Author:
Ju Naan,Kim Terry,Im Hyunjoo
Abstract
AbstractRecently, there has been a lot of interest in industry and academia in virtual influencers (VIs). This study aimed to augment the understanding of VI marketing by exploring the relationship between VI’s characteristics (i.e., their humanlikeness level and operator type), their social media post characteristics (i.e., emotional expression, use of pronouns, use of punctuation marks), and consumer engagement. The analysis of three popular VIs’ Instagram profiles and posts revealed that VIs with less humanlike appearances tend to exhibit stronger positive emotional expressions. Interestingly, the level of humanlikeness in appearance was not associated with VI's other post characteristics, suggesting other intrinsic factors (e.g., the VI’s character and virtual universe) may play a pivotal role. Whether a brand operates the VI or not made a statistically significant difference in the VI’s post characteristics. Assessment of user engagement metrics (i.e., number of likes and comments) showed that users prefer hyper-realistic VIs and VIs operated by non-brand agencies, underscoring the importance of perceived authenticity in the digital realm. The emotions expressed by VIs, along with their use of punctuation, were positively related to user engagement.
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Cited by
1 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献