Based on U&G theory applied to social media and the (in)congruence approaches, the study suggests a new dichotomy of message appeal for digital advertising, i.e. social vs. personal message strategies. Consumer engagement with the two appeals adds value to theory and practice by conceptualizing the effect of sponsored post content strategies on consumer engagement in Facebook while incorporating ad content with a hierarchical process.

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.

The purpose of this study is to examine how “homefluencers” sponsored posts on millennial consumers' purchase intention in the international marketing sphere can be impacted in the new normal by drawing on source credibility, parasocial interaction (PSI) and persuasion knowledge model (PKM) theory.

This research applies structural equation modeling (SEM) and mediation analysis as the data analysis method using non-probability purposive sampling of a total of 217 local millennial Instagram and Facebook users, who have followed homefluencers sponsored posts in fashion-beauty, yoga-fitness and food sectors.

Based on hypothesis testing, advertising recognition strongly mediates purchase intention with the indirect effects of expertise and trustworthiness than attractiveness.

This research extends the international marketing literature on source credibility, PSI, PKM and purchase intention theory in the new normal by proposing “Homefluencer's Endorsement Model for Purchase Intention” (HEMPI). Specifically, the mediating role of ad recognition of homefluencers sponsorship disclosure (#paidad, #sponsored), positively affects “change-of-persuasion meaning” on Instagram and Facebook, where research is rare.

This research provides valuable suggestions for global brand owners, consumers and authorities of Instagram and Facebook to consider post-COVID consumer behavior highlighting homefluencers sponsored collaboration.

The authors have contributed to the use of the source credibility model and PSI to identify the antecedents in determining how the homefluencer's effective sponsorship disclosure can positively activate ad recognition on millennial consumers' purchase intention in a crisis period from an international standpoint with the practical implications in post-COVID.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the source of brand-related user-generated content (UGC) (a close friend vs a celebrity) interacts with content sponsorship (organic UGC vs sponsored UGC) to influence consumer causal attributions, brand attitude, and intention to comply with the recommendation.

In all, 285 college students participated in a two (source: a close friend vs a celebrity) by two (content sponsorship: organic vs sponsored) between-subjects online experimental design.

Results showed that recommendation from a close friend generated more information-sharing attributions and less monetary-gain attributions than did recommendation from a celebrity when the brand-related UGC was organic. In contrast, source type did not influence causal attributions differently when the UGC was sponsored. Further, this study demonstrated that both information-sharing and monetary-gain attributions mediated the effects of source type and content sponsorship on brand attitude and intention to comply with the recommendation.

This study is one of the first to examine the effectiveness of celebrities as a source of brand-related UGC. Also, this research extends the existing knowledge about source effects by examining the relative effectiveness of two sources of product information, close friends and celebrities, who have both been found to be individually effective in the traditional marketing context. Additionally, the findings of this study that the relative effectiveness of source type depends on whether brand-related UGC is sponsored or not add a further insight into how source type influences the effectiveness of brand-related UGC.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a particular form of sponsorship disclaimer in sponsored content by social media influencers (SMIs), namely a sponsorship compensation justification disclosure. A sponsorship compensation justification disclosure explains why influencers and brands engage in sponsorship collaborations by providing a normative reason that justifies the existence and dissemination of sponsored content.

An experimental design was used to compare the effects of a sponsorship compensation justification disclosure made by either an influencer or the sponsoring brand, to a simple sponsorship disclosure and a no disclosure control post, on consumers’ responses to a product-review video by a YouTube influencer.

The paper offers empirical evidence that sponsorship compensation justification generates more positive consumer attitudes toward influencers receiving sponsorship compensation, and increases source and message credibility, compared to a simple sponsorship disclosure.

The hypotheses were tested on one YouTube video, comprising of a single product category, one SMI and one social media platform. Further studies might replicate the experiment on different product categories and on different social media platforms.

This empirical study can offer brand communication managers and influencers important information on how to communicate and design sponsorship disclosures to reach-desired responses from consumers.

The study is the first study to empirically demonstrate the effects of this particular type of sponsorship disclosure.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of social media strategies of sport organizations when an unexpected absence of relevant content occurs. The study explored the typologies of Instagram posts of NHL teams and measured engagement of social media content that was not planned in advance.

A mixed methods approach was utilized through a content analysis of 12 NHL team social media feeds. 502 (n = 502) posts were examined from the period of March 12 – May 26 during which the NHL season was suddenly paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Typologies of posts were identified through a qualitative coding process and ANOVA tests were conducted to examine the effectiveness of each typology in engaging consumers.

This study found that social media strategies of the sampled NHL teams is evidence of disinnovation with digital, as opposed to the previously conceptualized innovative properties that these activities bear. Therefore, in order to achieve the consumer engagement outcomes sought to build stronger relationships with fans and deliver on the expected leveraging capabilities for sponsors, sport marketers must reconsider their current, imbalanced approach and whether the more inherently interactive content should be balanced with entertaining content that requires organic consumer engagement.

This study offers a unique application of UGT, highlighting that social media in a sport context is not just about gratifying consumers, but preventing diminishing engagement and exploitation of users through overuse of sponsorship-laced content.

A critical step in influencer marketing is influencer outreach, where a brand reaches out to an influencer and forms a partnership. Yet little is known about how factors related to this process might influence the outcomes of sponsored posts. To address this gap, the authors investigated whether, how and when the order of influencers' product use and brand outreach (i.e. use/outreach order) affects post persuasiveness.

The authors conducted three experimental studies. Studies 1 and 2 examined the effect of disclosure type (use-first, outreach-later vs. outreach-first, use-later vs. no disclosure) on consumers' responses to the post. Study 3 investigated the moderating effects of compensation disclosure type.

The results revealed that when the influencer used the product before (vs. after) being contacted by the brand, consumers had more favorable attitudes about the product and greater purchase intention upon reading the sponsored posts; perceived information diagnosticity mediated this effect. However, this tendency was mitigated if the influencer disclosed the specific monetary payment from the brand.

This research advances understanding of sponsorship disclosure and provides a way to manage its impact on message persuasiveness.

This study identifies a new type of advertising, sponsored ad forwarding, in microblog contexts. It tests the effectiveness of designs of a message with an ad with regard to receivers who are purely online friends or offline friends.

In the main experiment, a three-by-two experimental design was employed. By random assignment, message senders forwarded an ad with either an other-oriented or a self-oriented message to a group of offline friends or purely online friends. In the control group, there was no message accompanying the ad. The data of 218 effective sender-receiver dyads were collected and compared.

The results show that a message with an other-oriented appeal is more effective than one with a self-oriented appeal for dyads with an offline relationship, and a message with a self-oriented appeal is more effective than one with an other-oriented appeal for dyads with a purely online relationship. Overall, the use of appeals significantly boosts ad effectiveness.

This study identifies a new type of marketing practice in social media, namely sponsored ad forwarding. It also proposes appeal orientation as a novel type of message content design. It shows how to apply the right appeal orientation to the right receiver groups, that is, offline or purely online friends.

This study aims to empirically test how sponsored video customization (i.e. the degree to which a sponsored video is customized for a sponsoring brand) affects video shares differently depending on influencer characteristics (i.e. mega influencer and expert influencer) and brand characteristics (i.e. brand establishment and product involvement).

This study uses a unique real-world data set that combines coded variables (e.g. customization) and objective video performance (e.g. sharing) of 365 sponsored videos to test the hypotheses. A negative binomial model is used to analyze the data set.

This study finds that the effect of video customization on video shares varies across contexts. Video customization positively affects shares if they are made for well-established brands and high-involvement products but negatively influences shares if they are produced by mega and expert influencers.

This study extends the influencer marketing literature by focusing on a new media modality – sponsored video. Drawing on the multiple inference model and the persuasion knowledge theory, this study teases out different conditions under which video customization is more or less likely to foster audience engagement, which both influencers and brands care about. The chosen research setting may limit the generalizability of the findings of this study.

The findings suggest that mega and expert influencers need to consider if their endorsement would backfire on a highly customized video. Brands that aim to engage customers with highly-customized videos should gauge their decision by taking into consideration their years of establishment and product involvement. For video-sharing platforms, especially those that are planning to expand their businesses to include “matching-making services” for brands and influencers, the findings provide theory-based guidance on optimizing such matches.

This paper fulfills an urgent research need to study how brands and influencers should produce sponsored videos to achieve optimal outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to thematically categorise sports sponsorship-linked Twitter content and, by drawing on uses & gratifications theory, to map the extent to which these categories cohere with known user motivations for consuming social media.

Qualitative content analysis of a sample of 1,502 tweets by London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games sponsors posted between January 2011 and September 2012 was used to develop the typology of sponsorship-linked Twitter content.

From the data, a typology is developed, comprising 17 categories grouped under four main types: informing, entertaining, rewarding and interacting. The majority of sponsor tweets (68 per cent) fell into the informing type, with 17 per cent categorised as interacting. While few (2 per cent) tweets were categorised as entertaining, the link to the sponsored event implies a degree of entertaining content even in ostensibly informative, rewarding or interactional sponsorship-linked tweets. Therefore, the typology categories highlight Twitter content produced by sponsors which engages customers, fostering dialogue alongside providing informative and entertaining content.

The typology can inform practitioners’ future sports sponsorship activation planning decisions and can also aid rights holders in tailoring appropriate sponsorship opportunities to potential sponsors, based on an appreciation of the nature of content sought by brand followers.

The typology extends existing understanding of the use of social media within sponsorship activation campaigns by thematically categorising content and mapping this against known user motivations for consuming brand-related social media content.