How Age and Disclosures of Sponsored Influencer Videos Affect Adolescents’ Knowledge of Persuasion and Persuasion

Abstract

This study examines the effects of age (early versus middle adolescence) combined with the content of disclosures for sponsoring in online influencer videos on adolescents' knowledge of persuasion and on persuasion. An experiment was conducted among a sample of 406 adolescents (167 early adolescents aged 12-14 years, mean age 12.85, SD = 0.14, 53% female; and 239 middle adolescents, aged 15-16 years, mean age 14.36, SD = 0.13, 59% female). The results show that early adolescents need extensive information (disclosure of advertising and of its intent) to activate their knowledge of persuasion regarding sponsored influencer videos, whereas middle adolescents' knowledge of persuasion is activated by disclosure of advertising alone. This indicates that early adolescents' knowledge of persuasion is less well developed and that their information processing is more limited than that of middle adolescents. Moreover, only middle adolescents showed more negative brand and influencer attitudes in response to the disclosure. Interestingly, purchase intention remains unaffected by the disclosure for all adolescents. These findings add to the research on adolescence as they show that adolescents' responses to influencer marketing are a function of their developmental stage in combination with disclosure content. As such, this study has implications for theory on persuasion among adolescents and for regulations aiming to empower adolescents to deal with online sponsored influencer videos.

Analysis of the Role of Digital Influencers and Their Impact on the Functioning of the Contemporary On-Line Promotional System and Its Sustainable Development

“…Therefore, in the new market situation, when promoting products, services or brands has never been so difficult, organizations have begun to look for alternative methods of influencing consumers [27]. One of the most important trends is the use of the concept of influencer marketing [28][29][30]. This concept is understood as "marketing practice that takes advantage of well-followed online users, who are able to influence consumers' attitudes and decision-making processes in favor of brands or ideas" [31].…”

“Wasn't Even on My Radar”: Increasing Parental Mediation of Influencer Marketing Behaviors in 35 Minutes with a Brief Theory of Planned Behavior Informed Online Randomized Controlled Intervention

“…Overall, a large body of empirical disclosure studies has robustly demonstrated the effect of disclosures on marketing fairness constructs (Boerman et al, 2015b;Van Reijmersdal & van Dam, 2020). However, many factors moderate the effect size of disclosures (Spielvogel et al, 2019).…”

“…Marketing researchers use arguments related to process and outcome unfairness when discussing (disguised, covert, masked or native) marketing techniques targeted at young consumers, but they do not always clearly and explicitly prescribe to one view (Rowthorn, 2019;Wojdynski & Evans, 2019). Overall, empirical researchers of young consumers aim to improve non-evaluative fairness constructs, such as improved recognition of the commercial intent, and stay mostly normatively agnostic about evaluative outcome constructs, such as desired attitude and behavioral change, unless there is a social consensus on the promoted products being clearly harmful to young consumers, such as unhealthy foods or alcohol (Coates et al, 2019;Van Reijmersdal & van Dam, 2020). Indeed, studies have demonstrated that young consumers susceptibility to advertising can be decreased by, for example, instructing them about the persuasive and selling intent of advertisements (e.g., Buijzen, 2007).…”

“…The term marketing fairness constructs refers to non-evaluative constructs used to measure short-term improvements in awareness, recognition, recall, and understanding related to specific marketing elements. The most common constructs are recognition of sponsored content as advertising, understanding of the real source of the marketing message (also: 'understanding of authorship'), perceived sponsorship transparency (composed of perceived brand presence, sponsorship clarity, disclosure, lack of deception), ad recognition, understanding persuasive intent, understanding of selling intent, attention to disclosure and recognition of disclosure (Boerman et al, 2018;Boerman & Van Reijmersdal, 2020;Evans et al, 2017;Spielvogel et al, 2019;Van Reijmersdal & van Dam, 2020;Wojdynski et al, 2018).…”

“…The examined explanatory factors for the effect size of disclosures can be roughly classified in audience-focused factors, message-focused, and disclosure-focused factors. The investigated audience-based factors were the consumer's awareness of the disclosure (Boerman et al, 2012;Nelson & Park, 2015), recall of disclosure (Boerman et al, 2015b), mood (Hullett, 2005;Kuykendall & Keating, 1990;Mackie & Worth, 1989;Van Reijmersdal et al, 2015), age (Van Reijmersdal & van Dam, 2020) and perceived credibility and ethicality of the source (Dekker & Van Reijmersdal, 2013;Nelson & Park, 2015). The important disclosure-based factors were disclosure timing (Boerman et al, 2014;Campbell et al, 2013), duration (Boerman et al, 2012), repetition (Spielvogel et al, 2019) and modality (Evans & Hoy, 2016).…”