Marketing through Instagram influencers : the impact of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude
Summary (2 min read)
INTRODUCTION
- Recently, brands discovered the far-reaching impact and viral growth potential of approaching influencers - people who built a large network of followers, and are regarded as trusted tastemakers in one or several niches - to promote their products.
- To their knowledge, no research yet investigated how people perceive and evaluate these numbers.
- Moreover, the reach of the message through an influencer should not be the only criterion for successful persuasive communication.
- First, it is investigated whether numbers of followers merely affect perceptions of popularity, or whether it might also cause people to ascribe opinion leadership to the influencer.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT
- The Impact of Number of Followers on Influencer Likeability A high number of followers implies that many people are interested in a certain account, as they subscribed to its updates.
- This leads to the proposition that an influencer who is perceived as popular, elicits perceptions of opinion leadership.
- Similar, Romero Galuba, Asur and Huberman (2010) found that number of followers is an indication for popularity, however this does not mean that they will also engage with the posted content by retweeting it, etc.
- Thus, the authors propose the following hypothesis: H1.
- The indirect effect of number of followers on likeability will partly be explained by perceived popularity and partly by perceived popularity and ascribed opinion leadership.
The Moderating Impact of Number of Followees on the Relation between Number of Followers and Influencer Likeability
- Besides number of followers, number of followees and the combination of both may affect one’s perceptions about the influencer.
- A rule of thumb is that you should especially follow people with a positive ratio, people who have more followers than followees.
- Today, no study has investigated whether number of followees is an important trait for consumers in the assessment of an influencer.
- Therefore, the authors propose the following research question: RQ1.
The Moderating Impact of Product Divergence on the Relation between Number of Followers and Influencer Effectiveness
- As number of followers represents the audience with whom influencers share their ideas, a higher number of followers might elicit greater brand effects.
- Jin et al. (2014) recently illustrated this idea and found that positive tweets from celebrities with a high number of followers result in higher product-involvement and buying intentions than tweets from less popular celebrities.
- In practice, sometimes consumers may be very attracted to unique products that are not obvious to obtain, but at other times, they might want to buy what others bought (Steinhart, Kamins, Mazursky and Noy, 2014).
- Therefore, they often make inferences to fill in these gaps.
- When such an influencer promotes a divergent product, product uniqueness might diminish due to the idea that many others might be interested in the product as well (Machleit, Eroglue and Mantel, 2000).
Method
- The study used a 2 (number of followers: moderate vs. high) by 2 (product divergence: low vs. high) between-subjects experimental design.
- After viewing the profile, participants read that the influencer recently posted a picture on Instagram and participants were instructed to view the post carefully.
- Divergence was manipulated by manipulating product design (Warren and Campbell, 2014).
- Participants had to evaluate whether the design “is different from the norm”, “is unique” and “shows independence” (α = .88).
- All scales were measured with 5 point Likert scales.
Results
- The authors data suggest that divergence has a positive effect on perceived uniqueness, which, in turn, increases attitude towards the brand.
- This process is conditional on number of followers of the influencer: if the product is posted by an influencer with a moderate number of followers, this effect is stronger than if the product is posted by an influencer with a high number of followers, confirming hypothesis 2.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
- Comparing different number of followers on an Instagram influencer’s likeability, study I found that having more followers increases likeability, for the most through higher perceptions of popularity and for a small part because these higher perceptions of popularity leads people to ascribe more opinion leadership to the influencer.
- A high number of followers may thus lead to higher perceptions of popularity, and subsequently higher likeability, but it does not mean that the influencer is automatically perceived as an opinion leader, as this is only true for a small part of their sample.
- There was thus found evidence for the negative implications of “hugely positive ratio’s” (Siegler, 2009).
- Important, when searching for an appropriate influencer, marketers must also consider the type of product they want to promote.
- These findings are consistent with Hellofs and Jacobson’s (1999) findings that if the market share of exclusive products grows, this may infer a loss of exclusivity for consumers.
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Frequently Asked Questions (6)
Q2. What is the effect of divergence on Ab?
Their data suggest that divergence has a positive effect on perceived uniqueness, which, in turn, increases attitude towards the brand.
Q3. What is the effect of number of followers on likeability?
As number of followers indicates audience size and influencers disseminate their ideas among them, having more followers accelerates the diffusion of information (Yoganarasimhan, 2012).
Q4. What is the effect of naive theories on brand attitudes?
Following the naïve theory of exclusivity, the authors expect consumers to have a better attitude towards brands with divergent product designs compared to brands with standard designs because they are perceived as more unique.
Q5. How many followers did the experiment use?
The experiment used a 2 (number of followers: moderate vs. high) by 2 (number of followees: low vs. high) between-subjects experimental design.
Q6. What is the effect of number of followers on influencer likeability?
higher numbers of followers may result in larger reach of the (commercial) message and may thus leverage the power of WOM at scale (Talavera, 2015).