Consumer Response To Instagram Advertising Posts: The Impact Of Product Demonstration And Message Sides Research

Today Social Networking Sites has a huge influence on consumers' decision making processes.The business communication has gone through significant change due to the popularity of Social Networks.More and more consumers make purchases relying on their peers' recommendations.Electronic word-of-mouth(eWOM)has become a very popular source to find and share information among consumers.This lead to the new marketing practices such as influencer marketing.Influencer marketing utilizes influential online opinion leaders-active users of Social Networking Sites with large amounts of followers to drive messages through promotional posts.These promotional posts can be seen as a form of paid for eWOM,effective due to the large user numbers of SNS and the trust consumers place in eWOM.There is need for scientific knowledge on influencer marketing but only limited research so far.This study aims to increase the scientific understanding of this yet tentatively researched marketing practice.This study investigates the effects of message sidedness and product depiction in promotional posts on Instagram on consumer responses.In the study 100 foreign students participated in a 2(message sidedness: One-sided vs.two-sided)x 2(product depiction: Abstract vs.context-based)online survey.Participants were presented with a fake Instagram post by an invented influencer and reported their purchase intentions,perceived source credibility and trustworthiness and product liking.The results showed that message sidedness has a significant influence on source trustworthiness whilst product depiction significantly affects product liking.Two-sided messages led to higher ratings of source trustworthiness by participants.However,the increased trust in the source of a two-sided message did not lead to heightened purchase intentions.Consumers responded with higher purchase intentions to a one-sided message albeit they put less trust in the source of it.Context-based product depictions lead to higher product liking ratings compared to abstract depictions.There was no significant effect of product depiction on purchase intentions.