"Humanized Robots": A Proposition of Categories to Understand Virtual Influencers

Abstract

Worldwide investments in influencer marketing are growing and could reach US$ 101 billion in 2020. But how can the brands shield themselves from scandals and other limitations of human influencers? The solution for many companies has involved robots. Virtual influencers (VI) are virtual robots that can emulate human appearance and behaviour and have become a trend in marketing. This study analyses how non-human influencers affect marketing communication by adopting two methods that are unpublished in the investigation of this phenomenon: a systematic literature review and netnography in conjunction with in-depth interviews with specialists resulting in the study identifying five categories (two of which are unpublished and unexplored in the literature) that can facilitate management decisions and also future studies around VIs: anthropomorphism/humanization, attractiveness, authenticity, scalability, and controllability. This study also identified more convergences than divergences between the virtual and the real and between humans and non-humans, generating challenges, opportunities, and guidelines for future research and for assisting management in making decisions concerning digital marketing.

Virtual influencers as an emerging marketing theory: A systematic literature review

“…A systematic literature review was conducted to identify the current state of knowledge, evaluate the existing literature, and identify further research directions in the field of VIs. A previous (and only one, to the best of our knowledge) systematic literature review on the issue of CGIs and their use in the marketing field identified 32 scientific articles, of which only two referred to nonhuman VIs (da Silva et al, 2021). A systematic literature review follows well‐defined steps that allow other researchers to understand the process and the replicability of the results (Czakon, 2015).…”

“Digital Influencer”: Development and Coexistence with Digital Social Groups

“…For a long time, stereotypes or fictional examples have existed in human society to represent the archetype of strength, beauty, and perfection that is not found in the average human being. Virtual influencers bring new scenarios to digital marketing and more; if most analyses point to more convergence than divergence between real and virtual and between human and non-human [2].…”

“…Today's technological advances have created worlds, games, and applications in which people can meet, talk, and socialize without physically being present. Individuals create virtual avatars, or representations of themselves, to represent the user in those environments [2]. Not only can the characters take on the form of people, but they can also take on the form of monsters, imaginative characters, and characters created by the creators.…”

How Big Five Personality Traits affect Information and Communication Technology Use: A Meta-Analysis

“…The recent growth of ICTs has effectively reduced the distance between people across the globe with just a click. Such technological advancements enable people to access a wide array of services and online applications (e.g., e-learning/online teaching platforms, social networking sites or applications, online banking applications, and e-commerce applications, among others) using their smartphones and/or computers (Corcoran & Duane, 2018;da Silva Oliveira & Chimenti, 2021;Fernandes et al, 2021). ICTs thereby have emerged as an indispensable part of contemporary lifestyle, whereby individual personality effortlessly meshes with the fabric of human life, everyday situations, problems, and relationships (Alhassan et al, 2020;Donvito et al, 2020;Goyal et al, 2021;Soral et al, 2020).…”