The fairytale of social media influencers. A multi-method approach to investigate the persuasiveness and ethical use of influencer marketing

Influencers earned a large audience of followers by creating and sharing entertaining narratives about their personal lives or demonstrating expertise on relevant topics. Their large network, their content creation skills and the fact that followers perceive them as likeable, credible and relatable role models, resulted in brands asking them to endorse their products in exchange for free products and/or monetary payment, a practice which has been referred to as influencer marketing. Accordingly, influencers are given an active role in the advertising process as persuasion agents. The overall aim of the work discussed in this paper is to contribute to the academic and societal debate on the persuasiveness and ethical use of influencer marketing through three research objectives. Research objective 1 aims to provide a state of the art of influencer marketing research. Additional emphasis is put on influencer marketing targeting children. Research objective 2 focusses on the persuasiveness of influencer marketing and aims to provide a contribution to the important managerial question which influencer to cooperate with when implementing an influencer marketing strategy. Finally, in research objective 3, the focus is placed on the ethical use of influencer marketing, in particular, the importance of advertising disclosure and the vulnerability of minors, both from a consumer and from an influencer perspective. This article discusses the main findings of the studies undertaken to tackle these objectives and how they contribute to our understanding of the persuasiveness and ethical use of influencer marketing.