Celebrities of Instagram - What Type of Content Influences Followers’ Purchase Intentions and Engagement Rate?

Celebrities have been traditionally used in marketing in tv-commercials and as company brand ambassadors for a long time. Celebrity influence on purchase intention has been studied extensively by academics. Along with the rise of social media, a new phenomenon of social media celebrities have emerged to the celebrity scene. Social media celebrities enable a completely new way for marketers to promote their products on the pages of social media celebrities on Instagram, for example. Social media celebrity Instagram accounts are an effective way to reach large audiences, and someone like Selena Gomez has more than 120 million followers on Instagram. In this study we examined what factors influence the purchase intentions and engagement rate (photo likes divided by followers) of social media celebrities’ followers. The data consists of 414 photos on 46 social media celebrity accounts. The data was collected through Instagram from the Finnish followers of these 46 social media celebrities. From the responses, 541 were validated for the study. In addition, we gathered data from the social media celebrities whether the photos hold sponsored content or not. Results were derived from the data with quantitative methods primarily by using hierarchical regression models. Purchase intentions and engagement rates were explained by partially the same and partially different variables. Congruence between the picture and the social media celebrity was the most significant variable explaining purchase intentions. Congruence was also positively related to the engagement rate. However the engagement rate was mostly explained by the age difference between the social media celebrity and the follower. A bigger age difference corresponded to a stronger relation to the engagement rate. From Ohanian’s (1990) characteristic source model (expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness), expertise was the only characteristic that had a positive relation to purchase intentions. However, trustworthiness and attractiveness were positively related to engagement rate, whereas social media celebrity expertise had a negative relation to engagement rate. Those social media celebrities who had acquired their fame solely on Instagram had strongest relation to engagement rate and purchase intentions, compared to the Instagram celebrities that had previous fame as bloggers or as general celebrities such as models and actresses. The findings of our study offer several interesting managerial implications as well as future research topics for academics. Sponsored pictures had a positive relation to purchase intentions, hence marketers should invest in marketing efforts on social media celebrity accounts. The most critical factor for success is finding and selecting the most suitable social media celebrities. In the selection process, the most important criteria should be congruence and fit between the social media celebrity and the sponsored content. Social media celebrity follower amount was not related to purchase intentions nor to engagement rate, so instead of favoring only ‘big stars’, also focus on social media celebrities with smaller follower amounts of so called micro influencers, should be utilized equally. Based on the study results, we recommend transparency on social media celebrity endorsement and disclosing sponsored contents with #collaboration, or some other indicator

Celebrities of Instagram - What Type of Content Influences Followers' Purchase Intentions and Engagement Rate?

Celebrities have been traditionally used in marketing in tv-commercials and as company brand ambassadors for a long time. Celebrity influence on purchase intention has been studied extensively by academics. Along with the rise of social media, a new phenomenon of social media celebrities have emerged to the celebrity scene. Social media celebrities enable a completely new way for marketers to promote their products on the pages of social media celebrities on Instagram, for example. Social media celebrity Instagram accounts are an effective way to reach large audiences, and someone like Selena Gomez has more than 120 million followers on Instagram. In this study we examined what factors influence the purchase intentions and engagement rate (photo likes divided by followers) of social media celebrities’ followers. The data consists of 414 photos on 46 social media celebrity accounts. The data was collected through Instagram from the Finnish followers of these 46 social media celebrities. From the responses, 541 were validated for the study. In addition, we gathered data from the social media celebrities whether the photos hold sponsored content or not. Results were derived from the data with quantitative methods primarily by using hierarchical regression models. Purchase intentions and engagement rates were explained by partially the same and partially different variables. Congruence between the picture and the social media celebrity was the most significant variable explaining purchase intentions. Congruence was also positively related to the engagement rate. However the engagement rate was mostly explained by the age difference between the social media celebrity and the follower. A bigger age difference corresponded to a stronger relation to the engagement rate. From Ohanian’s (1990) characteristic source model (expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness), expertise was the only characteristic that had a positive relation to purchase intentions. However, trustworthiness and attractiveness were positively related to engagement rate, whereas social media celebrity expertise had a negative relation to engagement rate. Those social media celebrities who had acquired their fame solely on Instagram had strongest relation to engagement rate and purchase intentions, compared to the Instagram celebrities that had previous fame as bloggers or as general celebrities such as models and actresses. The findings of our study offer several interesting managerial implications as well as future research topics for academics. Sponsored pictures had a positive relation to purchase intentions, hence marketers should invest in marketing efforts on social media celebrity accounts. The most critical factor for success is finding and selecting the most suitable social media celebrities. In the selection process, the most important criteria should be congruence and fit between the social media celebrity and the sponsored content. Social media celebrity follower amount was not related to purchase intentions nor to engagement rate, so instead of favoring only ‘big stars’, also focus on social media celebrities with smaller follower amounts of so called micro influencers, should be utilized equally. Based on the study results, we recommend transparency on social media celebrity endorsement and disclosing sponsored contents with #collaboration, or some other indicator

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Strategic and Operational Decision Making

openEffective decision making lies at the core of organizational success. In the era of digital transformation, businesses are increasingly adopting data-driven approaches to gain a competitive advantage. According to existing literature, Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents a significant advancement in this area, with the ability to analyze large volumes of data, identify patterns, make accurate predictions, and provide decision support to organizations. This study aims to explore the impact of AI technologies on different levels of organizational decision making. By separating these decisions into strategic and operational according to their properties, the study provides a more comprehensive understanding of the feasibility, current adoption rates, and barriers hindering AI implementation in organizational decision making

Consumers\u27 Perceptions of Digital Privacy in the United States and Japan

The purpose of my study is to explore the contours of contemporary consumer privacy protections derived from legislation, regulations and publicly available company policies as a way to get a better understanding of how consumer data is protected. A few examples ranging from company-based consumer protection in the United States to data breaches in Japan will be explored and examined. Finally, this paper includes a comparative survey of consumer perceptions and concerns related to personal data privacy in the U.S. and Japan. As a way to assess the degree to which digital privacy and personal data breaches have adversely influenced consumer perceptions, several data abuse examples will be highlighted and discussed

The role of attachment in endorsements

Endorsement research has predominantly focused on how the effectiveness of an endorsement is affected by variation in an endorser’s characteristics, such as their appeal, attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise, and more importantly, on their congruence with the endorsed product, and credibility as endorsers. However, there is little or no research on how the perceived commitment of the celebrity to the product affects the celebrity’s level of attachment to the endorsed product and thereby endorsement effectiveness. The following thesis considers this aspect of product endorsements and identifies six categories of endorsement situations based on the types of endorsement and endorsers. It seeks to emphasise the importance of attachment between a product and the endorser, and its subsequent impact on consumer perceptions. The tripartite attachment model is introduced in this thesis, which introduces three attachment nodes in an endorsement, viz., attachment between the consumer and product, between the consumer and celebrity and between the celebrity and product. Attachment between the consumer and celebrity and between the consumer and product has been extensively examined. However, there is little or no research on the perceived attachment between the celebrity and product. The thesis focuses on this attachment node by introducing the progenic brand: a brand launched by endorsers wherein the endorser’s name and values are imbued in the brand. The attachment theory was used to identify the endorsed, spokesperson and progenic, as the three primary types of endorsement situations associated with two types of endorsers, namely, celebrities and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). Using the source credibility model, it is hypothesised how the three appeals of attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise vary across six endorsement situations and the subsequent implications for marketing practitioners. A new brand term called ‘progenic’ is introduced which has been shown to have higher perceived attachment between the endorser and product compared to traditional endorsements. Finally, this research not only contributes theoretically by distinguishing between endorsement situations but can also assist practitioners when pairing the right type of individual with a specific product-type, and in distinguishing between product appeals

Not invented here: Power and politics in public key infrastructure (PKI) institutionalisation at two global organisations.

This dissertation explores the impact of power and politics in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) institutionalisation. We argue that this process can be understood in power and politics terms because the infrastructure skews the control of organisational action in favour of dominant individuals and groups. Indeed, as our case studies show, shifting power balances is not only a desired outcome of PKI deployment, power drives institutionalisation. Therefore, despite the rational goals of improving security and reducing the total cost of ownership for IT, the PKIs in our field organisations have actually been catalysts for power and politics. Although current research focuses on external technical interoperation, we believe emphasis should be on the interaction between the at once restrictive and flexible PKI technical features, organisational structures, goals of sponsors and potential user resistance. We use the Circuits of Power (CoP) framework to explain how a PKI conditions and is conditioned by power and politics. Drawing on the concepts of infrastructure and institution, we submit that PKIs are politically explosive in pluralistic, distributed global organisations because by limiting freedom of action in favour of stability and security, they set a stage for disaffection. The result of antipathy towards the infrastructure would not be a major concern if public key cryptography, which underpins PKI, had a centralised mechanism for enforcing the user discipline it relies on to work properly. However, since this discipline is not automatic, a PKI bereft of support from existing power arrangements faces considerable institutionalisation challenges. We assess these ideas in two case studies in London and Switzerland. In London, we explain how an oil company used its institutional structures to implement PKI as part of a desktop standard covering 105,000 employees. In Zurich and London, we give a power analysis of attempts by a global financial services firm to roll out PKI to over 70,000 users. Our dissertation makes an important contribution by showing that where PKI supporters engage in a shrewdly orchestrated campaign to knit the infrastructure with the existing institutional order, it becomes an accepted part of organisational life without much ceremony. In sum, we both fill gaps in information security literature and extend knowledge on the efficacy of the Circuits of Power framework in conducting IS institutionalisation studies

Rebuilding Corporate Leadership: How Directors Can Link Long-Term Performance with Public Goals

This report examines how efforts to build public trust and long-term value have coalesced to encourage many large, global corporations to pay greater attention to their longer-term interests by striking a balance between short-term commercial pursuits and such societal concerns as the environment, labor standards, and human rights. Many companies have also found ways to turn such concerns as the effects of climate change and other environmental damage into profitable commercial opportunities. This report also explores how all corporate boards could take a more active part in considering such issues and improving the reporting of financial and non-financial measures of corporate performance broadly conceived. In our view, directors could do more with their current authority to motivate managements to greater innovation, and to support managements in finding long-term value solutions to the numerous economic and societal pressures they face

Automating Society : Taking Stock of Automated Decision-Making in the EU

This is the first comprehensive study regarding the state of automated decision-making in Europe. Experts have looked at the situation at the EU level but also in 12 Member States: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK. They assessed not only the political discussions and initiatives in these countries but also present a section "ADM in Action" for all states, listing examples of automated decision-making already in use

Automating Society: Taking Stock of Automated Decision-Making in the EU. BertelsmannStiftung Studies 2019

Imagine you’re looking for a job. The company you are applying to says you can have a much easier application process if you provide them with your username and password for your personal email account. They can then just scan all your emails and develop a personality profile based on the result. No need to waste time filling out a boring questionnaire and, because it’s much harder to manipulate all your past emails than to try to give the ‘correct’ answers to a questionnaire, the results of the email scan will be much more accurate and truthful than any conventional personality profiling. Wouldn’t that be great? Everyone wins—the company looking for new personnel, because they can recruit people on the basis of more accurate profiles, you, because you save time and effort and don’t end up in a job you don’t like, and the company offering the profiling service because they have a cool new business model

The influence of media context on the effectiveness of podcast advertising

Advertising in Audio Podcasts has gained huge popularity in the last years. However, education on how to advertise effectively on Podcasts is still at an early stage. A high effectiveness of advertising is only achieved when an advertisement is placed and consumed in the appropriate media context. The placement and its effectiveness are a topic that still needs to be researched intensively in this regard. The ad-context congruence, the correspondence of theme and image between a brand being advertised and a podcast episode are explored more intensively in this work. These are common criteria used for the selection of advertising contexts. For the purpose of a deeper investigation of this topic, two experimental online surveys were realised. Here, either the thematic congruence or the image congruence and their advertising effectiveness were examined. Audio sequences of German podcast episodes were played to the panel participants. Fictitious podcast advertisements were inserted into these. These advertisements contextually fitted the episode either very well or not at all. After participants have been exposed to one audio sequence, advertising effectiveness was measured by the variables brand recall, brand recognition and attitudes towards the brand. Brand recall and brand recognition were higher in percentage terms for the thematic and image congruent condition. However, the study did not yield statistically significant results for these variables. Nevertheless, experiments demonstrate that thematic but also image congruence had a strong and statistically significant impact on attitudes towards the brand. In both experiments, the congruent condition was able to trigger a much more positive evaluation of the brand than the non-congruent one.Nos últimos anos, a publicidade em Podcasts áudio ganhou uma enorme popularidade. Noentanto, a formação para anunciar eficazmente em Podcasts está ainda na sua fase inicial. Só é possível alcançar um alto nível de eficácia publicitária se uma publicidade for colocada e consumida no contexto de media adequado. A colocação e eficácia é um tópico que ainda precisa de ser intensamente pesquisado neste âmbito. A congruência do contexto publicitário, assim como a correspondência entre o tema e a imagem da marca que está a ser publicitada e o episódio do Podcast em causa, são explorados de forma mais aprofundada neste trabalho. Estes são os critérios mais comuns usados para selecionar os contextos publicitários. Foram conduzidas duas sondagens experimentais online, com o intuito de aprofundar a investigação neste tópico. Através delas, foram examinadas a congruência temática ou a congruência de imagem, assim como a eficácia publicitária. Foram reproduzidas sequências de áudio de Podcasts alemães para que os participantes dos painéis as escutassem. Durante a reprodução, foram inseridos anúncios de Podcast fictícios. O nível de adequação destes anúncios ao episódio variava entre “muito adequados” e “nada adequados”. Depois de os participantes terem sido expostos a uma sequência de áudio, foi medida a eficácia publicitária do anúncio através das variáveis respeitantes à memória de marca, reconhecimento de marca e atitude perante a marca. A memória de marca e o reconhecimento de marca obtiveram mais pontos em termos percentuais quando se verificavam condições de congruência temática e de imagem. No entanto, o estudo não providenciou resultados estatisticamente significantes para estas variáveis. Não obstante, as experiências demonstras que a congruência temática – e também a de imagem – tem um impacto estatístico significativo nas atitudes perante a marca. Em ambas as experiências, a condição de congruência conseguiu desencadear uma avaliação muito mais positiva da marca quando comparada com uma condição de incongruência