Rethinking Authenticity: An Investigation of Virtual Influencers: An Abstract

Marketing scholars and practitioners have unanimously accepted authenticity as a construct that holds positive value for brands (personal and commercial) (Moulard et al., 2016). Authenticity has attracted the attention of an increasing number of researchers (e.g., Beverland, 2005; Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Moulard et al., 2016). At a broad level, authenticity is defined as what is true, genuine, real (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010) and low authenticity and fakeness are used interchangeably (e.g., Pine & Gilmore, 2008). Most scholars who study authenticity conceptualize it as an integral property of an object and quite often operationalize it as an agent’s perception that the object is real, genuine, or true. This research goes beyond previous studies and challenges this narrow definition of authenticity as a property of an object. Instead, we redefine authenticity as a combination of both agent and object properties. In fact, we argue that it is only in the absence of internal motivations for authentic judgments in the agent that agents look outside of themselves for external clues in the object. Using our new definition, we show that fakeness, quite often condemned as the opposite of authenticity, can lead to authentic judgments by consumers and positive outcomes for brands and the firm. An experimental design is adopted to test hypotheses on the impact of the authenticity of social media influencers (SMIs) on brand credibility, brand engagement and purchase intention. These results will be relevant to managers and researchers as technology transforms virtual interactions with consumers and firm investments in social media marketing communications.