• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.141-152
• /
• 2022

Purpose - This study attempts to explore the factors that affect the consumer's response to the influencer's "backdoor advertisement" which has been a social media controversy recently. Accordingly, this study focuses on the importance of the information source's characteristics in influencer marketing, and demonstrates the impact of influencer credibility, attractiveness, and expertise on consumer responses after the influencer's sponsorship controversy. Design/methodology/approach - To this end, a study was conducted on adults who subscribed to one or more channels of influencers, and a virtual newspaper article was used in the survey. 196 sample data were collected and SPSS PROCESS Macro was used for data analysis. Findings - As a result, there was a negative impact on the credibility of the influencer which carried over to a negative reception of their shared content, while the attractiveness of the influencer had a positive impact on the reception of their shared content, even after the controversy over the influencer's backdoor advertisement. Research implications or Originality - This study contributes to the expansion of research on influencer marketing. Also, it provides insight into understanding and interpreting the phenomenon of influencers' backdoor advertisements and consumer reactions.

• Journal of Fashion Business
• /
• v.25 no.5
• /
• pp.149-162
• /
• 2021

Nowadays, the cosmetic and fashion industries are paying attention to influencer marketing on Instagram. In this study, we determined whether electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) communications were affected by the following parameters: the influencer's information source, message sidedness, and consumer's regulatory focus. The experimental design of this study is a three-way mixed ANOVA, which comprises of 2 (influencer information source: expert vs general consumer) × 2 (message sidedness: two-sided message vs one-sided message) × 2 (consumer regulatory focus: promotion focus vs prevention focus) structure. The data for this research study was obtained by distributing a questionnaire to 410 subjects. The participants were aged between 20 and 39 years and lived in Seoul and Gyeonggi areas. In total, the data of 396 subjects was analyzed with the help of SPSS 25.0 statistical program: frequency analysis, reliability analysis, t-test, three-way ANOVA, and simple main effect analysis were performed. The analysis results were as follows: First, influencer information sources and consumer regulatory focus exhibited a significant interaction with consumers' e-WOM intentions. Second, message sidedness and consumer's regulatory focus exhibited a significant interaction with e-WOM intentions. Third, influencer information source and message sidedness exhibited a significant interaction with consumers' e-WOM intentions. Based on these findings, the type of influencer's information source and the consumer's regulatory focus was taken into consideration while marketing cosmetics on Instagram. Moreover, influencer marketing strategies must be used to evaluate message sidedness. This would help us gauge the consumer's attitude towards advertisements.

• Journal of Advanced Technology Convergence
• /
• v.1 no.2
• /
• pp.27-35
• /
• 2022

We investigated the role of product-influencer congruence between social distance, perceived authenticity and attitude toward ads. In particular, we focused on the mediating effect of perceived authenticity on the relationship between social distance and attitude toward ads. Also, we interested in the conditional indirect effect of product-influencer congruence on the mediation process. For our purposes, data were collected from a convenience sample of 340 undergraduate students at a large university in South Korea. Our results indicated that social distance is directly related to the perceived authenticity and, consequently, affects attitude toward ads. Also, an indirect effect of the perceived authenticity was significant on the low level of product-influencer congruence and not in the high level. Our findings suggest that marketing managers should consider the social media influencer's authenticity and congruence between the product and the influencer.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
• /
• v.28 no.6
• /
• pp.875-889
• /
• 2020

This study examined the effect of Instagram usage time (short, long) and spending on fashion products (light, heavy) on product attitude and purchase intention of products promoted by an influencer. The moderating effect of influencer type (mega, macro, micro) was also investigated. A total of 515 males and females in their 20s participated in an online survey. Descriptive statistics were analyzed and exploratory factor analysis and two-way ANOVA were conducted. Research findings were as follows. First, the usage time, both short and long, had a positive effect on product attitude. Also, the interactive effects of usage time and influencer type on product attitude were found. Consumers with short Instagram usage time displayed the highest attitude toward products promoted by a macro-influencer whereas consumers with long Instagram usage time displayed the highest attitude toward products promoted by a micro-influencer. Second, usage time and influencer type did not show interactive effects on purchase intention. Third, both categoriacl variables of users' spending on fashion products had a positive effect on product attitude. Fourth, the interaction effects of spending on fashion products and influencer types on purchase intention were found. The group of light buyers showed the highest purchase intention on products promoted by the macro-influencer while the group of heavy buyers showed the highest purchase intention of products promoted by the micro-influencer. Based on the results, implications were suggested.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
• /
• v.45 no.1
• /
• pp.56-72
• /
• 2021

This study examines the effect of influencer characteristics (attractiveness, reliability, expertise, and intimacy) and consumer need satisfaction (autonomy, relatedness, and competence) on attachment to influencer, content flow, and purchase intention. The moderating effect of gender was also investigated. Survey data collected from 515 male and female Instagram users were submitted for analysis. The research findings are as follows. First, the reliability and intimacy of influencers had a positive effect on attachment to influencers whereas attractiveness and intimacy had positive effects on content flow. Second, the relatedness and competence that consumers felt during the use of influencer content had a positive effect on attachment to influencers whereas the autonomy had a positive effect on content flow. Third, the attachment to influencers increased the intention to purchase products introduced by influencers via content flow. Fourth, there were some gender differences in the relationships of attachment to influencer, content flow, and purchase intention. Implications were suggested based on the results.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.193-204
• /
• 2023

In recent years, the concept of influencer marketing has experienced rapid growth in both academia and industry, leading to its emergence as a crucial consideration in the marketing strategies of many businesses. Despite the significance and expansion of the influencer market, however, research on the topic has not kept pace with its growth. Thus, this study seeks to address this gap by empirically analyzing the impact of influencer characteristics on consumer behavior through the coexistence of buyers and providing an empirical contribution to expand the relevant literature. To accomplish this, a survey was conducted with a sample of 400 individuals who had purchased a product through an influencer, and 384 responses were ultimately utilized in the analysis. The results revealed that the attractiveness and empathy of influencers had a positive impact on satisfaction among coexisting buyers, while also having a negative impact on dissatisfaction. In contrast, expertise had no impact on satisfaction, but a positive impact on dissatisfaction. Moreover, satisfaction was found to have a positive impact on brand image and recommendation intention, whereas dissatisfaction had a negative impact on both. Overall, this study adds to the growing body of literature on influencer marketing by providing empirical evidence of the impact of influencer characteristics on consumer behavior, specifically through the lens of coexistence with buyers. These findings hold important implications for businesses looking to develop effective influencer marketing strategies that can enhance their brand image and recommendation intention among consumers.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.19 no.11
• /
• pp.471-483
• /
• 2021

The purpose of this study is to find out audience' response of virtual influencer at the starting line of virtual influencer marketing. Therefore, posts, comments, number of likes, and video reviews were collected from Instagram of virtual influencers active in Korea. Python 3.7 and Textom were used for data collection and analysis. Sentimental analysis showed that the rate of positivity was higher than the rate of negativity and neutrality. The appearance of virtual influencer was found to be a major factor in both positive and negative. Consumers' interest in virtual influencer could be inferred from the neutral sensibility. This study is meaningful in that it presented data to help establish strategies for virtual influencer marketing by examining consumer reactions to virtual influencer and identifying factors of positive and negative emotions toward virtual influencer.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.23 no.11
• /
• pp.1321-1329
• /
• 2019

With the development of social information networks, the marketing methods are also changing in various ways. Unlike successful marketing methods based on existing celebrities and financial support, Influencer-based marketing is a big trend and very famous. In this paper, we first extract influencer features from more than 54 YouTube channels using the multi-dimensional qualitative analysis based on the meta information and comment data analysis of YouTube, model representative themes to maximize a personalized video satisfaction. Plus, the purpose of this study is to provide supplementary means for the successful promotion and marketing by creating and distributing videos of new items by referring to the existing Influencer features. For that we assume all comments of various videos for each channel as each document, TF-IDF (Term Frequency and Inverse Document Frequency) and LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) algorithms are applied to maximize performance of the proposed scheme. Based on the performance evaluation, we proved the proposed scheme is better than other schemes.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.245-251
• /
• 2022

This study attempted to examine the effect of virtual influencer, which is highly interested in consumers, and has recently been increasing the frequency of use in corporate marketing activities. In particular, the purpose is to examine the effect of the attributes of virtual influencer on consumers as an information source for a product or brand. To this end, the effect of perceived attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise of virtual influencer on SNS usage intention and imitation intention consumers was examined. As a result of the study, it was found that attractiveness among the attributes of virtual influencer had a positive effect on the usage intention, and attractiveness and trustworthiness had a positive effect on imitation intention. In addition, it was found that imitation intention had a positive effect on usage intention. In other words, the perceived attractiveness of virtual influencer by consumers through SNS is the most important attribute. These findings imply that when virtual influencer is used in marketing, companies must perceive the attractiveness of virtual influencer through content posted on SNS as well as their attributes as information sources. We expect the results of this study to provide major implications for marketing activities such as companies and public institutions that consider using virtual influencer.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
• /
• v.1 no.3
• /
• pp.31-44
• /
• 2021

The emergence of the digital economy and easy accessibility to Web 2.0 tools has seen an expansion of the influencer ecosystem within the travel and tourism industry. Founded on the principles of reference groups and peer reference there is a growing trend amongst industry practitioners who are now opting to move away from many of the traditional approaches used to market their products and services and are instead taking advantage of the concept of e-word-of-mouth (eWOM). Whilst there is a growing body of academic literature addressing the notion of influencer marketing, there is little understanding of influencer marketers themselves. Consequentially, this study addresses this gap in the literature through the quantitative examination of those who promote products, services, or companies by distributing eWOM through their online digital channels and presence; otherwise known as travel influencers. A quantitative research approach involving an online survey yielded 255 responses from travel influencers. The research findings indicate that those who work in this field prefer not to be awarded the label "travel influencer," focusing instead on their specific method of influencing, such as blogging and vlogging or sharing Instagram updates. The research also demonstrates how the new influencers have a strong role in generating travel urge and desire. The research contributes to the wider body of academic literature and travel industry practitioners by establishing the general profile of influencers and their increasingly specialized role in tourism and hospitality marketing.