Influencer marketing for sustainable products. Presentation at Conference «Advertising literacy: Dealing with persuasive messages in complex media environment»

Purpose. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of ecological and egoistic appeals in influencer messages, which are either declared as sponsored or not, on customers’ interest to obtain further information about a sustainable product.

Theory. As sustainable consumerism and lifestyle are more relevant than ever before, there has been an increase in the supply of sustainable products (i.e., Ageron, Gunasekaran, & Spalanzani, 2012). At the same time, influencer marketing has become a popular advertising strategy that includes a key individual or a small group of individuals, which persuades their followers to buy a certain product (i.e., De Veirman, Cauberghe, & Hudders, 2017). However, little is known about the suitability of influencer marketing to promote sustainable products.

Communication agencies often track back the effectiveness of influencer marketing to authenticity that in turn will increase influencer’s credibility and popularity. This idea is not entirely new: Hovland and Weiss (1951) already examined the communication effectiveness under the consideration of source credibility. Beside the dimensions of the communicator’s expertise and trustworthiness, communicator’s likeability determines the advertising effectiveness (i.e., Reinhard & Messner, 2009). Hence, to sell a product, the influencer should appear as an expert in this product category; then he or she will be trusted, likeable, and consequently, the customer will be interested.

As influencers usually describe their personal experience with the product, the advertising strategy focuses on personal benefits. In contrast, a major part of the sustainability concept is attributed altruistic. Nevertheless, within the area of green advertising, in addition to ecological or altruistic claims, recent studies show the effectiveness of egoistic appeals (i.e., Hardeman, Font, & Nawijn, 2017). The primary goal of this study is to test the impact of ecological and egoistic appeals in influencer marketing.

The secondary goal is to integrate the role of declaration of influencer marketing. Due to ethical reasons, advertising messages should display sponsorship disclosures (An, Kang, & Koo, 2018) and in practice, posts are labeled on the social media platform Instagram. However, there are concerns that such a declaration might weaken the advertising effectiveness, not least because the authenticity might be reduced (Beckert et al., 2019; Ferrer Conill, 2016). Therefore, this study tests this claim, under consideration of the effect of two different appeals.

Methods. A 2 (appeals: ecological vs. egoistic) x 2 (declaration: sponsored vs. no label) between-subject experiment was conducted. At the beginning of the experiment, participants (N = 140; gender: nmale = 42, nfemale = 98; age: n18-24 = 83, n25-29 = 41, n30- 39 = 10, n40-55 = 2, n55+ = 4,) were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental groups and received two Instagram messages about ecologically-friendly accommodations (see appendix, figure 1). The influencer stated either altruistic and environmental-related or more self-related reasons why staying in these accommodations. Furthermore, the messages either included the information that the posts was sponsored, or the declaration of sponsorship was not included.

After participants viewed both Instagram posts, they completed the questionnaire, which included items (on a seven-point Likert scale) regarding their perception of the expertise ( = 0.91, M = 4.05, SD = 1.25), trustworthiness ( = 0.82, M = 4.15, SD = 1.00), and likeability ( = 0.86, M = 4.13, SD = 1.13) of the influencer (Xiao, Wang, & Chan-Olmsted, 2018). Additionally, participants stated if they were interested to obtain further information about the accommodations (Matthes, 2006;  = 0.83, M = 3.04, SD = 1.34).

Results. To test the influence of the appeal and the labeling on the interest to obtain further information, mediated by the perception of the influencer, I performed a moderation analysis with the SPSS macro from Hayes (2018). Regression results for the mediation are presented in Table 1 (see appendix). Additionally, Figure 2 (see appendix) illustrates the standardized regression coefficients. In Step 1 of the mediation model, the regression of appeals on interest for more information, ignoring the mediators, is significant, b = 0.45, t(135) = 2.06, p = .04. Nevertheless, the relationship between declaration and interest is not significant, b = 0.12, t(135) = 0.54, p = .59. Step 2 shows in the regression of appeals on the mediator, that the perceived expertise of the influencer is significant, b = –.46, t(135) = –2.27, p = .02. Likewise, the regression of labeling on influencers’ expertise is significant, b = – .45, t(135) = –2.21, p = .03. The mediator influencers’ expertise has a significant effect on the perceived trustworthiness, b = .27, t(134) = 3.95, p < .001, and likeability, b = .35, t(134) = 4.76, p < .001. However, only the regression of influencers’ likeability, b = .36, t(132) = 2.74, p = .01, and not influencers’ trustworthiness on customers’ interest is significant, b = –.01, t(134) = –0.07, p = .95. Finally, the analyses reveals that, controlling for the mediators, the type of appeals used in the influencer posts are not a significant predictor of the interest, b = 0.41, t(132) = 1.88, p =.06. However, it is found that influencers’ expertise and popularity mediate the relationship between the appeals and the interest to obtain further information about the accommodations, b = –0.06 (LLCI = –0.147, ULCI = –0.003).

Discussion and Conclusion. This is the first experimental study that tests the persuasiveness of influencer marketing for sustainable products. The investigation clarifies that the logic of influencer marketing to emphasize personal benefits should be maintained while promoting ecologically-friendly accommodations. Environmental or altruistic association is not required to be communicated, because these attributes are already included in the product category. Messages with egoistic instead of ecological appeals are suitable to increase influencers’ reputation. Customers believe influencers know more about self-related emotions and product benefits, but less about the environmental advantage.

Furthermore, this study shows that the concern to declare the sponsorship is justified, from a commercial perspective. If posts are labeled, the perceived influencers’ expertness is reduced. It seems that customers believe less that the influencer knows very much about a product he or she is sponsored for.

Institutionen

Vienna AdME Research Group

Universität Wien

DGPuK
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Link zur Konferenz

Veranstaltungsdatum

27.-29. November 2019

Funktion

Referentin
researcher, sprecker, participant