Purpose Social network sites are becoming more visual-centric. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of visual social network sites as a marketing platform. Design/methodology/approach This paper comprises two experiments. The first experiment sought to examine the effect of social influence; while the second experiment examined the effect of image quality on the perception of quality and purchase intention. Findings The first experiment showed that social influence did not affect perceived quality or purchase intention. In the second experiment, a one-way between-groups multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) adjusting for sport involvement showed a statistically significant difference between the two groups. Respondents in the experimental group reported higher levels of perceived quality (adjusted M=3.68) and purchase intention (adjusted M=3.23) when compared to the control group’s perceived quality (adjusted M=3.12) and purchase intention (adjusted M=2.17). Research limitations/implications One of the limitations of this study is that it only examined the effects through a single social network site, i.e. Instagram. As there are other visual-centric social network sites, such as Tumblr and Pinterest, which operate slightly different from Instagram, it remains to be established how such effects vary across these social network sites. Practical implications The results suggest that social influence on Instagram is limited and marketers should invest in images of high quality when marketing on visual social network sites. Originality/value While there are many studies examining the effectiveness of marketing on social network sites, these studies have primarily focussed on earlier social network sites, such as Facebook. Newer social network sites that are more visual-centric, such as Instagram, are different from earlier social network sites and studied to a lesser extent. This study adds insights on the marketing effectiveness of visual-centric social network sites and deepens the understanding on marketing in general on social media.