ABSTRACT
With the growth of influencer marketing, so has the establishment of rules in regard to native advertising and sponsored content grown. Viewers more than ever question influencers’ authenticity. This chapter will focus on understanding customers’ attitudes towards YouTube beauty influencers and the differences in their credibility in sponsored and non-sponsored content. By investigating consumer attitudes, we can provide insight into what type of influencer is deemed trustworthy by today’s social norms. We apply the source credibility model in the context of beauty social media personalities to explore each dimension of the model (attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise) and its impact on credibility. A quantitative content analysis of 2,591 macro-influencers’ YouTube comments under sponsored and non-sponsored video was conducted to determine whether all of the model’s aspects have an impact on the endorser’s credibility. The findings suggest that there are differences in perceived credibility depending on the type of content watched by the viewer. This can have an impact on influencer marketing campaigns and the future of this discipline.
