How social media influencers’ narrative strategies benefit cultivating influencer marketing: tackling issues of cultural barriers, commercialised content, and sponsorship disclosure

Zhou, S, Blazquez, M, McCormick, H and Barnes, L (2021) How social media influencers’ narrative strategies benefit cultivating influencer marketing: tackling issues of cultural barriers, commercialised content, and sponsorship disclosure. Journal of Business Research, 134. pp. 122-142. ISSN 0148-2963

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Abstract

Social media influencers (SMIs) are increasingly involving in influencer marketing to promote products. However, there are both opportunities and issues with influencer marketing. SMIs’ narrative strategies can be of great value as high-quality eWOM content is vital to maintain influencer marketing effectiveness. This paper adopts the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework to explore the value of SMIs’ narrative strategies to overcome potential influencer marketing issues within the context of China's luxury market. A qualitative approach is applied to explore Chinese consumer perceptions toward capabilities of three SMIs’ narrative strategies (brand attribute evaluation, brand love inspiration, self-identity construction) to deal with the issues of cultural barriers, commercial–personal tension, and sponsorship disclosure in SMIs’ eWOM. Based on the research findings, this paper develops a conceptual model to illustrate how SMIs’ narrative strategies benefit the cultivation of influencer marketing on social media.