Exploring the Perception of Influencers Vs. Traditional Celebrities: Are Social Media Stars a New Type of Endorser?

The growing popularity of social media networks enables individuals to acquire large audiences of up to several million people on these platforms. Companies are starting to recognize this potential especially for young target groups, and to hire these so-called 'influencers' as endorsers in social media; these individual influences sometimes even take the place of traditional celebrities in corporate advertising. The question arises whether there is a difference in perception between these two types of endorsers and if so, which moderators influence these perceptions. In this study we explore consumers' general perception of social media influencers compared to traditional celebrities. We conduct an online survey with 590 respondents who were asked to rate 14 influencers and traditional celebrities in pairwise comparisons regarding their similarity. We apply multidimensional scaling (MDS) and find substantial differences in perceptions between the two groups. Additionally, we apply property fitting with evaluations regarding six different characteristics determining endorser effectiveness. While in total traditional celebrities are evaluated more favorably, this difference diminishes for high levels of familiarity and even reverses for perceived trustworthiness and similarity to oneself. The results indicate that marketers should carefully distinguish between influencers and traditional celebrities for endorsements, as systematic differences in perceptions between the groups are likely to have an impact on endorser effectiveness. Further research is needed to investigate which moderators (e.g. advertising type, product category) influence the perception and subsequently the endorsement effectiveness of the two types of endorsers.