Purpose This study aims to examine the ability of the social influence heuristics framework to capture skillful and creative social media influencer (SMI) marketing in long-form video content on YouTube for influencer-owned brands and products. Design/methodology/approach The theoretical lens was a framework of seven evidence-based social influence heuristics (reciprocity, social proof, consistency, scarcity, liking, authority and unity). For the methodological lens, a qualitative case study approach was applied to a purposeful sample of 6 SMIs and 15 videos on YouTube. Findings The evidence shows that self-promotional influencer marketing in long-form video content is relatable to all seven heuristics and shows signs of high elaboration, innovativeness and skillfulness. Research limitations/implications The study reveals that a heuristic-based account of self-promotional influencer marketing in long-form video content can greatly contribute to the understanding of how various well-established marketing concepts (e.g. source attractivity) might be expressed in real-world communications and behaviors. Based on this improved, in-depth understanding, current research efforts, such as experimental studies using one video with a more or less arbitrary influencer and pre-post measure, are advised to explore research questions via designs that account for the observed subtle and complex nature of real-world influencer marketing in long-form video content. Practical implications This structured account of skillful and creative marketing can be used as educational and instructive material for influencer marketing practitioners to enhance their creativity, for consumers to increase their marketing literacy and for policymakers to rethink policies for influencer marketing. Originality/value Prior research has created a body of knowledge on influencer marketing. However, a conceptual disconnect has hampered the advancement of the field. The social influence heuristics framework is a highly functional conceptual bridge that links the qualitative and quantitative evidence and will advance the understanding of influencer marketing more effectively.
Human enhancement aims at improving individual human performance through science‐based or technology‐based interventions in the human body. For various decades, associated research and applications/interventions were performed in conventional settings (e.g., research institutes) through conventional regulated and controlled procedures (e.g., clinical trials). In the last decade there has been an emergence of science activities grounded on emerging technologies used in unconventional settings (e.g., households; community labs), often through unconventional unregulated and uncontrolled procedures (e.g., self‐administration of substances). The Do‐It‐Yourself Biology or Biohacking movement is an example of communities supportive of such activities, which use emerging technologies such as the CRISPR technique. Among others, these can have other or self‐enhancement goals. Because such activities are anticipated to increase in the future, and due to the methods novelty, lack of regulation, quality, and safety control, there is uncertainty regarding personal and social consequences. Thus, these can be considered to present an emerging risk to human health and the environment. A first step in risk regulation is considering ethical aspects of emerging technologies use, which has been implemented. A second step to sustain subsequent evidence‐based risk management and risk communication to citizen scientists, is necessary. It should involve risk assessment by experts and an understanding of public views on human enhancement technologies. Due to the scarce literature, gathering information to support this step was the goal of a non‐systematic literature review. This focused on internal enhancements through substances intake and human body manipulations, specifically DIY biology/biohacking activities with this goal.
Background: Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is common and debilitating. The standard of care includes light therapy provided by a light box; however, this treatment is restrictive and only moderately effective. Advances in LED technology enable lighting solutions that emit vastly more light than traditional light boxes. Here, we assess the feasibility of BROAD (Bright, whole-ROom, All-Day) light therapy and get a first estimate for its potential effectiveness.Methods: Patients were randomly assigned to a treatment for 4 weeks; either a very brightly illuminated room in their home for at least 6 h per day (BROAD light therapy) or 30 min in front of a standard 10,000 lux SAD light box. Feasibility was assessed by monitoring recruitment, adherence, and side effects. SAD symptoms were measured at baseline and after 2 and 4 weeks, with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-Seasonal Affective Disorders 29-items, self-report version.Results: All 62 patients who started treatment were available at 4-week follow-up and no significant adverse effects were reported. SAD symptoms of both groups improved similarly and considerably, in line with previous results. Exploratory analyses indicate that a higher illuminance (lux) is associated with a larger symptom improvement in the BROAD light therapy group.Conclusions: BROAD light therapy is feasible and seems similarly effective as the standard of care while not confining the participants to 30 min in front of a light box.In follow-up trials, BROAD light therapy could be modified for increased illuminance, which would likely improve its effectiveness.
The gaming industry is now one of the largest entertainment industries and one of the rising sub-industry is video game live streaming (Video Gaming Industry, 2018). Building on the work of Johnson and Woodcock (2019), who interviewed PVGLS to construct life and career narratives based on commonalities and differences, this paper reconstructed how journalists are representing the lives and careers of PVGLS. In addition to representational analysis, a single case study design was chosen to focus on the reconstruction of one original in-depth narrative. As the case subject, the most popular video game live streamer, Mr. Blevins was elected because he represents the most successful case of a PVGLS and usually this status also makes him the most influential opinion leaders in terms of culture and practices within one community. Thus, aspiring professional or already PVGLS tend to look at Ninja as a role model and heuristic for mindsets and best practices to adopt. Consequently, his thoughts about himself as a PVGLS, the community of PVGLS and the community of VGLS are espe-cially relevant. Ultimately, he represents also the whole PVGLS community as a whole when he gives interviews on big shows on traditional media channels (Cash, 2018). To enable tri-angulation 15 written news article interviews were collected from different news outlets.Compared to Johnson & Woodcock (2019) analysis of past narratives that focused on the question how PVGLS moved to streaming, this study goes more in-depth in the past narrative of PVGLS by starting with Blevins childhood and identifying subsequent the crucial events and factors influencing his current mindset, behavior and successful position. His superior ability to perform and provide a high-level gaming and entertainment experience is influ-enced by his early on favorable social environment (i.e., parents, siblings, friends, wife), the personal inclination for competitive gaming and entertainment, high drive for learning and a vast amount of practice. After understanding the factors that got him to his current position, we reconstruct his current daily life with the potentials, challenges and his motivation. Mr. Blevins’s past and present narratives echo the finding of Johnson & Woodcock (2019) that PVGLS’s amount of work-ing time devoted to streaming was significant, often far more than the 35 average job hours. However, compared to the PVGLS interviews by Johnson and Woodcock (2019), Mr. Blevins seems also to exhibit a more entrepreneurial and profit-optimizing mindset. Overall, the reconstructed narrative, based on the journalists' interests, explores more in-depth what it means to be a PVGLS. In fact, the focus is on his life as a PVGLS, his challenges and poten-tials as a PVGLS, PVGLS as a career path. Blevins narrative clearly outlines the importance of various factors to become and stay one of the most popular and successful PVGLS. There is a large overlap in the factors mentioned in the past narrative, namely intense work ethic, sacrifice of social and personal goals, supportive social relationships, the motivation for this intense work ethic of achieve a certain level of financial security and the pressure to perform and compete at a high level to secure these financial outcomes. Ultimately, we investigated his perceptions and ambitions about his future. In many areas, there is an overlap between the attitudes and topics found by Johnson and Woodcock (2019) in their interviews. Both Mr. Blevins and the interviewed PVGLS share (1) the enjoy of their work and want it to continue indefinitely, despite the substantial amounts of time and effort investment and the emotional and background labor (2) feelings of precariousness in their streaming activities, having a backup plan (3) the common belief that Twitch and streaming would only continue to grow. It is surprising that even with Mr. Blevins’s level of financial success, being the biggest streamer in the world, he shares the sentiment of precariousness indicating a more cultural subjective than objective opinion. Further, Mr. Blevins seems more confident and optimistic about his future overall compared to the interviews PVGLS as Johnson and Woodcock (2019). Compared to Mr. Blevins’s clear vision for the future of his brand, Johnson and Woodcock (2019) do not mention any considerations of PVGLS for brand strategy and further expansion plans indicating a lack of strategizing and vision.
Online marketing to humans in their childhood, adolescent and early adulthood is an increasingly important research topic because it can on a larger scale than previously possible with traditional marketing lead to undesirable outcomes (e.g., obesity) and target more ethical grey zones between questionable, unfair and deceptive marketing to achieve its goals (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2005; De Pauw et al., 2019). In particular, social media influencer content and embedded marketing might have a large influence on young consumers (Folkvord et al., 2019).The largest recent research trend and solution to address the problems related to online young consumer marketing was the establishment of online marketing disclosure policies (De Veirman et al., 2019; FTC, 2017; Gürkaynak et al., 2018; Riefa & Clausen, 2019). Disclosures have their merits, but also shortcomings. In particular, increased process fairness (i.e., awareness of the selling intent) appears not to be enough to diminish undesirable outcomes because young consumers also need the knowledge and the skills to counter the undesirable effects resulting from marketing exposures (De Pauw et al., 2019; Isaac & Grayson, 2019; Jung & Heo, 2019; Youn & Shin, 2019). In intervention research targeting the increase of knowledge and skills of children, the largest yet comparatively small trend are school-based interventions (De Jans et al., 2019; Nelson, 2016; O’Rourke et al., 2019; Truman & Elliott, 2019). However, school-based interventions have a few vital shortcomings. First, school-based marketing literacy interventions are costly to scale. Second, they create further competition for scare school-based financial, human and attention resources. Lastly, they might not be frequent or context-specific enough to produce a lasting change in marketing-related knowledge and skills. In contrast, parent-targeted interventions that increase the parental intentions to engage in behaviors that increase marketing-related knowledge and the skills of children do not have these shortcomings and, as a result, can be considerably more important for researchers and policymakers (De Pauw et al., 2019; Isaac & Grayson, 2019; Jung & Heo, 2019; Youn & Shin, 2019). Compared to school-based interventions, parents have more opportunities and time to influence the media diet directly and educate them with higher frequency and higher context-specificity by daily discussing the marketing their children actually engage with (Chen & Shi, 2019; Lin et al., 2019; Nelson et al., 2017). Consequently, the thesis purpose was to advance the knowledge of interventions that target parental intentions to engage in marketing-literacy-relevant behaviors. To this end, the study combined a conceptual and theoretical framework based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and broader intervention science concepts, in particular behavioral change techniques (BCTs) and mechanisms of actions (MoA), and an advanced experimental design. More specifically, 21 theory-informed hypotheses were tested in a randomized controlled online experiment composed of six interventions and one control condition with a sample of 196 (pre-intervention and immediately post-intervention) and 166 participants (one-month post-intervention).Numerous contributions are made. First, relatively brief (35 minutes) TBP-based online interventions can have a significant effect on parental intentions to engage in the discussion of influencer marketing and on self-reported one-month post-intervention behaviors. Second, the combined framework was highly valuable to inform an intervention design that produces effects of practical and theoretical importance. Third, the parsimonious TPB-based model (i.e., consistent of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and intentions) is also appropriate for the context of parental mediation of influencer marketing because the three-based constructs could significantly explain the majority of parental intentions (74%), and parental intentions alone significantly predicted a moderate amount variance in the future behaviors (39%). Fourth, parental attitudes were the base-construct most susceptible to change and considerably predicted intentions. Therefore, research efforts should focus on the study of parental attitudes and practical efforts should focus on targeting parental attitudes until marketing and influencer marketing become mainstream topics in the parental discourse. Lastly, despite the high intentions in the attitude only condition, the condition had no significant impact on future behaviors. Even though the attitude and three-construct condition shared an identical intention level, the three-construct intervention had a marginally non-significant (.06) effect on future behaviors. The four-construct had a significant effect on future behaviors. As a result, time spent (10 minutes vs. 33 and 35 minutes) and associated elaboration might be an important moderator of future behavior.
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