Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Prior research has shown that influencer marketing is an integral part of the public relations and marketing strategy for return on investment (ROI) of most firms (Ferguson 2008). Social Media Influencers (SMI) build relationships and trust with their audiences over time (Freburg, Graham, McGaughey, & Freburg 2011). Marketing research has found that dispositional attributions consumers make about how much an endorser likes, uses, and truly values the endorsed product are essential to understanding endorser influence (Kapitan & Silvera 2016). Building on this research, we propose that influencer fit (Veiman, Cauberghe & Hudders 2017), transparency (Evans, Phua, Lim & Jun 2017), and evidence of relationship over time will lead to greater consumer brand trust and intent to purchase. The authors compare three international key influencers on YouTube and Instagram and test the influencer’s authenticity, audience trust, and consumer intent to purchase. Additionally, we created an experiment where we manipulate influencer fit, transparency, and evidence of relationship over time for eight fake influencers to isolate the effects of each of the variables on brand liking, brand trust, purchase intentions, intent to visit brand’s website, and intent to follow brand on social media.