With or Without “#sponsored” in Influencer Marketing: How an Advertising Literacy Intervention Can Help Mitigate Advertising effects

• In Event: HIGH-DENSITY: At the Intersection of Cognition, Emotion, and Message

Abstract

Amidst the burgeoning surge of innovative marketing practices on social media, to ensure consumer protection, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a series of enforcement policies that regulate sponsorship disclosures in social media advertising. Focusing on the phenomenon of influencer marketing, the current study revisited and reconsidered ad literacy as a potentially effective defense for consumers to cope with influencer marketing. Based on the results of three pretests (N = 369), the present study administered a 2 (ad literacy intervention vs. control) × 2 (disclosure: yes vs. no) × 3 (message repetition) mixed experimental design study (N = 279) to explicate the relationship among ad literacy intervention, persuasion knowledge, and advertising effects. Results suggest that, in the intervention condition, upon seeing disclosure (vs. no disclosure), participants tended to activate their conceptual persuasion knowledge, which, in turn, led to their coping behaviors, and ultimately resulted in lower eWOM and lower purchase intentions. In contrast, in the control condition (no ad literacy intervention), the presence of disclosure (vs. no disclosure) did not trigger the occurrence of such process.

Authors

• Chen Lou, Nanyang Technological University

• Yang Feng, San Diego State U