The Dark Side of Influencer Marketing - the Role of Impulse Buying and Product Returns
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Englisch
Original Tagungtitel:
ISMS Marketing Science Conference
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Influencer marketing has grown into a $16.4 billion industry
by 2022. More than 90% of companies consider influencer
marketing as a critical advertising channel to promote their
products and services. Identifying influencers who can
authentically represent the brand and drive positive ROI
remains the biggest challenge for marketers wishing to
take advantage of this opportunity (Influencer Marketing
Hub, 2023). However, influencer marketing, as well as
other advertising channels, lead to product returns which
can harm the profitability and sustainability, especially, for
fashion retailers. For example, the perceived credibility
and authenticity of influencers induce impulse buying
behavior and often result in perceptions of regret and
dissatisfaction towards the purchased product. Consequently,
we expect for such perceptions higher return rates. To test
this expectation, we combined sales data from a leading
European fashion brand resulting from Instagram postings
(with unique and directly attributable discount codes) of
about 5,000 influencers with more than 45,000 sponsored
postings leading to a preliminary revenue of ?160,000,000
and product returns worth ?89,000,000 resulting in a revenue
of ?71,000,000. By analyzing the textual components of
the influencers? postings for the brand we explore the
sentiment and its impact on impulse buying behavior and
product returns. We contribute to the marketing literature
by investigating the effect of both the influencer and the
sponsored posting characteristics on downstream return rates
for the brand. Based on that, we derive recommendations
for not only effective but also sustainable influencer
marketing strategies.
Forschungs-