Impact of Virtual Influencers: A Study on Customer-Brand Engagement

By Samudrapom DamReviewed by Susha Cheriyedath, M.Sc.Feb 6 2024

In an article recently published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, researchers investigated branded and non-branded virtual influencers on Instagram to evaluate their impact on customer-brand engagement. Virtual influencers are human or non-human-like influencers generated using computers or artificial intelligence and have a huge social media following. They are presented as visually interactive and real-time entities.

Background

Increasing customer-brand engagement on social media has been the focus of brand success/attention for several years. Many studies have demonstrated that brands can build network-based online communities through social media to stimulate customer engagement by allowing customers to satisfy their social needs and develop social identities.

Additionally, customer-brand engagement substantially influences purchase intentions, willingness to share, and brand loyalty. Recently, virtual influencers have received significant attention among brands as a new approach to enhance customer engagement.

Brands are increasingly partnering with virtual influencers for product promotion and also focusing on developing them due to the popularity of such influencers. Several studies have explored virtual influencers and their use in marketing. However, most of these studies have analyzed virtual influencers from the perspective of influencer marketing, considering the significance of virtual influencers in marketing.

Only a few studies have analyzed virtual influencers based on their impact on customer-brand engagement. Moreover, previous studies did not analyze the differences in customer engagement and responses with brands depending on the characteristics of various virtual influencers.

The study

In this study, researchers investigated 33 virtual influencers on Instagram to determine whether brands should create virtual influencers or collaborate with them to increase customer-brand engagement. They also determined the customer-brand engagement level for various categories of non-branded and branded virtual influencers and how the virtual influencers' customer-brand engagement can be increased.

The objective of the study was to assess the credibility of virtual influencers among customers. Some of the influencers investigated in this study include Nobody Sausage, K/DA, Seraphine Song, Yameii Online, Bermuda, Imma, Lil Miquela, Minnie Mouse, Good Advice Cupcake, and Barbie.

Instagram was selected as the social media platform as it features among the fastest-growing social networking sites and is extensively used by influencers. Moreover, Instagram was also the most popular social media platform for consumers in 2022 to follow virtual influencers. Thus, this platform is suitable for analyzing virtual influencers' interactions with brands and customers.

The virtual influencers investigated in this study were selected from a list of 35 Instagram-verified virtual influencers in 2022. Among them, 25 influencers were included excluding the influencers that had suspended their activities for sampling purposes.

Out of the 25 influencers, 17 were non-branded and 8 were branded virtual influencers. Six branded and two non-branded virtual influencers were also included in the list of 25 selected influencers to increase the number of branded virtual influencers and supplement the sample of non-branded and branded virtual influencers in this study.

Overall, 19 non-branded and 14 branded influencers on Instagram were selected. The Instagram posts of every virtual influencer up to December 2022 were manually collected from the official Instagram accounts for primary data collection. A total of 23,260 posts were reviewed using a mixed method of descriptive statistics and content analysis. Specifically, the descriptive statistics on the number of followers, comments, and likes were initially collected, and then customer-brand engagement was analyzed using SPSS.

Subsequently, highly engaged comments and posts were content-analyzed and categorized for all virtual influencers depending on the engagement rate between the brand and the customer. DiVoMiner was utilized to categorize the virtual influencers through content analysis.

Significance of the study

The investigation of 33 virtual influencers showed that branded influencers were less engaged than non-branded influencers. Virtual influencers demonstrated different impacts on customers and brands based on the implicit/explicit marketing intentions they show in their posts. Thus, this study disagreed with the outcomes of previous studies that said that every virtual influencer produces positive brand benefits and is effective in increasing brand awareness and building brand benefits.

Additionally, this study categorized virtual influencers into brand assistants, product demonstrators, social connectors, and virtual storytellers and complemented previous research by including several key factors to understand virtual influencer marketing's operational mechanisms, such as promotional characteristics, character narratives, and community reaction.

Moreover, this study also classified current virtual influencers into humanoid, doll-like, two-dimensional (2D) animated, and animalistic virtual influencers based on humanization and authenticity. Results from the investigation demonstrated that the humanization and authenticity of virtual influencers do not impact differences in customer-brand engagement. The differences in virtual influencers' customer-brand engagement were primarily impacted by their character narratives and marketing intentions in the posts, promotional characteristics, and social media platforms.

Conclusion

To summarize, the high customer-brand engagement displayed by non-branded virtual influencers indicated that brands are not required to create their virtual influencers by making significant investments to increase customer-brand engagement. Additionally, brands must prefer brand assistants and social connectors while selecting virtual influencers in their collaborations, as these categories of influencers displayed higher customer-brand engagement compared to product demonstrators and virtual storytellers. Finally, brands must not explicitly present their marketing intentions in virtual influencers' posts as it can reduce customer-brand engagement.