Abstract

Influencer marketing is a critical component of many strategic campaigns, but most research on social media influencers has examined influencer attributes (credibility, attractiveness, follower count, etc.) or congruency with the brand or cause. Challenging the conventional wisdom that green advertising should be humble and answering a call to develop novel green messaging strategies, we conceptualize a new strategy called enviro-bragging. We find this aggressive form of advertising is best suited for green influencers collaborating with brands that dominate their product market. We use signaling theory to show that influencers can function as signals of a brand’s environmental commitment and identify a differential effect of influencer- (versus advertiser-) generated green ads depending on the firm’s relative market position. Interestingly, while we find a significant difference in influencer impact when the brand is dominant, we find no difference when the brand is not dominant. We discuss our results in light of their theoretical and managerial implications.

摘要

影响者营销是许多战略活动的关键组成部分，但大多数关于社交媒体影响者的研究都考察了影响者的属性（可信度、吸引力、关注者数量等）或与品牌或事业的一致性。为了挑战绿色广告应该谦虚的传统观念，并响应开发新颖的绿色信息传递策略的号召，我们构思了一种名为“环境吹嘘”的新策略。我们发现这种积极的广告形式最适合与主导其产品市场的品牌合作的绿色影响者。我们使用信号理论来表明，影响者可以作为品牌环境承诺的信号，并根据公司的相对市场地位确定影响者（与广告商）制作的绿色广告的差异效应。有趣的是，虽然我们发现当品牌占主导地位时，影响者影响力存在显着差异，但当品牌不占主导地位时，我们发现没有差异。我们根据其理论和管理意义讨论我们的结果。