Fake human but real influencer: the interplay of authenticity and humanlikeness in Virtual Influencer communication?
Naan Ju,
Terry Kim,
Hyunjoo Im
Abstract:Recently, there has been a lot of interest in industry and academia in virtual influencers (VIs). This study aimed to augment the understanding of VI marketing by exploring the relationship between VI’s characteristics (i.e., their humanlikeness level and operator type), their social media post characteristics (i.e., emotional expression, use of pronouns, use of punctuation marks), and consumer engagement. The analysis of three popular VIs’ Instagram profiles and posts revealed that VIs with less humanlike app… Show more
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