首页|Role of the Appearance of the Virtual Influencers on Social Presence and Brand Attitude
Role of the Appearance of the Virtual Influencers on Social Presence and Brand Attitude
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NETL
Virtual influencers in social media marketing are the upcoming and most influential force in the current marketing context and this research is one of the first in marketing discipline to empirically examine its effects. The research is of critical importance because of their widespread adoption by marketers and acceptance by the public even after the revelation of the fact that these virtual influencers are artificially created and are simply fictional computer-generated personas with humanlike characteristics. The purpose of this research is to unravel how the appearance of a virtual influencer (more humanlike versus less humanlike) persuades consumers to adopt an advocated position, and if disclosures of the fact that the virtual influencer is not real (despite looking humanlike) affects its persuasiveness. I adopted an interdisciplinary approach by seeking support from theories in psychology, information processing, human-computer interaction and marketing to understand the mechanisms that determine the influential capability of the virtual influencers and tested my hypotheses using experimental design. Using three studies, I examined the role and effectiveness of the humanlike appearance of the virtual influencers. The results of the studies indicate that the humanlike appearance of the virtual influencers enhances the feelings of social presence (i.e., individuals feel the presence of another social entity), which improves the perception of advocated message quality and brand attitude. I further find that disclosing that the influencers might be non-human reduces feelings of perceived social presence. I also find evidence of the effect of the appearance of the virtual influencers in a real-world setting using both process measures and content analysis approach. The findings of this research contribute to the existing gap in the literature of influencer marketing which has primarily focused on the human influencers. This also provides valuable insights to managers by suggesting a more effective way of leveraging virtual influencers on social media.
NETL
