Understanding the relationships between social media influencers and their followers: the moderating role of closeness

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to better understand the role of closeness and the relationships between social media influencers and their followers, and, more specifically, how social media influencers can effectively manage their human brands. Design/methodology/approach Two studies were conducted to explore social media influencers. Qualitative content analysis and modeling with path analysis were used to analyze the data. Findings Results found attractiveness and likeability to positively predict attitudes toward the influencer, word-of-mouth and purchase intentions, whereas similarity only predicted word-of-mouth from the follower. Closeness served as a moderator but had different effects. Closeness positively moderated the effect of attractiveness on purchase intentions; however, it had a negative effect with similarity on purchase intentions. Moreover, closeness moderated the effect of likeability on attitude toward the influencer. Research limitations/implications This study was limited by the student sample as well as the students’ self-identification of a social media influencer. Future research should include experimental design manipulating well-known/followed or fictional social media influencers on different social media. Practical implications This paper explores the characteristics of social media influencers as well as the potential outcomes associated with influencers on social media. The implications for marketers and advertisers include a better understanding of how consumers engage with influencers on social media. Originality/value The role of closeness is identified as a moderator of consumers’ behaviors toward social media influencers.

“It’s selling like hotcakes”: deconstructing social media influencer marketing in long-form video content on youtube via social influence heuristics

“…Evidence was found for relationships between the influencer's perceived attractiveness, homophily, expertise, closeness, likability, and parasocial relationship, along with the entertainment value of content, the informative value of content, the procedural fairness, and the interpersonal fairness of interactions (Lim et al, 2017;Lou and Kim, 2019;Lou and Yuan, 2019;Taillon et al, 2020;Trivedi and Sama, 2020;Yuan and Lou, 2020). Recently, two qualitative studies advanced our understanding of the followers' perceptions of sponsored influencer content.…”

Micro-Influencer Celebrity’s Communication Strategy in Brand Promotion

“…It is essential for marketers to collaborate with influencers who share the same values and embody the brand's personalities they are promoting subsequent to the effective delivery of the brand's message. Moreover, micro-influencers personify dual personalities in the eyes of their followers: as a celebrity (individuals who inspired) and at the same time as an ordinary personality (next-door neighbor or a family member) (Taillon et al, 2020) they can relate to. According to FREDD principles seen in Figure 2, both relevance and familiarity are listed as two principles of a successful marketing campaign (Swerdlow & Swerdlow, 2003).…”

“…Unlike traditional celebrities who keep their personal lives as the utmost private, these social media influencers interact with their followers by publically giving access to their day-today lives and thus resulting in commonality among their followers (De Veirman, Cauberghe, & Hudders, 2017;Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017;Schau & Gilly, 2003). This strategy allows influencers to generate relationships with their grassroots followers using seemingly organic content (Taillon et al, 2020). Influencers apply various communication strategies to engage with their followers to ensure brands' messages are received by their followers as intended.…”

Guest editorial

“…In an exploratory study, the authors reveal closeness, attractiveness, likeability and similarity as key elements in terms of understanding why consumers follow social media influencers. Taillon et al (2020) empirically examine these relationships in a follow-up study, exploring the moderating role that closeness has on the relationships between attractiveness, similarity and likability on attitude toward the influencer, intention to spread positive word-of-mouth and purchase intentions. Results demonstrate that closeness does moderate these relationships, with the pattern of results suggesting that when an influencer lacks attractiveness or likeability perceptions of closeness may mitigate negative outcomes.…”

“…Fournier and Eckhardt note the potential for intimacy is much greater for person-brands than traditional brands because of the unique characteristics of humans. Taillon et al’s (2020) is the first of the two papers that consider a characteristic that is analogous to intimacy – closeness. The authors examine consumer perceptions of their social relationship with social media influencers to understand how social media influencers can effectively manage their human brand.…”