Is the use of influencer marketing and brand community effective for enhancing awareness of a new brand?

Undoubtedly, in the modern age of digitalization, Millennials, who are considered digital natives, have become a massive target market for salespersons. Changes in the way Millennials think accompanied by an explosion of social media have led to an increased focus on social media influencer marketing in the company sector. To help establish a new marketing paradigm that accounts for these changes, this research aims to conceptualize and investigate the process of building consumer-brand relationships with Millennial consumers through social media micro-influencers. Findings based on structural equation modeling revealed that four core characteristics of social media micro-influencers (i.e., authenticity, the meaning of the influencer, specific content, and secret sharing) were a significant antecedent of brand engagement and brand love, which, in turn, mediated the pathway from social media micro-influencer characteristics to brand evangelism. Understanding what social media micro-influencers mean to Millennials offers the promise of improving brand evangelism through more precise market analysis and market strategy. In the discussion, the paper introduces a three-stage building method towards brand evangelism through social media micro-influencer, including: (1) the stage of selecting influencers; (2) the stage of constructing intense emotional responses to the brand (brand engagement and brand love); and ultimately (3) the stage of becoming a brand evangelist. Lastly, limitations and future directions were discussed.

The video game and virtual reality became a new way of doing marketing considering their growing popularity and the advances of new technologies in the past few decades. In this paper is presented a research that investigates the impact of product placement in video games on gamers’ decisions on the purchase of goods from advertised. This research is focused on two of the most played games nowadays: FIFA 19 and Final Fantasy XV. A survey with 465 respondents was conducted to understand the antecedents that impact the purchase decision considering the stimulus originated from the product placement. To conduct the survey, a framework was designed based in the extant literature reviewed and finally considering the constructs of product placement, quality of virtual reality, brand recognition, brand familiarity, emotional response and purchase frequency. The results of the study suggest that gamers generally respond positively towards product placement and that product placement can indirectly impact emotional responses that will impact on consumer’s purchase intention. Hence, advertising in the video game enhances brand recognition and the perception of virtual reality. The framework presented in this paper represents the theoretical contribution of this paper, relating different concepts in the theory of product placement to the purchase intention. Therefore, the findings on this paper can help managers to find the best way to reach customers by improving the product placement strategy in the video games.

Branding strategy is crucial in strengthening firms’ market competitiveness. This study examined the influence of brand equity of luxury brands on attitudinal responses and behavioral intentions of consumers towards electronic word-of-mouth. The population of this study was consumers in Saudi Arabia who search about online reviews of luxury brands on social media platforms. This study used a convenience sampling technique. The research data were collected on-line from 277 luxury brand consumers in Saudi Arabia using a quantitative Likert-type survey. SPSS and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were used to examine the research hypotheses. The results of this study showed that brand equity and its components (brand image and brand awareness) have significant positive relationships with consumer attitude towards electronic word-of-mouth, as values of correlation coefficient were r = 0.440 and r = 0.396, respectively, at a significance level less than 0.01. Additionally, the results indicated that brand image and brand awareness have significant positive relationships with consumer intention to follow electronic word-of-mouth, as values of correlation coefficient were r = 0.336, r = 0.360, respectively, at a significance level less than 0.01. The findings of this study provide valuable theoretical and practical implications for managers and marketers in the luxury brand sector.