Influencer Marketing and Behavioral Outcomes in Social Media: Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Influencer Marketing (also called Influence Marketing) is a communication method responding to major issues that brands and communication agencies encounter when communicating with their targets on social networks. Given the continual change in communication methods, brands must be creative in developing effective processes capable of reaching consumers who are averse to intrusive advertisements. Going through an influencer gives the campaign credibility with a more authentic and closer message, relayed by an opinion leader. The purpose of this paper is to review the academic literature on influencer marketing and its behavioral outcomes on social media to highlight the current state of the art, the key research themes and the implications for management research and practice. A systematic literature review of academic research on social media influencer marketing has been conducted to gather, examine and synthesize studies related to behavioral outcomes that result from thesis communication methods. By following a review protocol based on both automatic and manual search for the Scopus and Web of science database, all relevant studies on influencer marketing were identified and analyzed.  Following the results identified by a critical conceptualization of the concept of influence marketing. The main key research topics covered were categorized and divided into four main areas which were further analyzed: The influence of SMIs communication strategy on user/consumer behavior; Influencer-Follower interpersonal relationship; Social media endorsements and the perception of SMIs as human brands; Celebrity level of SMIs and their congruence with brand endorsements are the main themes that have been mostly identified and discussed in our study.

JEL classification: M31

Paper type: Theoretical Research