Influencer marketing for hedonic and utilitarian products: counterintuitive tourism findings

This work investigates how the relevance of social influencers’ product-specific expertise and utilitarian/hedonic argument style depends on consumers’ (hedonic or utilitarian) consumption goals. The experiment consists of comparing a hotel selection for a vacation (hedonic condition) to a hotel chosen for a seminar trip (utilitarian condition). To verify the hypotheses, a structural equation model is developed. Contradicting human intuition, (1) expertise has a similar importance under hedonic and utilitarian conditions. Regarding (2) argument style, the results indicate the necessity for adaptation to a particular consumption goal. This finding marks a surprising contrast to prior results. Collectively, these findings clarify the ideal pairing of influencer characteristics and consumption goals in the context of influencer marketing.