Short and long-term impact of the frequency of social media influencers' sponsored posts on attitudinal and behavioral brand outcomes

The importance of Social Media Influencers (SMIs) as persuasive agents for companies has long been established. However, we need more research on the long-term (compared to the short-term) impact of the frequency of SMI's advertising messages. We examine the effects of different frequency levels of SMI's sponsored posts on brand outcomes, precisely brand attitude and purchase intention. Based on the concept of attitudinal persuasion knowledge, we examine the mediating role of skepticism. Moreover, we examine how brand outcomes change over time based on the Sleeper Effect. We conducted a 2 (between-subject factor: low vs. high frequency of sponsored-pots) by 2 (within-subject factor: short vs. long-term effect) experiment with N = 190 U.S. participants. The results show that the frequency of sponsored posts had no direct or indirect influence on brand outcomes in the short term, nor was skepticism activated. Brand attitudes did not change significantly in the long term, but purchase intention increased.