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Influencer marketing in the traditional sense is changing and taking on a new and creative form. Previously, classic influencers were real, human people, now there is a rise in fake, artificial influencers who are opening up innovative means for brand–influencer collaborations over a variety of platforms. Computer-generated imagery influencers (CGIIs) are blurring the lines between the concept of real and fake people and with that numerous brands have begun creatively integrating them into both their marketing strategies and campaigns. This chapter contributes to the largely unexplored phenomena of CGIIs with a focus on the social media platform Instagram. Following a qualitative approach, the research provides a first detailed classification of CGIIs according to the categories demographics, positioning, behaviour and brand collaborations, and followers. As a frame of analysis, the current top 20 CGIIs (those with the most followers on Instagram) were investigated according to the top rankings outlined by HypeAuditor in 2019. The research resulted in the findings that CGIIs from their profile tend to be mostly female, of Asian origin, aged between 18 and 25 years old, and their content is most predominantly related to lifestyle and fashion. Also discussed in this chapter are six case studies evaluating creative brand collaborations with CGIIs in order to gain insights, as well as a first guideline to best practices. These collaborations can be seen across a spectrum of multiple different industries, such as luxury, home and interior, service, people, technology, and fashion.

This study aims to investigate the relationships between sponsorship disclosure, influencer type and audience value co-creation behaviour in influencer marketing.

This study explores audience value co-creation behaviour in influencer marketing through sponsorship disclosure and influencer type using a 3 (sponsorship disclosure: explicit vs implicit vs no disclosure) × 3 (influencer type: micro vs meso vs macro) factorial between-subjects design.

This study finds that the influence of explicit disclosure on audience value co-creation behaviour (participation behaviour and citizenship behaviour) is greater than when that information is either implied or not disclosed. Likewise, the influence of macro-influencers on audience participation behaviour is higher than that of micro-influencers and meso-influencers. The findings also show that the interaction effect between influencer type and sponsorship disclosure significantly impacts audience participation behaviour.

This study introduces value co-creation behaviour into influencer marketing and expands research on sponsorship disclosure and influencer type. The study further enriches the value co-creation behaviour antecedent research in influencer marketing.

Since influencer marketing becomes more sophisticated, it is difficult for brands to manage the strategy and process of this marketing practice. With a practical focus, this study aims at helping marketers cope with the challenge by developing conceptual typologies for influencers and followers and suggesting marketing implications for each type of influencer and follower.

This study subscribes to the perspectives of virtual community and social information processing to develop conceptual typologies for influencers and followers based on their essential characteristics.

Based on levels of expertise and interactivity, influencers can be categorized as broadcasters, leaders, friends and companions. Each type has advantages in certain branding objectives (e.g. increasing awareness, inducing judgments and feelings, building brand and user imagery, encouraging pro-brand behaviors and managing relationships) and is associated with certain marketing limitations (e.g. reach, domain breadth, informational support, brand congruence and relationship management). Based on levels of behavioral engagement and the point of attachment, followers are categorized into spectators, participants, admirers and advocators, with specific marketing communication strategies most effective for each type (e.g. strategies of content, narratives, engagement and co-branding).

The study translates the idea of influencer community into a practically useful framework for practitioners to best leverage influencer marketing and an innovative perspective for scholars to further investigate the phenomenon.

This paper aims to review the literature on stakeholder identification and classification related to sustainability marketing from 1998 to 2012 and provides a generalized approach to stakeholder identification and classification in the field of sustainability marketing.

Beginning with brief introductions of the key concepts, the research discusses landmark studies on the subject in detail. The review process then begins by identifying and selecting relevant research papers from various online databases. Finally, 60 research papers are found suitable for the review and are examined to theoretically analyze the stakeholder identification and classification schemes used in sustainability marketing literature.

This study identifies trends of growth in stakeholder identification and classification literature. In addition, there are two major findings. First, stakeholder identification can be done with the help of previous studies, with support from managers or via a combination of both. Second, future research can adopt generic stakeholder classification schemes or relative classification schemes based on dimensions of sustainability to classify stakeholders in relation to sustainability marketing. In relative stakeholder classification, regulatory stakeholders may be considered separately.

While the literature review may be incomplete, as it uses only a title-based advanced search, researchers and practitioners can still benefit from this simplified approach to manage stakeholders.

The study introduces a generalized approach to stakeholder identification and classification related to sustainability marketing and provides a bibliography from 1998 to 2012 that can be used by academics and managers.

This study aims to provide a holistic review of social media influencers (SMIs) research based on a unique approach of bibliometric analysis and content analysis between 2011 and 2020. The review examines the main influential aspects, themes and research streams to identify research directions for the future.

The sample selection and data collection were done from the Scopus database. The sample dataset was refined based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria to determine the final dataset of 183 articles. The dataset was exported in the BibTeX format and then imported into the BiblioShiny app for bibliometric analysis. The content analysis was done following the theory-context-methodology framework.

The several findings of this study include (1) Co-word analysis of most used keywords; (2) Longitudinal thematic evolution; (3) The focus of the research papers as per the theory-context-methodology review protocol are persuasion knowledge model, fashion and beauty industries, Instagram and content analysis, respectively; and (4) The network analysis of the research studies is known as the co-citation analysis and depicts the intellectual structure in the domain. This analysis resulted in four clusters of the research streams from the literature and two emergent themes (Chen et al., 2010)

In general, the previous reviews in the area are either domain, method or theory-based. Thus, this study aims to complement and extend the existing literature by presenting the overall picture of the SMI research with the help of a unique combined approach and further highlighting the trends and future research directions based on the findings of this study.

The continued evolution of influencer marketing has created a need to better understand influencer marketing effectiveness. With brands increasingly partnering with influencers, research is yet to provide an integrated perspective examining the critical role of both parties. This study aims to draw on the source credibility model and signaling theory to explain the mechanisms that matter in influencer marketing effectiveness.

The proposed model of influencer marketing effectiveness is analyzed using partial least squares with data from 281 followers of social media influencers.

The authors establish influencer characteristics of popularity and attractiveness as heuristic cues that inform judgments of influencer efficacy. Further, category involvement and altruistic motives for collaboration are shown to moderate followers’ reliance on these heuristic cues. Then, a sequential mediating effect demonstrates the critical roles of the influencer and partner brand in three desired outcomes: enhanced perception of brand authenticity, enhanced brand engagement and positive attitudes toward influencer posts.

Future research should consider other heuristic cues that could inform influencer efficacy judgments and switch the focus toward the partner brand’s impact on such judgments.

A step-by-step visual framework is presented to help marketers and influencers translate these findings into key responsibilities for developing more effective and collaborative partnerships.

Besides presenting an integrated perspective, signaling theory provides an original lens for explaining influencer marketing effectiveness, addressing the need to expand the theoretical boundaries of influencer marketing research. 

The aim of this chapter is to shed light on a growing phenomenon in communication practice: employees speaking voluntarily for, about or on behalf of their organization, hereafter labelled as corporate ambassadors. The goal of this qualitative study is to analyze the role of corporate ambassadors within an organization and explore the perceived benefits and risks from three perspectives: the communication department, other departments such as marketing or human resources, and corporate ambassadors themselves. The research is based on an interdisciplinary literature review and 25 qualitative in-depth interviews with employees in one large, internationally operating German organization. By combining the theoretical and empirical insights, a conceptual framework that depicts the benefits (e.g., joy, increased trust, positive impact on reputation) and risks (e.g., work stress, lack of integration, loss of quality) of integrating corporate ambassadors into the overall communication of the organization was developed. In addition, this chapter suggests two typologies that help to distinguish between different roles of communication professionals and of corporate ambassadors. The contribution of this study is to lay a groundwork for further discussions about corporate ambassadors in the field of corporate communications. The chapter outlines directions for future research and implications for practice on how the framework can be applied in organizations.

The integration of social media and e-commerce has resulted in a rising phenomenon among individual content providers (ICPs), who used to offer free content, to provide consumers with paid content, such as online courses, Q&As or consultations. Despite the prevalence of ICPs’ content monetization, empirical research has rarely studied its underlying mechanism. This paper examines how the characteristics of free content contributed by ICPs on social media platforms influence their paid content sales, focusing on the perspective of human brand.

The empirical setting is an online knowledge exchange platform, where users are allowed to provide free content (e.g. answers) on the social media platform and launch paid content (e.g. lectures) on the e-commerce platform. A machine learning technique is employed to construct measures for the characteristics of free content, and fixed-effects estimation is presented to confirm which factors have a significant influence on the sales of paid content.

The empirical results show that the quality, diversity and expertness of free content have a significant positive impact on the sales of the ICP-paid content, with the brand popularity of ICP playing a mediating role.

This study is the first attempt to demystify the relationship between content contribution and ICPs’ content monetization from the perspective of human brand. The findings validate the effectiveness of the “Selling by Contribution” strategy and provide valuable insights for ICPs and social media platforms.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how media plays a role in the issue of counterfeit vaccines. Specifically, to describe how the government communicators manage issues of counterfeit vaccines in Indonesia. Even though a public health emergency situation is very hard to predict, monitoring issues in media is crucial before communicating with the public. This will help improve public trust on the importance of vaccines.

The study collected data from June until December 2016. The research method employed quantitative content analysis of data obtained from media monitoring and interviews.

The results show that the issue of fake vaccines received great attention from the media with a total of 1,724 news headlines on the topic. The government communicators were responsive in handling this issue by providing sources of information for key influencers when it arose. Since the majority of media sentiment was positive, the research also proposes a model for the future managing of issues on counterfeit vaccines.

Limited to managing issues on media about counterfeit vaccines and how government communicators and stakeholders communicated during the crisis. It is suggested that future research should focus on the emotional perspective of parents whose children were affected by counterfeit vaccines.

This research is worthwhile for Public Relations Practitioners in government health institutions, such as the Ministry of Health, the National Agency for Food and Drugs Control and PR practitioners in Hospitals and Pharmacies to overcome another communication crisis in a public health emergency.

To increase awareness in Indonesia about the importance of vaccines and to educate the public about using government vaccines without fear.

This research is new as the topic about counterfeit vaccines has not been brought up before. This has the potential to have a considerable impact to local communities, as well as a wider impact on global health systems.

This research focuses on the role of product acquisition cues in positive word-of-mouth (PWOM) content on social media, comparing the characteristics of different sources of product acquisition (purchased vs. gifted) and exploring whether and how they affect consumers' reliance on word-of-mouth (WOM).

The research model was developed based on the mental imagery theory. Two offline experiments and two online experiments were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that, compared to the purchased source, the gifted source evokes more positive mental imagery and greater emotional attachment to the product, resulting in greater consumer reliance on PWOM. In addition, the effect of the source of product acquisition on reliance on PWOM was stronger for experiential (vs. material) products and for consumers with higher interdependent (vs. independent) self-construal.

This research highlights the role of product acquisition cues in PWOM in influencing consumers' evaluation of WOM, while also revealing the processes inherent in how consumers process information through mental imagery. The findings provide a more comprehensive understanding of the antecedents of reliance on WOM and offer new insights and recommendations for management practitioners.