Putting the “Me” in endorsement: Understanding and conceptualizing dimensions of self-endorsement using intelligent personal assistants

Abstract

Self-endorsement—depicting the “self” as an endorser of a brand—represents a potentially powerful advertising strategy made possible by new media. This experiment tests the hypothesis that receiving brand recommendations from an intelligent personal assistant believed to be tailored to one’s own characteristics and consumer interests yields higher brand attitude and purchase intention toward the (self-endorsed) brand than receiving brand recommendations from a typical, but not self-tailored, intelligent personal assistant. Because endorsement is a well-known and highly effective advertising strategy, this is a high bar. We present evidence for self-referencing as an underlying mechanism, and perceived interactivity and identification as boundary conditions of self-endorsing. Consumers may show skepticism toward advertising but may not know how to be skeptical of themselves. As consumers outsource their tasks and decisions to new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven devices, they will need to be attentive to new media biases that threaten productive use of these devices.

Mind or Machine?

“…In our current experiments, we use intelligent personal assistants to investigate the moderating role of digital agents (or media agents) on cognitive self-esteem. Intelligent personal assistants (or digital agents) are mobile, autonomous, and software agents with access to large amounts of online and personal information that communicate with natural language with the goal of helping users accomplish day-to-day tasks (Hamilton et al, 2021). Similar to online search engines, digital agents can filter through an enormous reservoir of information to facilitate decision-making processes.…”

The impact of social media influencers purchase intention in the Philippines

“…This study aims to determine consumers' perception of the advertising efficacy of social media influencers concerning their purchase intention (Hamilton et al, 2021;Kusumasondjaja & Tjiptono, 2019;Probstnerová, 2018). Total respondents of the study were 200, with 129 females and 71 males, the majority of whom were 18 to 24 years old and were single.…”

“…The shift in the entertainment world and the loss of power of traditional media channels of marketers all over the world fall into a pit. As more people start turning and being influenced by peer endorsements, influencer marketing, and authentic opinions and reviews, it is necessary to find less conspicuous recommendations and more effective alternatives to promotion (Hamilton et al, 2021;Lovitt, 2020). Businesses are welcoming social media influencers with millions of followers in their social media accounts as their brand ambassadors to promote their goods to their followers and other customers (Tapinfluence, 2017).…”

‘Seeing is experiencing’: impact of showcasing fashion merchandise on digital platforms

“…Previous studies have defined the virtual experience in visualizing merchandise as a psychological state of feeling (Jung et al, 2021), which enhances merriment and arousal, visual enjoyment, perceptions related to self-image congruence and develops purchase intentions to transform the virtuality into real experience. The virtual merchandising on digital platforms drives self-endorsement (Hamilton et al, 2021) and predetermined psychological effects induced by collective intelligence (Secundo et al, 2021) and hedonic disposition (Bradley and LaFleur, 2016). This study is founded on the theoretical maxims of theory of visual perceptions (Gordon, 2004), cognitive theory of reasoning (Yu et al, 2021), theory of appearance and reality (Merlo, 2020) and Heider's balance theory (Heider, 1958), which explains the relationship between the social self-concept (Fazli-Salehi, 2021) and selfimage congruence (Hosany and Martin, 2012).…”