Showing your true self? Investigating how influencers' authenticity and credibility affect attitude towards promoted brands

Abstract

Today’s competitive markets have made it difficult for marketers to reach audiences efficiently. In this case, influencers help a lot by featuring the brand’s products in their content so that customers can discover the brand and its products. However, customers prefer the content which is authentic, credible and is linked with the influencer’s life in some context. So, this research is about investigating if images’ brightness, lightness, naturalness, average number of objects in images and presence of face in images have an impact on an influencer’s authenticity and credibility. This research further explores if authenticity and credibility have an impact on attitude towards influencers and finally explores if attitude towards influencers impact brand attitude where influencer’s fit with the brand is a moderator. After doing experiments and a survey, we concluded that according to our model, images’ brightness, lightness, naturalness, average number of objects in images and presence of face in images do not have a significant impact on an influencer’s authenticity and credibility. Moreover, our model showed that authenticity and credibility have an impact on attitude towards influencers and attitude towards influencers positively contribute to brand attitude where influencer’s fit with the brand was proved as a moderator. This research makes it easy for brands to reach the right influencers in a short span of time