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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Sponsorship disclosure of influencers - a curse or a blessing?
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Andrea Giuffredi-Kähr
  • Alisa Petrova
  • Lucia Malär
Contributors
  • Journal of Interactive Marketing
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Journal of Interactive Marketing
Publisher Sage Publications
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 1094-9968
Volume 57
Number 1
Page Range 18 - 34
Date 2022
Abstract Text Influencer marketing has become increasingly important in the field of marketing communication as an effective way to reach the appropriate target group. Using their own social media channels, influencers often give the impression that they have a personal rather than a commercial relationship with the brand and the products they promote. Therefore, when influencers post sponsored content, consumers often experience difficulty making accurate distinctions as to whether the influencer is offering a personal recommendation or doing a promotion. Given this issue, we examine to what extent sponsored posts of different influencer types affect consumers’ evaluations of the sponsoring brand and the influencer as well as what role the sponsorship disclosure plays therein. Across four experimental studies, we demonstrate that sponsored posts of mega influencers increase consumers’ persuasion knowledge relative to the posts of nano influencers, which decreases the trustworthiness of those posts and in turn negatively impact both brand and influencer evaluations. Interestingly, our results reveal that this indirect effect is only present when the sponsorship is not disclosed. Thus, more transparency by disclosing such sponsorship can eliminate the negative impacts of persuasion knowledge on the trustworthiness of posts and subsequent evaluations of the brand and the influencer. These findings have important implications for marketing practice and research.
Free access at DOI
Digital Object Identifier 10.1177/10949968221075686
Other Identification Number merlin-id:22217
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