Virtual vs human: comparing persuasive factors in influencer marketing campaigns

Filova, Nicolette; Miguel, Cristina; Perez Vega, Rodrigo

Virtual vs human: comparing persuasive factors in influencer marketing campaigns

Lists

Tools

Filova, N., Miguel, C. and Perez Vega, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1619-317X (2025) Virtual vs human: comparing persuasive factors in influencer marketing campaigns. In: Vandenberg, K. M. and Tinger, M. (eds.) Rethinking Advertising. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 153-171. ISBN 9783031865350

Text - Accepted Version
· Restricted to Repository staff only until 18 July 2026.
378kB

It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing.

To link to this item DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-86536-7_9

Abstract/Summary

This chapter explores the evolving landscape of influencer marketing with the advance of virtual influencers—AI-powered, computer-generated characters designed to emulate human influencers. As traditional advertising faces growing consumer skepticism, social media influencers have emerged as compelling alternatives, with electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) playing a central role in shaping consumer behavior. Recently, virtual influencers have garnered attention for their ability to engage audiences, offering brands unprecedented control and consistency in their messaging. However, concerns around their authenticity, credibility, and ethical use remain prevalent. Drawing on empirical research, this chapter investigates how virtual influencers are perceived by social media users, with a specific focus on parasocial interactions and source credibility. Using in-depth interviews analyzed through thematic analysis, the study identifies key factors that make virtual influencers persuasive, including physical and social similarity to the target audience, engaging content, and interactive behaviors. While respondents acknowledge their appeal—especially in contexts such as technology promotion—virtual influencers are seen as less credible than human influencers when promoting products they cannot physically use. Nonetheless, credibility can be enhanced through third-party validation and relevant, high-quality content. The findings highlight that while virtual influencers hold promise, their persuasive power is highly context-dependent and currently falls short of human influencers in terms of perceived authenticity and trustworthiness. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the potential for virtual influencers to gain traction as technology improves and audience expectations evolve.

Item Type:	Book or Report Section
Refereed:	Yes
Divisions:	Henley Business School > Digitalisation, Marketing and Entrepreneurship
ID Code:	123636
Uncontrolled Keywords:	influencer, influencer marketing, virtual influencer
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan

Altmetric

Related URLs

Deposit Details

References

Ao, L., Bansal, R., Pruthi, N., & Khaskheli, M. B. (2023). Impact of Social Media Influencers on Customer Engagement and Purchase Intention: A Meta-Analysis. Sustainability, 15(3), 2744. Arora, A., Bansal, S., Kandpal, C., Aswani, R., & Dwivedi, Y. (2019). Measuring social media influencer index-insights from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Journal of retailing and consumer services, 49, 86–101. Arsenyan, J., & Mirowska, A. (2021). Almost human? A comparative case study on the social media presence of virtual influencers. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 155, 102694. Bendoni, W., & Danielian, F. (2019). The future of influencer marketing in the digital age of virtual influencers. In 2019 Global Fashion Management Conference at Paris, (pp. 604–607). Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. Conti, M., Gathani, J., & Tricomi, P. P. (2022). Virtual influencers in online social media. IEEE Communications Magazine, 60(8), 86–91. Chopra, A., Avhad, V., & Jaju, A. (2020). Influencer Marketing: An Exploratory Study to Identify Antecedents of Consumer Behavior of Millennial. Business Perspectives and Research, 9(1), 77–91. De Veirman, M., Cauberghe, V., & Hudders, L. (2017). Marketing through Instagram influencers: the impact of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude. International Journal of Advertising, 36(5), 798–828. Enke, N., & Borchers, N. S. (2021). Social media influencers in strategic communication: A conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication, in Borchers, N. S. (Ed.), Social Media Influencers in Strategic Communication. Routledge, London, UK, (pp. 17–23). Feine, J., Gnewuch, U., Morana, S., & Maedche, A. (2019). A Taxonomy of Social Cues for Conversational Agents. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 132, 138–161. 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.07.009. Freberg, K., Graham, K., McGaughey, K., & Freberg, L. (2011). Who are the social media influencers? A study of public perceptions of personality. Public Relations Review, 37(1), 90–92. Guren, T.W., Osmonbekov, T., & Czaplewski, A.J. (2006). eWOM: The impact of customer-to-customer online know-how exchange on customer value and loyalty. Journal of Business Research, 59(4), 449–456. Horton, D. & Wohl, R. (1956). Mass communication and para-social interaction: Observations on intimacy at a distance. Psychiatry, 19, 215–229. Ki, C. W., Cuevas, L. M., Chong, S. M., & Lim, H. (2020). Influencer marketing: Social media influencers as human brands attaching to followers and yielding positive marketing results by fulfilling needs. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 55, 102133. Ki, C.W.C., & Kim, Y.K., (2019). The mechanism by which social media influencers persuade consumers: the role of consumers’ desire to mimic. Psychology & marketing, 36(10), 905–922. Kim, D., & Kim, H., (2021). Trust me, trust me not: A nuanced view of influencer marketing on social media. Journal of Business Research, 134, 223–232. Kim, M. (2022). A Study on the Effect of Perceived Attractiveness and Social Distance of Virtual Influencer on Information Acceptance Intention. The journal of the convergence on culture technology. 국제문화기술진흥원, 8(2), 309–314. Lee, J. E., & Watkins, B. (2016). YouTube vloggers’ influence on consumer luxury brand perceptions and intentions. Journal of Business Research, 69(12), pp.5753–5760. Lim, J.S., Choe, M-J., Zhang, J., et al. (2020). The role of wishful identification, emotional engagement, and parasocial relationships in repeated viewing of live-streaming games: a social cognitive theory perspective. Computers in Human Behavior, 108, 106327. Lim, X., Mohd Radzol, A., Cheah, J., & Wong, M. (2017). The Impact of Social Media Influencers on Purchase Intention and the Mediation Effect of Customer Attitude. Asian Journal of Business Research, 7(2), 19–36. Liu, H., Lim, E. P., Lauw, H. W., Le, M. T., Sun, A., Srivastava, J., & Kim, Y. A. (2008). Predicting trusts among users of online communities: an epinions case study. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, (pp. 310–319). Lou, C. & Yuan, S. (2019). Influencer Marketing: How Message Value and Credibility Affect Consumer Trust of Branded Content on Social Media. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 19(1), 58–73. McGuire, W. J. (1985). “Attitudes and Attitude Change”, in Lindzey, G. & Aronson, E. (eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 2. New York: Random House, 233–346. Moustakas, E., Lamba, N., Mahmoud, D., & Ranganathan, C. (2020). Blurring Lines between Fiction and Reality: Perspectives of Experts on Marketing Effectiveness of Virtual Influencers, in International Conference on Cyber Security and Protection of Digital Services (pp.1–6). Available Online: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9138861/ Mrad, M., Ramadan, Z., & Nasr, L. (2022). Computer-generated influencers: the rise of digital personalities. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 40(5), pp.589–603. Munnukka, J., Uusitalo, O., & Toivonen, H. (2016). Credibility of a peer endorser and advertising effectiveness. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 33(3), 182–192. Salles, A., Evers, K., & Farisco, M. (2020). Anthropomorphism in AI. AJOB Neuroscience, 11(2), 88–95. Sands, S., Ferraro, C., Demsar, V. & Chandler, G. (2022). False idols: Unpacking the opportunities and challenges of falsity in the context of virtual influencers. Business Horizons, 65(6), 777–788. Shan, Y., Chen, K. J., & Lin, J. S. (2019). When social media influencers endorse brands: The effects of self-influencer congruence, parasocial identification, and perceived endorser motive. International Journal of Advertising, 39(5), 590–610. Sokolova, K., & Kefi, H. (2020). Instagram and YouTube bloggers promote it, why should I buy? How credibility and parasocial interaction influence purchase intentions. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 53, 101742. Stein, J., Breves, P.L. & Anders, N. (2022). Parasocial interactions with real and virtual influencers: The role of perceived similarity and human-likeness. New Media & Society, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221102900 . Stever, G. S. & Lawson, K. (2013). Twitter as a way for celebrities to communicate with fans: Implications for the study of parasocial interaction. North American Journal of Psychology, 15(2), 339–354. Sokolowski, T. (2018). Lil Miquela: How a virtual avatar became one of Time’s 25 most influential people [website]. Available at: https://outsideinsight.com/insights/lil-miquela-how-a-virtual-avatar-became-one-of-times-25-most-influential-people/ Su, N., Mariadoss, B. J., & Reynolds, D. (2015). Friendship on social networking sites: Improving relationships between hotel brands and consumers. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 51, 76–86. Tafesse, W., & Wood, B. (2021). Followers' engagement with instagram influencers: The role of influencers’ content and engagement strategy. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 58, 102303. Tang, J., Gao, H., Hu, X., & Liu, H. (2013). Exploiting homophily effect for trust prediction. Proceedings of the sixth ACM international conference on Web search and data mining - WSDM '13, (pp. 53-62). Wibawa, R. C., Pratiwi, C. P., Wahyono, E., Hidayat, D., & Adiasari, W. (2022). Virtual influencers: is the persona trustworthy?. Jurnal Manajemen Informatika (JAMIKA), 12(1), 51–62.

University Staff: Request a correction | Centaur Editors: Update this record

University of Reading

CentAUR: Central Archive at the University of Reading

Accessibility navigation

Virtual vs human: comparing persuasive factors in influencer marketing campaigns

Abstract/Summary

Page navigation

See also

Footer navigation