Size does Matter: How do Micro-influencers Impact Follower Purchase Intention on Social Media?

Social media influencers have become a significant source of information for customers and a prevalent marketing tool for brands. It is crucial to explore factors that affect the follower’s purchase intention of the products endorsed by social media influencers. Recently, micro-influencers have gained recognition for their authenticity and relatability when compared with their established counterparts, such as macro- or mega-influencers. Increasing organizations also see the value micro-influencers can bring to their brands via more interaction with their target customers. Based on the parasocial interaction theory, we propose that the perceived credibility and transparency of micro-influencers enhance followers’ purchase intention through the mediation of parasocial interaction. Parasocial interaction is a kind of psychological relationship in which followers consider influencers as their friends, regardless of their limited interactions with those influencers. Our findings indicate that parasocial interaction between micro-influencers and their followers positively impacts purchase intentions of recommended products. It is also found that perceived micro-influencer credibility and transparency positively affect followers’ parasocial interaction with microinfluencers. Implications of our findings are discussed

How can live streamers enhance viewer engagement in eCommerce streaming?

eCommerce live streaming has enabled new forms of customer engagement, where live streamers, viewers and platform owners engage each other in real time to hawk and trade goods and services. Central to live streaming sales are live streamers. It is therefore critical to discover techniques to maximize live streamers’ engagement with viewers. Based on the intimacy theory, we propose the perceived intimacy live streamers created improves online engagement with viewers. Our survey results suggest streamers’ authenticity, attitudinal similarity and customer response capability enhance intimacy perceived by online viewers, leading to viewers\u27 online engagement. Contributions of our study are discussed

Engaging Viewers in Ecommerce Live Streaming: Perspectives of the Broadcaster and Viewer

Background: ECommerce live streaming has enabled new forms of broadcaster-viewer interaction, where broadcasters engage viewers in real time to sell goods and services. It is therefore critical to discover strategies to maximize viewer engagement with broadcasters. Method: A mixed methods approach was applied. Five strategies emerged from our qualitative observation of three famous broadcasters: establishing a personal brand essence, maintaining personal brand consistency, creating message credibility, tapping on shared attitudes, and maximizing customer responsiveness. Based on a signaling theory perspective, we then hypothesized about the five strategies and constructed a survey to examine the effectiveness of these strategies. A total of 505 valid responses were received, and CB-SEM with AMOS was utilized to test the five hypotheses, with three hypotheses supported. Results: Our findings demonstrate that message credibility, shared attitudes, and customer responsiveness play critical roles in enhancing viewers’ engagement behaviors. Conclusion: Our mixed methods approach allows empirical exploration of effective engagement strategies and broadcaster-viewer interaction during eCommerce live streaming. This study thus contributes nascent knowledge to the live streaming literature, helping future research to develop possible theoretical perspectives. Our findings also provide actionable insights for broadcasters to enhance viewer engagement and boost sales

On Online Engagement: Does the Leadership Style Matter?

The news industry is facing tremendous changes. Integrating digital technologies into news practices has become the key to survival. Social media engagement editors are one of such innovations to respond to the challenge. Engagement editors are required to facilitate the functions of marketing, editing, content production, and data analysis. They thus play the role of boundary-spanner within and beyond the organizational boundaries. However, there are few studies to explore issues associated with the management of social media engagement editors. This research examines whether and how the leadership style (i.e., transformational and passive leadership style) influences engagement editors’ job performance. We collected 122 valid responses, and used the SmartPLS 3 and SPSS 19.0 to analyze the data. Our findings indicate that performance of engagement editors is influenced by the leadership style; moreover, job autonomy mediates the positive effect of transformational leadership on engagement editors’ job performance. Implications for the management of social media engagement editors are discussed

Driving marketing agility in the digital age

Facing rapidly changing markets, firms need to develop marketing agility to respond to the markets. However, marketing agility involves marketing decisions that often rely on the marketing department, rather than top management, to initiate and execute. Thus, this study, based on the theory of organizational alignment and resource orchestration theory, proposes that firms need to facilitate the alignment between marketing and non-marketing departments (i.e., marketing-operations alignment) by developing marketing resource orchestration capability. Further, we argue IT collaboration capability (i.e., inter-department collaboration tools and applications) and advanced analytics capability (i.e., analytics tools with machine learning algorithms) can help firms to enable marketing-operations alignment and marketing resource orchestration capability respectively. Based on a sample of 155 Taiwanese service firms, a model with five hypotheses is empirically tested using the PLS analysis. Our preliminary results support our arguments

The Mitigators of Ad Irritation and Avoidance of YouTube Skippable In-Stream Ads: An Empirical Study in Taiwan

On YouTube, skippable in-stream advertisements (ads) are critical income for both YouTube and content creators. However, ads inevitably irritate viewers, and as a result, they tend to avoid ads. Thus, this study attempts to identify potential mitigators—source attractiveness and reciprocal altruism—of ad irritation and avoidance in the context of YouTube skippable in-stream ads. Using an online survey (n = 512) in Taiwan, the proposed model is examined by a partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis. The findings show that while ad irritation has a positive effect on ad avoidance, reciprocal altruism can significantly reduce both ad irritation and avoidance. However, source attractiveness fails to mitigate ad irritation and avoidance. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed, and several solutions for reducing ad irritation and avoidance are provided

Passive leadership and online interaction: The mediating effects of job autonomy and employee resilience

With the prevalence of the Internet and mobile devices, news organizations must adapt themselves to the trend of digitalization. Social media engagement editors emerge as a new role crucial for the survival of news organizations. Engagement editors are tasked to internally facilitate the functions of marketing, content production, and data analysis. They also assume the role of “boundary spanner” for a news organization, managing online community and dealing with online audiences and their frequent toxic and aggressive behaviors. That is, engagement editors are easier than other workers to be affected by emotional stress, and thus reduce job performance. According to conservation of resource theory (COR), leadership and job autonomy both have impacts on personal resources. This research attempts to investigate whether a particular style of leadership (i.e., passive leadership) would negatively affect the engagement editors’ performance (i.e., interaction with online fans). Furthermore, how the negativity would be amelioratedby job autonomy and employee resilience. The management of engagement editors has not yet been a focus of academic studies; researchers rarely approach engagement editors from the perspective of COR. This study attempts to remedy these theoretical and practical shortcomings. We surveyed 200 news media engagement editors and used the smart PLS 3 to analyze the data. This research provides useful implication for the management of engagement editors