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

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.35-51
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• 2021

Purpose: As the digital environment has expanded opportunity for consumers to acquire information from social media and social network services(SNS), With this environment, influencer has not only promoted products, but also participated in distribution and influencing on their followers. Despite the increasing interest in influencers, there has not been enough research on the structure of fashion influencer, relationship of immersion and purchase intention. This study examined the effects of fashion influencers' characteristics to the immersion of relationship with followers and purchase intention. Research design, data and methodology: For data collection, a pilot survey and the final survey were conducted. The pilot survey data was conducted to 50 female SNS users following fashion influencers. Based on the pilot tests, questionnaire was revised and the final survey was conducted online from august 22 to September 1, 2019 to female SNS users who have followed fashion influencer. A total of 408 data were collected, and exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and structural equational modeling techniques were employed for the data analyses using AMOS 26.0 and SPSS 26.0. Results: First, five factors were extracted for the fashion influencers' characteristics: interactivity, similarity, reliability, expertise and attractiveness. Second, fashion influences' reliability, expertise, similarity, interactivity have a positive (+) effects on relationship immersion; however, attractiveness has no effect on relationship immersion with followers and fashion influencer. It was also determined that relationship immersion had positive (+) influences on purchase intention. The relationship immersion has been found to have a partially mediated effect and similarity has complete mediated effects between interactivity, reliability, and expertise of fashion influencers and purchasing intentions. In terms of fashion opinion leadership, it was found to have a significant influence on purchase intention only for low fashion leadership groups. Conclusions: The present study found the structural relationships among the influencer characteristics, relationship immersion and purchase intentions to provide framework for succeeding research. This research revealed academic association of intention of purchasing through use of fashion social media and fashion influencer marketing. The results also showed the practical implications that fashion influencers' expertise and reliability perceived by their followers are key determinants to success in influencer marketing.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.140-151
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• 2024

This study explores an innovative advertising technique on Bilibili, where product links are embedded as bullet comments visible only to mobile app users. The research involved 140 participants, divided equally between followers and non-followers of a popular influencer, 'Gourmet WanggangR.' These groups were further split, with half viewing a video containing the product link on the app and the other half via PC. The study revealed that influencer attachment significantly increased viewer immersion (transportation) and positively influenced attitudes towards the content, which in turn elevated purchase intentions. Importantly, the influencer's followers showed a stronger attachment and more favorable attitudes towards the content, alongside a heightened likelihood to purchase the advertised product. The presence of the product link further accentuated these effects among the influencer's followers. Conversely, in the absence of the link, the correlation between influencer attachment and content attitude was less pronounced. These findings highlight the effectiveness of embedding product links in video content as a marketing strategy, particularly when targeting an influencer's followers through mobile platforms.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.1-20
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• 2021

Purpose Nowadays, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is rapidly growing in popularity and increasingly appearing in marketing. Not even in TV commercial advertisement, ASMR also fast growing in one-person media communication, many brands and social media influencers used ASMR for their marketing contents. The purpose of this study is to measure consumers' perceptions about the products in ASMR marketing content and compare the differences in communication effect of ASMR content creator between product review and how-to in the same Macro tier influencer - the YouTuber that has 10,000-100,000 subscribers. Design/methodology/approach The research methods selected ASMRtist that do product review content and how-to content, Text comments data was collected from 200 videos of tech-device review videos and beauty-fashion videos. A total of 52,833 text comments were analyzed by applying the LDA topic modeling algorithm and social network analysis. Findings Through the result, we can know that ASMR is good at taking attention of viewers with ASMR triggers. In the Tech device reviews field, ASMR viewers also focus on the product like product's performance and purchase. However, there are many topics related to reaction of ASMR sound, trigger, relaxation. In the Beauty-fashion field, viewers' topics mainly focus on the reaction of the ASMR trigger, response to ASMRtist and other topics are talking about makeup - fashion, product, purchase. From LDA result, many ASMR viewers comment that they feel more comfortable when watching the marketing content that uses ASMR. This result has shown that ASMR marketing contents have a good performance in terms of user watching experience, so applying ASMR can take more consumer intention. And the result of social network analysis showed that product review ASMRtist have a higher communication effectiveness than how-to ASMRtist in the same tier. As an influencer marketing strategy, this study provides information to establish an efficient advertising strategy by using influencers that create ASMR content.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.574-585
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• 2019

The acceleration of digital transformation (DX) has resulted in SNS influencer marketing trends becoming the mainstream of the new market. SNS influencers act as early adopters in the process of new products being accepted. Chinese consumers are most affected by Hallyu, which increases interest in K-beauty products. This study analyzes how K-beauty SNS influencers are related to Chinese consumers. A survey was conducted among Chinese millennial consumers after watching videos provided by K-beauty SNS influencer; subsequently, 456 responses were used for data analysis. As a result, the analysis based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) distinguishes the central route and the peripheral route in the process of Chinese consumers accepting new SNS products. The study findings suggested that information quality, credibility, accuracy, and usefulness had significant effects on acceptance intention for new products among central route factors, and similarity, trustworthiness, pleasure, expertise, and attractiveness also had significant effects on the acceptance intention of new product among peripheral route factors. It was found that variables of the central route, rather than those of peripheral route, had stronger effects on the acceptance intention for new products. Consequently, the central route of K-beauty SNS influencer is more important to Chinese consumers' acceptance of new products. It is expected that this study will offer beauty influencer marketing-based cosmetics brands efficient consumer management suggestions.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.163-188
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• 2023

Purpose The study examines the impact of the level of anthropomorphism (both in appearance and behavior) of virtual humans on user liking. It investigates whether this relationship is mediated by social comparison experiences, with the moderated mediation effect of users' desire for self-improvement. Design/methodology/approach A between-groups experimental design was employed to examine the impact of different levels of appearance(low/mid/high) and behavior(low/high) anthropomorphism on user liking of virtual humans. The experiment was conducted in an online environment, and participants were randomly exposed to one of six stimuli, which were Instagram-like posts. Findings The results indicate that as virtual humans become more anthropomorphic, they have a positive impact on user liking. However, once the level of anthropomorphism in appearance reaches a certain point (mid vs high), there is no significant difference in user liking. Users who perceive virtual humans as highly anthropomorphic tend to engage in more social comparison experiences, which positively affects their liking for these virtual humans. Conversely, individuals with a high desire for self-improvement found that the positive effect of appearance anthropomorphism on liking through social comparison experiences was reduced. The study extends the application of social comparison theory by examining its impact on influencer marketing with virtual beings. It provides valuable insights for the formulation of influencer marketing strategies using virtual humans.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.557-567
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• 2023

The rapidly evolving social platform marketing landscape has led businesses to increasingly rely on social platform influencers for brand and service promotion. Despite growing interest in these influencers, there remains a dearth of empirical research examining the impact of their characteristics on consumer attachment and brand loyalty. This study, therefore, investigates the relationships between social platform influencer characteristics, consumer attachment, and brand loyalty. An online survey targeting Chinese consumers was conducted, and a total of 360 responses were analyzed using SPSS and AMOS software. The findings reveal that among the various social platform influencer characteristics, reliability, professionalism, and intimacy significantly influence consumer attachment. Furthermore, it was confirmed that higher attachment to a social platform influencer leads to increased brand loyalty.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.39-50
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• 2022

Live streaming has become one of the most important communication tools for influencers to synchronously interact with viewers. It is critical to understand the effect of the reciprocal and synchronously interactive relations built between influencers and viewers, so-called trans-parasocial relations, in the context of live streaming. In this study, we investigate how trans-parasocial relations impact viewers' stickiness and purchase intention on live streaming platforms. Furthermore, we investigate fanship as a mediating factor in the relationship between trans-parasocial relations and viewers' behaviors. Overall, the results reveal significant direct and indirect effects of trans-parasocial relations on viewers' stickiness and purchase intention. Higher trans-parasocial relations further lead to stronger viewers' fanship toward influencers and increases their willingness to stay longer or make purchases on live streaming platforms. These findings further the understanding of influencer-viewer relations and viewers' behavior on live streaming platforms and provide valuable insights into influencer marketing and live streaming.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.12 no.11
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• pp.86-94
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• 2023

In recent years, advertisements and brand promotions using virtual influencer have been actively conducted, and this study focused on the characteristics of virtual influencer, including Attractiveness, to examine the Attractiveness of virtual influencer through previous studies and to test the hypothesis that Attractiveness has an effect on Brand attitude and Advertising attitude when mediated by Immersion. For this purpose, data were collected from university students who experienced marketing contents using virtual influencer, and Process macro was conducted to analyse the mediating effect. The results showed that virtual influencer Attractiveness partially mediated the relationship between Brand attitude and Advertising attitude. These results suggest that virtual influencer Attractiveness not only affects Brand attitude and Advertising attitude, but also positively increases consumer attitude when mediated by Immersion. This study has both academic and practical implications by examining the mediating effect of Immersion on the effect of virtual influencer Attractiveness on consumer attitudes.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.17-32
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• 2019

This study examines the effects of SNS fashion influencer's authenticity on the followers' relationship maintenance intention and product purchase intention through the mediating role of fanship. In addition, influencer's attractiveness is proposed as a moderator affecting the authenticity on fanship; in addition, authenticity is operationalized as honesty and expertise. A written survey is developed for 181 female Instagram users. The analyses of the data yields the following findings. First, honesty has a positive effect on fanship, relationship maintenance intention and purchase intention, while expertise affects fanship and relationship maintenance intention, but does not have a significant effect on purchase intention. Second, honesty and expertise have a positive effect on follower behavior intention through the partial mediation of fanship. Third, social attractiveness and physical attractiveness have a significant effect on fanship. However, all interaction effects between authenticity and attractiveness are not significant. Unlike authenticity, attractiveness has no direct effect on follower behavior intention. This study verifies the critical role of authenticity for an influencer in the context of SNS marketing and commerce, as this factor leads to followers behavioral intention as well as fanship in both direct and mediated paths.