Building Stronger Brand Evangelism for Sustainable Marketing through Micro-Influencer-Generated Content on Instagram in the Fashion Industry

Abstract

Micro-influencers have become powerful sources of information for consumers in the digital age. Marketers have strategically collaborated with micro-influencers as brand endorsers to generate valuable content, which attract the consumers and encourage them to engage with micro-influencers, leading to brand evangelism. This reflects the sustainable consumer‒brand relationships. In Southeast Asia, Instagram stands out as the preferred choice for fashion influencers for sharing product information and boosting consumer engagement. The current study is the first one incorporating literature-based frameworks, consisting of consumer-based digital content marketing, information relevance theory, observational learning theory, consumer‒influencer engagement behavior, and brand evangelism, into a unified framework to deal with the research gaps. The quantitative method was applied through using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The SmartPLS v. 3.3.9 software application was applied to explore the proposed model. The data were acquired from 499 Thai consumers who have followed and engaged the content with fashion micro-influencers on Instagram. The results revealed that the positive effect of topicality of content is the strongest antecedent that motivates consumer‒influencer engagement, while novelty, understandability, reliability, interestingness, and influencers’ authenticity of content also have a positive influence on consumer‒influencer engagement. Finally, the findings showed that consumer‒influencer engagement have vital effects on brand evangelism.

Understanding Different Types of Followers’ Engagement and the Transformation of Millennial Followers into Cosmetic Brand Evangelists

“…Moreover, the study by Rungruangjit and Charoenpornpanichkul [ 48 ] found that micro-influencer-generated content on Instagram can affect consumer–influencer engagements consisting of three dimensions: consuming (passive participation), contributing, and creating (active participation). This leads to sustainable consumer–brand relationships, including positive brand referral, purchase intention, and oppositional brand referral.…”

“…Moreover, social networking fans can efficiently spread positive word of mouth and defend their branded entity [ 42 ]. However, many previous research studies have focused on how customer engagement in online communities affects customer satisfaction, commitment, brand trust [ 43 ], brand affect, word-of-mouth [ 44 ], repurchase intention [ 45 ], and brand loyalty [ 46 , 47 ] but overlooked brand evangelism, which is essential in virtual communities because brand evangelism indicates that customers provide full support to the branded entity and build a deep emotional connection with it [ 48 ]. Continuing strong relationships through community fan pages is the most effective method of brand marketing management [ 41 ].…”

The Effects of Social Media Communication and e-WOM on Brand Equity: The Moderating Roles of Product Involvement

“…Although marketers can initiate e-WOM conversations directed to targeted customers, not all FGCs will exert the same impact on all consumers, with some content achieving a sizeable response, while other content does not [49]. It has been reported that reliable content, when created by online marketers, produces consumer agreement and increased attention to that content or online celebrities; whereas the absence of this reliability results in a failure to continue to view this content [50]. Therefore, creating accurate content represents an essential component in generating a positive customer response [51].…”

A Comprehensive Overview of Micro-Influencer Marketing: Decoding the Current Landscape, Impacts, and Trends

“…The previous research in the field of business and management underscores the impact of micro-influencers’ comparative advantages and user perception on followers’ engagement and purchase behavior. Specifically, micro-influencers offer advantages such as the potential for targeted communication and the substantial level of trust they establish with their audience [ 10 ], leading to followers of micro-influencers exhibiting higher engagement levels compared to followers of influencers at higher tiers [ 4 , 11 ]. However, existing research has not explored which characteristics of micro-influencers can reflect competitive advantage, that is, the antecedents of competitive advantage are not yet clear.…”