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Social media influencers: A route to brand engagement for their followers
Author(s) -
Delbaere Marjorie,
Michael Brittany,
Phillips Barbara J.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/mar.21419
Subject(s) - influencer marketing , customer engagement , social media , brand engagement , brand community , advertising , context (archaeology) , affection , business , empirical research , social media marketing , product (mathematics) , brand awareness , psychology , marketing , digital marketing , relationship marketing , marketing management , computer science , social psychology , world wide web , paleontology , philosophy , geometry , mathematics , epistemology , biology
Social Media Influencers (SMIs) are micro‐celebrities with large followings on social media platforms who engage consumers and hold the potential to promote customer‐brand relationships across different product categories. SMIs have an existing relationship of trust with consumers, and consumers seek out the content created by SMIs for valuable information and advice. This study explores the process of brand engagement between consumers and brands in the digital content marketing environment, specifically examining the research question: Do SMIs act as a route to brand engagement for their followers? The context for this study is the beauty community on YouTube; over 60,000 user comments were analyzed through automated text analysis. This study is among the first to provide empirical evidence that SMIs do act as a route to brand engagement through the three dimensions of cognitive processing, affection and activation.