Increasing Trust in Influencer Marketing: The Effects of Sponsorship Disclosure and Endorser Type

Abstract

Inconsistent results regarding consumers’ reactions to sponsorship disclosure call for more research into the mechanisms underlying the effects of sponsorship disclosure. Considering the critical role of trust in advertising and marketing, we examined how sponsorship disclosure influenced trust toward the endorser of a product and subsequently affected attitudes toward the endorsed product and intentions to purchase the product. These effects were examined for both influencers and celebrities. The results of an online experiment revealed that sponsorship disclosure increased trust toward the endorser, which in turn led to more positive attitudes toward the endorsed product and increased purchase intentions. However, these effects were significant only for influencers, but not for celebrities. These findings advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the effects of sponsorship disclosure and have implications for advertising regulation and social media marketing.

Keywords:

• sponsorship disclosure
• trust
• influencer marketing
• celebrity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We also tested the hypotheses with the full sample without excluding the participants who failed the manipulation check. The results showed that sponsorship disclosure did not significantly affect trust toward influencer endorsers, F(1, 516) = 1.34, p = .25, and trust toward celebrity endorsers, F(1, 516) = 2.82, p = .09. These results suggest that the effect of sponsorship disclosure discovered in our study hinges on conscious recognition of sponsorship disclosure in an endorser advertisement.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Faculty Research Grant at City University of Hong Kong(Project No. 7200638).