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Mapping the influence of influencer Influencer

marketing:
marketing: a bibliometric analysis a bibliometric
review
Abhishek
Institute of Management Technology Ghaziabad, Ghaziabad, India, and
979
Mukta Srivastava
T A Pai Management Institute, Manipal, India Received 17 March 2021
Revised 7 June 2021
Abstract 16 July 2021
Purpose – The advent of social media has led to the emergence of influencers and the domain of influencer Accepted 16 July 2021
marketing (IM). Despite being a popular and evolving research domain, it still lacks a comprehensive and
systematic bibliometric analysis in the field. This study attempts to fill this critical gap by mapping the
influence of IM to understand the intellectual structure and propose a future research agenda for scholars
working in the domain.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors have used VOSviewer and Biblioshiny packages for
conducting a variety of analyses such as citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, keyword analysis and three-
field plot analysis.
Findings – The main findings include identifying six clusters in the domain, i.e. “mechanism of IM,”
“measuring the impact of IM,” “persuasive cues in IM,” “likability factors of influencers,” “authenticity of
influencers” and “understanding followers.” Future research guidelines have been proposed in each of the six
clusters, followed by research and managerial implications, conclusion and limitations.
Originality/value – This study is probably the first attempt at providing a comprehensive bibliometric
analysis in the domain using a combination of VOSviewer and Biblioshiny packages.
Keywords Influencer marketing, Social media influencers, Bibliometric analysis, Bibliographic coupling,
VOSviewer, Biblioshiny
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
With the growing popularity of social media, many brands have changed their marketing
communication strategies and are increasingly relying on social media to engage with
consumers. Social media has spawned the rise of social media influencers who, as individual
content creators, have utilized social media as a megaphone (Mcquarrie et al., 2013) to share
their opinions with large audiences in an authentic manner (Morris and Anderson, 2015). For
gaining the attention and trust of consumers, brands are using social media influencers
whose social media accounts are followed by millions of people. A significant budget is
devoted to influencer marketing (IM), with projected worldwide spending of USD 15 bn in
2022 (Waller, 2020). While 55.4% of companies employed IM in 2019, this number was
reported as 62.3% for 2020 and is expected to touch 72.5% by 2022 (Williamson, 2021). With
greater budget allocation, IM has emerged as an important research domain, with
practitioners and researchers devoting time and resources to understand the phenomenon.
Even though IM is a recently emerged domain, the last few years have seen many papers
with Scopus reporting more than 90 pieces published in 2020 alone. As the domain grows,
there is a need to understand the scattered research in IM and the evolution of this domain. To
understand this domain, we have used bibliometric analysis techniques that are considered
unbiased and free from researchers’ subjectivity (Baumgartner and Pieters, 2003). The study
aims to understand the core knowledge structure of the IM domain. More specifically, we
intend to develop the intellectual structure of the domain. With this study, we also identify an
objective list of the most influential content, prolific and most cited researchers, their Marketing Intelligence & Planning
Vol. 39 No. 7, 2021
pp. 979-1003
The authors thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their invaluable suggestions on an © Emerald Publishing Limited
0263-4503
earlier version of this manuscript. DOI 10.1108/MIP-03-2021-0085
MIP affiliations and networks among authors and journals, which can foster cooperation among
39,7 current and prospective researchers in this domain. We also provide future research
pathways in this field by providing a detailed set of recommendations for future research.
Given the evolving nature of this domain, we think such an endeavor is important and timely.
Understanding the budding nature of an emerging field is also not without precedence. Some
of the previous bibliometric studies (e.g. Mustak et al., 2020) have been conducted on
contemporary topics such as artificial intelligence.
980 This paper contributes in three important ways. First, to the best of our knowledge, we
have not come across any comprehensive bibliometric analysis paper in the domain of IM.
Thus, this is the first complete systematic quantitative analysis of the domain. Second, based
on the bibliometric analysis, we propose six clusters that provide clear pathways for
researchers who want to increase the depth and breadth of research in this domain. Third, we
have used Biblioshiny, a new software, which–to the best of our knowledge–has not been
employed until now for bibliometric analysis studies in marketing.

Theoretical background of influencer marketing

IM started becoming vital with the emergence of social media platforms and user-generated
content. While firms and brands were using their own social media channels to create online
buzz, they started investing in the content of third-party social media channels to disseminate
product information (Zhou and Duan, 2015). Consumers started preferring many of these
seemingly independent social media channels and these seem to exert more influence on
consumers than firm operated social media channels (Gu et al., 2012). An academic search of
the term “influencer marketing” showed that the term was first used in 2008 in a book by
Brown and Hyes (2008) with the same name. The first peer-reviewed article in the domain was
published in 2011. Freberg et al. (2011, p. 90) defined social media influencers as a “new type of
independent third-party endorsers who shape audience attitudes through blogs, tweets, and
other social media applications.” The main premise is that a similar message is perceived
as more authentic and credible when it is provided by a fellow consumer than an advertiser
(De Veirman et al., 2017). The influencer, projected as a fellow consumer, used social media
channels to spread the news to her followers, very similar to how opinion leaders used mass
media to pass on information to the general public (Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955). Researchers
have explained the higher impact of third-party social media channels and their user-
generated content through different theories. Amongst all the views, para-social interaction
(Horton and Wohl, 1956) is the most widely quoted theory.
Horton and Wohl (1956) proposed parasocial interaction in the context of mass media
options like radio, television and movies. They contended that the spectator and media
characters develop a relationship which is very similar to the one between consumer and
those in the primary reference group. While playing the fictional role, the characters use
direct address mode and are engaged with others as if conversing personally. Consequently,
the spectator assumes that one is meeting the character as if the character is in the circle of
one’s peers (Horton and Wohl, 1956).
In the context of social media marketing, Kim et al. (2015) found that social networking site
usage is positively related to the development of a parasocial relationship with celebrities.
Unlike mainstream celebrities, influencers are believed to be more easily believable, intimate
and easy to relate (De Veirman et al., 2017). Also, as influencers are easily accessible to their
followers and interact with them through the textual and visual narration of their lives, they
are said to generate parasocial interactions (De Veirman et al., 2017). Social network users can
create such a parasocial relationship with influencers who are content creators on YouTube,
Facebook and Instagram by subscribing to their channels and following their posts
published on social media (Sokolova and Kefi, 2020). As a result, recent research in IM has
employed parasocial interactions to explain the phenomenon of IM.
 With the emergence of IM as an exciting area of research, many scholars have focused on Influencer
understanding the nuances of this topic. Scopus research of systematic review of papers on marketing:
IM till December 2020 showed that early work in understanding the comprehensive nature of
this domain focused on systematic literature reviews (SLRs). This included works by
a bibliometric
Sundermann and Raabe (2019), De Veirman et al. (2019), and Nafi and Ahmed (2019). While review
Sundermann and Raabe’s (2019) work focused on strategic influencer communication, De
Veirman et al. (2019) focused on the effects of IM on young children under 12 years. Nafi and
Ahmed’s (2019) paper discusses the ethical use of influencers in the tourism sector. The recent 981
two papers by Hudders et al. (2020) and Vrontis et al. (2021) also focus on SLR with the former
providing insight into the research on the strategic use of social media influencers and later
presents an integrative multidimensional framework that considers antecedents, mediators
and moderators of social media influencer, as well as contextual factors that translate into
consumer behavior. While SLR papers are considered useful when the scope of review is
specific and the dataset is small and manageable enough so that its contents can be manually
reviewed (Donthu et al., 2021), its use is not recommended when the dataset is large and the
scope of review is broad. Since we wanted this research to be comprehensive and not be
specific on any particular theme, we decided to use bibliometric analysis as per the
recommendations of Donthu et al. (2021).

Materials and methods

Data collection
We used Elsevier’s Scopus database to obtain the data for the study. Scopus is a highly
reputed abstract and citation database that contains significant publications from renowned
journals and research scholars (Van Eck and Waltman, 2014). As of January 2020, there are
more than 25,000 (over 23,452 peer-reviewed) journals listed on Scopus, with over 77.8 m
publications having 1.7 bn citations (Elsevier, 2020). The choice of Scopus over other popular
databases was made due to multiple reasons. First, though there are other databases
available for conducting bibliometric analysis such as PubMed and Web of Science (WoS)
(AlRyalat et al., 2019), PubMed focuses more on life sciences and bio-medicinal research
(AlRyalat et al., 2019), as against Scopus and WoS, which offer multidisciplinary coverage.
Second, Scopus has wider coverage than WoS as it has over 25,100 journals as against 21,419
listed on WoS. Further, Scopus guarantees access to 1.7 bn citations against 1.6 bn on WoS
(Elsevier, 2020; WoS, 2021). This comparison convinced us to go ahead with Scopus for data
collection.
The first search query was “TITLE-ABS-KEY (((influencer AND “social media”) OR (“IM”
AND “social media”)))”. This resulted in 757 documents. Since we wanted to restrict our search
till October 2020 (the data were obtained from Scopus on November 1, 2020), we excluded
the year 2021 from our search criteria, which resulted in 745 documents. We then restricted
the subject area to “Business & Management,” due to which 204 documents remained in the
output. As per Ramos-Rodr
ı gue and Ru
ız-Navarro (2004), published articles, articles in the
press, and reviews are considered “certified knowledge.” Hence, the search was restricted to
them in terms of inclusion criteria, which resulted in 172 documents. We then restricted our
search query to only journal articles and thus excluded documents such as conference
proceedings, theses, book chapters and so on. With this filter, two documents were excluded.
Finally, 168 articles remained in our search output after excluding all non-English articles.
Citation information, bibliographic information, abstracts and keywords, and references of
these 168 articles were downloaded in a comma-separated file (.csv) from Scopus.

Data analysis
We used Biblioshiny and VOSviewer to conduct a variety of analyses. VOSviewer was used to
identify the top ten most influential authors, journals, countries and articles. Bibliographic
MIP coupling was also performed using the same tool. Other analyses were performed on
39,7 Biblioshiny. First, keywords analysis was used to obtain the thematic map, treemap, word
cloud and trend topic matrix. Then, a three-field plot was also obtained to view the interaction
between countries, keywords and journals. Lastly, few additional analyses were performed,
which provided us with an annual scientific production graph, average article citations per
year, country scientific production map, author impact, source impact and most local cited
sources.
982

Results and discussion

Descriptive details of publications
The first output pertained to the annual scientific production of 168 documents in the
domain of “‘IM.” Research in the domain emerged in 2011 (with four documents), gained
momentum post-2016, and is now witnessing massive growth with 41 documents published
in 2019 and 77 documents published by October 2020 with an annual growth rate of 38.9%
[1]. The second output depicts the average article citations per year. The average citation
per year is maximum in the year 2017 (11.3) followed by 2011 (9.1) and 2019 (7.5). This might
be due to the most cited article in the domain by De Veirman et al. (2017) (177 citations),
followed by Freberg et al. (2011) (167 citations) and Goodman et al. (2011) (141 citations).
The article-wise analysis resulted in 74 such documents, which have at least three citations.
Out of these 74 articles, it was found that only 33 were linked to each other. The figure
indicates the presence of two seminal studies in the domain (Freberg et al., 2011; De Veirman
et al., 2017).
An author-wise analysis on VOSviewer revealed that 134 such authors have at least one
document and five citations. De Veirman M. and Hudders L. have the same number of
citations (193) on the two articles they authored together (De Veirman et al., 2017; De Veirman
and Hudders, 2020). Cauberghe V. stands next with 177 citations for the same article
(De Veirman et al., 2017). It was found that Jin S. V. had the maximum number of documents
(i.e. four), but her documents received only 42 citations, and hence she could not make it
through the top10 list. In this context, a more important analysis, i.e. author impact analysis
was also conducted on Biblioshiny, which revealed that Jin S. V. has maximum h-index (i.e.
three). Since De Veirman M. and Hudders L. both have only two documents, they remained in
the fifth position. The table also presents additional information such as g-index, m-index and
year of first publication by authors.
A source-wise analysis on VOSviewer was also conducted, resulting in 26 journals with at
least two articles published in the domain with at least two citations. With five documents
and 221 citations, International Journal of Advertising is at the top position, followed by Public
Relations Review (seven documents, 219 citations) and Journal of Retailing and Consumer
Services (four documents and 93 citations). In order to get a more in-depth understanding
of sources and their impact, some additional analyses were conducted on Biblioshiny.
As per the results of source impact analysis, Journal of Marketing Management has the
maximum h-index and the maximum number of articles (i.e. nine), followed by Public
Relations Review (seven documents) and Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services
(four papers). In this list, International Journal of Advertising is at the fourth position since its
h-index is three despite having the maximum number of total citations (TCs). Other additional
information such as g-index, m-index and year of first publication in the domain by a journal
is also given in the table. We also analyzed most local cited sources. Journal of Advertising is
the most locally cited source in the domain with 225 local citations (LC), followed by Journal of
Consumer Research (213 LC) and Journal of Marketing (207 LC).
Our next analysis was about understanding the top countries in IM based on the number
of citations. With 70 documents and 840 citations, the USA stands at the top position. Though
the UK has 18 documents, it still stands at number three position with 188 citations after Influencer
Belgium, which has only two documents but 193 citations. The reason is that the most marketing:
influential authors in the domain (i.e. De Veirman M. and Hudders L.) belong to Belgium.
a bibliometric
review
Keyword analyses
We analyzed the top 30 most salient keywords and created the treemap of the top 10
keywords. Results showed that “social media” is the most frequently used keyword (26%) in 983
the domain, followed by “social networking (online)” (16%) and “Internet” and “marketing”
(both 12%).
Trend topic analysis was also performed to understand the top three most trending topics
in the domain. The abstract was chosen as the field of analysis, while the minimum word
frequency was set to ten. Trend topic analysis shows that in the year 2020, “influencer” and
“brand” are trending while “social,” “media” and “marketing” were the top three trending
topics in the year 2019. We can also conclude from the analysis that the topics are changing
continuously every year, demonstrating the evolving nature of the domain.
Finally, to obtain the evolving themes in the domain of IM, a thematic map analysis was
conducted through Biblioshiny. The analysis was run with 200 keywords and a minimum of
10 cluster frequency (per thousand documents), which resulted in 7 clusters. The size of the
circles is proportional to the number of keywords occurring in that cluster (Cobo et al., 2011).
For instance, under the “social media” theme, 36 separate keywords have appeared 56 times
cumulatively, making it the biggest cluster followed by “social networking (online)” having
24 separate keywords while “conceptual framework” is the smallest with only five keywords.
The thematic map has been created based on two dimensions, i.e. centrality and density.
Centrality of a given cluster measures “the intensity of its links with other clusters” (Callon et al.,
1991, p. 164). It measures the significance of a theme in developing a particular domain (Cobo
et al., 2011). Thematic map analysis shows that “social networking (online)” is the most
significant theme in the domain since it has maximum linkages with the other clusters and
has high centrality. On the other hand, the theme “conceptual framework” has very low
centrality, which means that it has minimum linkages with other clusters in the domain.
Density refers to “the strength of the links that tie the words making up the cluster together”
(Callon et al., 1991, p. 165). It represents the theme’s ability to maintain and develop itself over
a period in the domain (Callon et al., 1991; Cobo et al., 2011). Thematic map analysis shows that
the two themes having maximum density are “behavioral research” and “websites.” This
represents that the keywords falling within these clusters are closely tied up and linked
together. While “conceptual framework” and “social media” both have low density indicating
their lesser ability to maintain and further develop themselves in due course of time, and
hence may soon disappear in the IM domain.
In a nutshell, we can say that centrality indicates “importance,” while density indicates
“development” of a theme. From the figure, we can further conclude that “social networking
(online)” and “behavioral research” both are motor-themes since they are both important and
well-developed themes (Cobo et al., 2011). “Social media,” however, is a highly developed but
isolated theme and hence losing its importance in the domain (Cobo et al., 2011).
“Collaborative filtering” and “conceptual framework” fall under the quadrant of emerging
or declining themes as per Cobo et al. (2011) since they carry both low-centrality and low-
density. This can be further confirmed by looking at the keywords falling under these themes.
Under “collaborative filtering,” the presence of keywords such as “data mining,”
“factorization,” “matrix factorization,” “social media analysis” and so on indicates that this
is an emerging theme in the domain and needs further attention and development. Finally,
thematic map analysis shows that none of the clusters completely falls in the fourth quadrant;
however, “websites” and “community” partially belong here, which represents that these
MIP themes are significant for the IM domain, but they are still developing and need the attention
39,7 of IM scholars (Cobo et al., 2011).

Three-field plot
Figure 1 presents the three-field plot for the country, keywords and journal. This figure is
based on the more popular Sankey diagrams (Riehmann et al., 2005). The size of the boxes is
984 proportional to the frequency of occurrences (Riehmann et al., 2005), hence we can say that the
USA has the maximum number of publications in the domain, and its scholars are publishing
more on “social media,” “IM” and “social media influencers.” The main interest of IM scholars
in the UK and Australia is also “social media,” while in Canada, IM researchers’ favorite theme
is “social media marketing.” Germans are also publishing majorly on “social media” and “IM,”
the keyword “influencer” is popular among Indians, while for Indonesians, it is “purchase
intention.” If we see, journal-wise, the keyword “IM” is well-accepted by the Journal of Digital
and Social Media Marketing, “Twitter” is popular among USA scholars and is published in
Journal of Interactive Advertising and Public Relations Review, whereas “Instagram” is more
prevalent in International Journal of Scientific and Technology Research and International
Journal of Advertising.

Bibliographic coupling
Bibliometric coupling was conducted using VOSviewer to better understand the IM domain
and its evolving themes. While conducting this analysis, units of analysis can be author,
document or source (Van Eck and Waltman, 2019). In this study, “document” was selected as
the unit of analysis, and the fractional counting method was chosen. The minimum threshold
for the number of citations was set to ten, which resulted in 38 documents, out of which 33
were linked together (Figure 2). As we can see, six clusters were obtained. The first cluster
was identified with yellow color having four articles with the theme “Mechanism of influencer
marketing.” The second cluster, identified with red color, was the biggest one with eight
articles having a theme of “Measuring the impact of influencer marketing,” third with purple
having a theme of “Persuasive cues in influencer marketing,” fourth with blue color and
“Likability factors of influencers” theme, fifth with green and “Authenticity of influencers”
theme and sixth cluster present “Understanding followers” theme depicted with aqua color.
Table 1 provides cluster-wise listing of papers, along with their main findings.

Future research directions

One of the aims of this study was to propose guidelines for future researchers working in the
domain of IM. We have listed the future research direction for each cluster separately.
Cluster 1: Mechanism of influencer marketing
Future research in this theme is important to understand various mechanisms by which
researchers can understand the working of IM in different contexts. In the last couple of years,
many research papers in the IM domain (e.g. Jin et al., 2019; Jin and Muqaddam, 2019) have
used parasocial interaction as a theoretical basis to explain the phenomenon. However, given
the role of influencers being similar to celebrity endorsers, researchers can also look at the
celebrity endorsement theories to examine the working mechanism of IM. One can go beyond
the source theories and consider the product match-up hypothesis (Kamins and Gupta, 1994)
and the meanings transfer model (McCracken, 1989). It has been observed that the
congruence between product/brand and celebrity (Lee and Thorson, 2008) and between
celebrity and consumer (e.g. Choi and Rifon, 2012) work in the context of celebrity
endorsement, so it will be worthwhile to examine if the same is tenable for IM. Different
 Influencer
marketing:
a bibliometric
review

985

Figure 1.
A three-field plot of
country, keyword and
journal
 39,7
MIP

986

Figure 2.

of 33 articles
Bibliographic coupling
Cluster 1:
Mechanism of Influencer Marketing

Cluster 2:
Measuring impact of
Cluster 4:
Influencer Marketing
Likeability factors of
influencers

Cluster 6:

Cluster 3: Understanding followers

Persuasive cues in
Influencer Marketing
Cluster 5:
Authenticity of influencers

Source(s): VOSviewer
Cluster S. Total link
no no Article Title Article type Summary of main idea Citations Links strength

1 1 Carter and Yeo Internet-enabled collective intelligence as Empirical – Based on the online buying experience of 43 12 3 2
(2018) a precursor and predictor of consumer Ethnographic respondents, a preliminary collective intelligence
behavior content analysis (CI) effect framework is developed. This CI
framework consists of four elements–form of
communication, the language of communication,
criteria for choice, opinion leaders and influencers
on both prior and post–purchase behavior–and
their predictive effect on the consumer purchase
process
2 Hamilton et al Social media and value creation: The role Empirical – This study collects data from 125 respondents on 40 17 15
(2016) of interaction Satisfaction and interaction Survey brand-consumer interactions to understand the
immersion effect of social media brand-consumer interaction
on three types of customer value namely customer
lifetime value (CLV), customer influencer value
(CIV) and customer knowledge value (CKV).
Results suggest that interaction satisfaction
positively influences CLV and CIV, whereas
interaction immersion impacts CIV and CKV.
3 Ki and Kim The mechanism by which social media Empirical - survey This research collects data from 395 respondents 11 21 20
(2019) influencers persuade consumers: The role to test the social media influencers’ influencer
of consumers’ desire to mimic mechanism which the study proposes. The
influence mechanism works through four stages
and identified five aspects of influencing posts, i.e.
attractiveness, prestige, expertise, information
and interaction
4 Porter et al. Gender differences in trust formation in Empirical - survey Based on the survey of 232 respondents from 26 6 5
(2012) Virtual communities virtual communities, the paper explores if gender
difference exists in the process of online trust
formation. Findings suggest that gender
moderates the effect of managerially controlled
trust influencers

(continued )
a bibliometric
Influencer

987
review
marketing:

Details of clusters
Table 1.
 39,7
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Table 1.
Cluster S. Total link
no no Article Title Article type Summary of main idea Citations Links strength

2 1 Chae et al. (2017) Spillover effects in seeded word-of-Mouth Empirical – Dataset This research used data from 390 social media 29 11 13
marketing campaigns campaigns across 192 product categories to test
for three types of electronic word-of-mouth
(eWOM) spillover effects, namely focal product
spillovers, brand spillover and category
spillovers. The finding suggests brand spillover
and category spillover effects exist which goes
beyond the normal product-related intended
eWOM
2 Hughes et al. Driving brand engagement through Empirical – Dataset The research used real in-market customer 26 22 29
(2019) online social influencers: An empirical and experiment response data and data from an experiment to
investigation of sponsored blogging explain that blogger characteristics and blog post
campaigns content affect online engagement and it gets
moderated by social media platform type and
campaign advertising intent
3 Kupfer et al. The role of the partner Brand’s social Empirical – Dataset A data set featuring 442 movies, including 1,318 17 12 13
(2018) media power in brand alliances actor–movie combinations and weekly social
media data was used to test a conceptual
framework about the influence of the social media
power of partner brands on brand alliance
success. The power of partner brands was
explained using three concepts viz social media
power potential (size and activity of the social
media network), social media power exertion
(different posting behaviors and comments) and
their interaction
4 Lin et al. (2018) Using online opinion leaders to promote Conceptual This article proposes that online opinion leaders 30 18 12
the hedonic and utilitarian value of can serve appeal leadership functions, serve
products and services knowledge leadership functions and take multiple
roles to promote different types of products and
services. A five-stage planning process consisting
of planning, recognition, alignment, motivation
and coordination was also proposed

(continued )
Cluster S. Total link
no no Article Title Article type Summary of main idea Citations Links strength

5 Verma (2013) Effectiveness of social network sites for Empirical - survey A survey of 138 respondents was analyzed using 12 7 5
influencing consumer purchase decisions regression to provide support for dependency
relationship wherein ten different communication
forms in social networking sites act as an
influencer to various stages of consumer purchase
decision
6 Alp and Identifying topical influencers on Twitter Empirical – This research is using data from 20 influencers on 23 3 4
€
Ogu uc€
€d€ u (2018) based on user behavior and network Dataset and Twitter to create a model to identify topical
topology experiment influencers on Twitter who are experts on a
special topic. The model integrates data from the
information obtained from network topology and
the information obtained from user actions and
activities in Twitter
7 Zhang et al. Modeling the role of message content and Empirical – The paper develops a model to examine the role of 47 7 10
(2017) influencers in social media rebroadcasting Dataset content, influence and content-user fit on social
media rebroadcasting behavior. Results from
individual-level split hazard model analysis show
that rebroadcasting a message depends not only
on message content but also on the message’s fit
with a user
8 Zhou and Duan An empirical study of how third-party Empirical – Dataset Based on data from the sale of online software, 29 6 4
(2015) websites influence the feedback this study examines the impact of eWOM by third-
mechanism between online word-of- party websites (called external eWOM) and third-
Mouth and retail sales party free sampling influence on eWOM of the
retailer-hosted website (called internal eWOM).
Findings suggest that external eWOM amplifies
the impact of past sales on the volume of internal
eWOM and third-party free sampling weakens the
impact of past sales on internal eWOM

(continued )
a bibliometric
Influencer

989
review
marketing:

Table 1.
 39,7
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Table 1.
Cluster S. Total link
no no Article Title Article type Summary of main idea Citations Links strength

3 1 Arora et al. Measuring social media influencer index- Empirical – The research proposes a mechanism for 43 18 16
(2019) insights from Facebook, Twitter and Dataset measuring influencers’ influence on Facebook,
Instagram Twitter, and Instagram. Findings suggest that
engagement, outreach, sentiment and growth can
play a key role in identifying the influencers for
social media promotion and engagement for larger
outreach
2 Ge and Gretzel Emoji rhetoric: a Social media influencer Empirical - dataset Based on 600 posts by the top 200 Weibo 21 9 4
(2018) perspective influencers, this research develops a taxonomy of
six influencer moves supported by emojis which
social media influencer’s attempts to initiate
engagement with their followers
3 Sokolova and Instagram and YouTube bloggers Empirical – Survey The research investigates the role of physical 40 23 33
Kefi (2020) promote it, why should I buy? How attractiveness, attitude homophily, and social
credibility and parasocial interaction attractiveness on purchase intention through
influence purchase intentions mediating role of credibility and para-social
interaction. The findings suggest that attitude
homophily is positively related to parasocial
interaction and there is no evidence of a positive
relationship between physical attractiveness and
credibility

(continued )
Cluster S. Total link
no no Article Title Article type Summary of main idea Citations Links strength

4 1 De Veirman Marketing through Instagram Empirical – This research, using a set of two experiments with 177 26 38
et al. (2017) influencers: The impact of number of Experiment 235 respondents in total, shows that Instagram
followers and product divergence on influencers with a high number of followers are
brand attitude found more likeable and if the influencer follows
very few accounts herself, this can negatively
impact influencers’ likeability
2 Lou and Yuan Influencer marketing: How message value Empirical - survey This research collects data from 538 participants 72 21 25
(2019) and credibility Affect consumer trust of to check the validity of the social media influencer
Branded content on social media value model. PLS path modeling results show that
the informative value of influencer-generated
content, influencer’s trustworthiness,
attractiveness, and similarity to the followers
positively affect followers’ trust in influencers’
branded posts
3 Schouten et al. Celebrity vs. Influencer endorsements in Empirical - The study compares the effectiveness of celebrity 25 19 27
(2020) advertising: The role of identification, experiment vs. influencer endorsements on advertising
credibility, and product-endorser fit effectiveness, moderated by product-endorser fit.
Two experiments with 567 respondents examine
the comparison with two potential mediators
namely identification and credibility
4 Xiao et al. (2018) Factors affecting YouTube IM credibility: Empirical - survey The study collects data from 497 respondents to 22 18 32
a heuristic-systematic model test the model in which informational cues
influence the credibility of YouTube influencer.
Findings suggest that trustworthiness, social
influence, argument quality, and information
involvement are important cues among the
different cues mentioned in the model
5 Xu and Pratt Social media influencers as endorsers to Empirical - survey This research compares the impact of social media 22 15 13
(2018) promote travel destinations: an endorser-destination congruence and social media
application of self-congruence theory to endorser-consumer congruence on visit intentions
the Chinese generation Y for tourist destinations. Results, from data of 234
respondents, show that both types of congruence
positively contribute to visit intentions
(continued )
a bibliometric
Influencer

991
review
marketing:

Table 1.
 39,7
MIP

992

Table 1.
Cluster S. Total link
no no Article Title Article type Summary of main idea Citations Links strength

5 1 Audrezet et al. Authenticity under threat: When social Empirical With the increasing use of social media 36 22 23
(2020) media influencers need to go beyond self- -qualitative influencers (SMIs), the brand engages with SMIs
presentation which can lead to tensions for SMIs’ authenticity
in minds of SMI followers. Findings from a
qualitative approach to examine this phenomenon
suggests that passionate and transparent
authenticity are two authenticity management
strategies to manage the authenticity of
influencers
2 Campbell and The challenges native advertising Poses: Conceptual This research traces the evolution of deception for 11 12 16
Grimm (2019) Exploring potential Federal Trade native advertising and identifies the
commission responses and identifying shortcomings. It proposes remedies that the
research needs Federal Trade Commission or industry could
adopt to prevent consumer harm, detect
infractions, and enforce its regulations from
native advertising which also includes posts by
social media influencers
3 De Veirman and Disclosing sponsored Instagram posts: Empirical - Research using data from 414 respondents shows 16 19 24.5
Hudders (2020) The role of material connection with the experiment that including a sponsorship disclosure
brand and message-sidedness when (compared to no disclosure) negatively affects
disclosing covert advertising brand attitude. Further findings suggest that
brand attitude is negatively affected when the
influencer use a one-sided message in comparison
to when the message is two-sided
4 Dhanesh and Relationship management through social Empirical - survey This study examines associations between 13 18 16
Duthler (2019) media influencers: Effects of followers’ followers’ awareness of paid endorsement done by
awareness of paid endorsement social media influencers and cognitive, attitudinal
and behavioral outcomes on followers. Data
analysis using 269 respondents shows that ad
recognition does not affect the influencer-follower
relationship but ad recognition is correlated with
the purchase and eWOM intentions

(continued )
Cluster S. Total link
no no Article Title Article type Summary of main idea Citations Links strength

5 Gannon and Beauty blogger selfies as authenticating Empirical - This research examines the use of beauty 23 8 9
Prothero (2016) practices qualitative blogging selfies in conveying consumer
authenticity. Findings of qualitative research
using 20 in-depth qualitative interviews suggest
that bloggers use selfies as records of product
trial, success and failure via specific sub-types
6 Jin and Product placement 2.0: “Do brands need Empirical – This research tries to understand the effects of 10 21 35
Muqaddam influencers or do influencers need brands? Experiment Instagram posts’ source types and product-
(2019) ” placement types on brand attitude and credibility
perception. Data analysis using 304 respondents
shows the main effect of source types on perceived
trustworthiness and interaction effects of product
placement and source types on perceived
expertise, corporate credibility, and attitude
toward brand posts
7 Jin et al. (2019) Instafamous and social media IM Empirical – This study tests the effects of two types of 23 17 19
Experiment celebrities (Instagram celebrity vs traditional
celebrity) on source trustworthiness, brand
attitude, envy and social presence. Findings
suggest that consumers exposed to Instagram
celebrity’s brand posts perceive the source to be
more trustworthy, show a more positive attitude
toward the endorsed brand, feel a stronger social
presence and feel more envious of the source than
those consumers exposed to traditional celebrity’s
brand posts

(continued )
a bibliometric
Influencer

993
review
marketing:

Table 1.
 39,7
MIP

994

Table 1.
Cluster S. Total link
no no Article Title Article type Summary of main idea Citations Links strength

6 1 Canhoto et al. Emerging segmentation practices in the Empirical Using data from 19 interviews, this research 20 6 2
(2013) age of the social customer -qualitative conducts an exploratory study about
segmentation practices of organizations with a
social media presence. It investigates the
relevance of traditional segmentation approaches
in a new socio-technical environment and
identifies emerging practices
2 Childers et al. #Sponsored #ad: Agency perspective on Empirical This study provides insight into the experiences 11 23 15
(2019) influencer marketing campaigns -qualitative and perceptions of IM among those working in
advertising agencies. Based on data from 19
interview, this paper suggests a shift in the
agency process for effective implementation of IM
3 Voorveld (2019) Brand communication in social media: A Empirical – Survey This paper provides an agenda for future research 14 22 18
research agenda on brand communication in social media after
examining the current state of research, a
discussion of the theoretical and conceptual
challenges of brand communication in social
media, and a survey about the expectations of the
media and advertising industry
4 Zhao et al. Disentangling social media influence in Empirical - dataset This research tries to develop a systematic 21 14 8
(2018) crises: Testing a four-factor model of conceptualization and a valid measure of social
social media influence with large data media influence in the crisis context. Findings
from an analysis of the dataset of Twitter feeds
during four crises provides an integrated
framework by incorporating the network
perspective
dimensions of self-congruity (Sirgy, 1982), namely actual self-congruity, social self-congruity Influencer
and ideal self-congruity, should also be employed to understand IM effectiveness. marketing:
The meanings transfer model (McCracken, 1989), along with social influence theory
(Kelman, 1961) and social learning theory (Bandura et al., 1961), can be used to explain the
a bibliometric
mechanism of influence exerted by influencers. Researchers can also explore theories from review
communications [e.g. elaboration likelihood model by Petty et al. (1983); information
processing theory by Bettman and Park (1980); persuasion knowledge model by Friestad and
Wright (1994)] and social psychology [construal level theory by Trope and Liberman (2010); 995
regulatory focus theory by Higgins (2012)], which have been widely used in the advertising
field to explain the working of IM. The trust formation process between influencers and
followers also needs to be understood for better effectiveness of IM. The factors related to
followers, like motivation and personality traits, can be used to better understand the
mechanisms. Whether these mechanisms differ across generation, gender, race and culture
are additional potential extensions of research in this theme. Understanding gender may be
necessary as female and male users differ across their preferences for social media platforms
(De Veirman et al., 2017), and females are more susceptible to social influence than males
(Eagly, 1983).
Cluster 2: Measuring the impact of influencer marketing
To understand the effectiveness of IM, research about the impact of IM campaigns can be
examined in terms of process and outcome. Customer decision journey (CDJ) (Lemon and
Verhoef, 2016) can be a useful framework to explore the process impact of IM. Batra and
Keller (2016) contend that to generate short-term purchases and build long-term loyalty
and brand value, it is crucial to understand consumers’ pressing needs at different stages in
the CDJ and then match those needs with a focused marketing message. How social media is
driving CDJ is already being discussed as a social customer journey (Hamilton et al., 2021), the
impact of IM on different stages of the CDJ can provide insights about how IM can deliver on
this aspect.
The direct impact of IM campaigns can be measured in terms of engagements, likes and
clicks. Sentiment analysis of engagement post can provide real-time inputs to brands on
working of IM campaigns. It is also possible to measure the direct impact of purchase
intentions by inserting a clickable purchase link or by providing influencer-specific promo
code. Taking a cue from celebrity endorsement where positive and negative impact on
economic returns of sponsoring companies is well-documented (Agarwal and Kamakura,
1995; Chung et al., 2013), similar research should be carried out for IM campaigns. Chae et al.
(2017) examined the multiple spillover effects of influencer-induced campaigns, but more
research needs to be done to understand the indirect impact of IM campaigns. The indirect
impact can be understood by using brand tracking studies to measure the long-term
consumer brand equity of promoted brands. Research needs to be conducted to understand
the direct and indirect impact across different social media platforms for a holistic
understanding of IM campaigns’ impact.
IM is most likely to be used in conjunction with other marketing communication tools. The
effectiveness of an IM campaign combined with other marketing communication tools should
be studied for its employability by managers. Also, given the rising incidence of “troll”
accounts, influencers’ posts may have to face backlash in some instances. “How does this
impact the overall effectiveness of IM campaigns?,” will be an exciting area of research.
Cluster 3: Persuasive cues in influencer marketing
The third cluster’s theme provides multiple opportunities for researchers to further the
understanding of persuasion cues on followers. The persuasion cues can be attributed to the
MIP message and the sender (Lasswell, 1948). Since we will cover persuasion cues related to
39,7 influencers in the next section, we focus on persuasion cues related to the message. The first
possible research area in this theme can be about understanding the effectiveness of implicit
and explicit brand promotions by influencers. How influencers promote the brand through
their posts can have a differential impact, given influencers’ trust among followers. Another
possible area of research can be to understand the role of rational versus emotional
persuasion cues in IM. While all rational arguments may not be useful in IM, research can
996 examine the effectiveness of some themes like rhetorical, inoculative and framing arguments.
Similarly, research can be done to understand emotional appeals like humor and warmth.
Both these appetitive motivational appeals have different typologies which present several
research possibilities. Two possible extensions in this theme can be examining the message
persuasion cues concerning types of platforms and the nature of products. Research
examining persuasion cues for each platform separately considering their content specificity
will help understand the IM phenomenon (Sokolova and Kefi, 2020). Researchers can also
investigate the role of different persuasion cues across hedonic and utilitarian products,
products differing in involvement levels and products with varying familiarity levels.
Cluster 4: Likability factors of influencers
In this cluster’s theme, future research can examine various factors that drive the likability of
influencers. Followers’ liking of influencers is based on the perception of influencers. De
Veirman et al. (2017) looked at this aspect by examining the number of followers and
concluded that influencers with high numbers of followers were found more likeable as it was
seen to increase the influencer’s perceived opinion leadership. However, an increased number
of followers, i.e. higher reach, also reduces engagement with followers as it is not possible for
an influencer to give individual replies. Reduced engagement can again happen due to fake
followers, which will also impact the likability of influencers. Furthermore, influencers’
growing popularity, especially in the case of mega influencers (having more than 1 million
followers), may lead to influencers promoting multiple products. This may have an adverse
impact on the likability of influencers. Both these points need to be examined in detail to
understand the likability aspects of influencer.
Source theories from celebrity endorsement (source credibility model and the source
attractiveness model) can be employed to understand the different factors driving
influencers’ likability. While source credibility is driven by the endorser’s perceived
expertise and trustworthiness, source attractiveness refers to the endorser’s physical appeal,
and consumers have a positive attitude toward the message and brand due to similarity,
familiarity and liking for an endorser (McGuire, 1985). Xiao et al. (2018) looked at expertise,
trustworthiness and likability, but further research needs to be done using more factors for
different products in different social media platforms. For understanding the factors related
to influencers, research can examine different personality traits of influencers as well. This
can be implemented by examining the role of persuasion cues in the message in conjunction
with personality frameworks like Big Five, Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and 16
Personality Factors. Understanding the personality of influencers and their impact on
followers can help practitioners to identify suitable influencers in different use cases.
Cluster 5: Authenticity of influencers
Future research directions for this theme become significant as IM is increasingly used for
brand promotions by firms. Research looking into influencers’ authenticity needs to explore
the credibility of influencers, the reputation of the promoted brand and message design
elements. Credibility has been explained using different dimensions like competence,
extraversion, composure, character and sociability (B€ uhlmann and Gisler, 2006), and an
influencer’s authenticity can be driven by any of these dimensions. On a similar line, the Influencer
reputation of a promoted brand can impact an influencer’s authenticity. One can explore the marketing:
interaction effect of the credibility of influencers and the reputation of a brand. Also, how a
combination of messages and images can be manipulated to enhance the believability and
a bibliometric
authenticity of the promoted message is another potential area of research as images may review
have an interactive impact in combination with text messages. It would be interesting to
examine the impact of language elements such as typos and language errors, using foreign
languages, slang or dialects on the authenticity of influencers (De Veirman and Hudders, 997
2020). In some of the promoted messages, influencers also embed buying options through
affiliate links or promo codes that followers can avail of when making purchases. Their
impact also needs to be investigated in the context of IM.
The authenticity of influencers and disclosures about brand promotion in IM are
important for ad deception–related policy. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has already
provided clear guidelines in 2019 for influencers when they work with brands. FTC
guidelines call for disclosure when influencers have any financial, employment, personal or
family relationship with a brand. Depending upon the social media platform’s nature, these
disclosures can be in textual, visual or audio-visual formats. The different disclosure formats
used and the context of IM should be examined to understand what types of disclosures
should be employed to avoid ad deception. It will also be worthwhile to research if sponsored
posts as an advertising medium are distinct from other forms of advertising that consumers
view unambiguously as paid advertising (Hughes et al., 2019). This will help in enhancing the
authenticity of influencers and hence the effectiveness of IM.
It also needs to be investigated if influencer’s authenticity is the same across typical fast
moving consumer goods products, expensive products, and experience products. De Veirman
and Hudders (2020) state that expensive and experience products may lead to higher feelings
of envy and may result in more negative effects when disclosing financial or material
compensation.
Cluster 6: Understanding followers
Cluster six provides direction for researchers to examine the data from social media
influencers’ messages and followers’ and uncover new patterns. Canhoto et al. (2013) suggested
that empirical data provided by social media can be used to address the problems associated
with traditional segmentation. The message features related to social media influencers’
messages and responses by followers provide rich data points for marketers to develop
segmentation schema for delivering customized communication. For example, researchers can
uncover or augment the customer segmentation schema based on affective, cognitive and
conative messages sent by influencers. Researchers can also try to segment followers based on
their responses regarding beliefs, attitudes and behaviors (Zhao et al., 2018). We have seen
research on segmentation using social media (e.g. Ahani et al., 2019; So et al., 2021), but no
published work is available in the context of IM. Given the vast data accessibility for
researchers and advances in text data analytics, there is enough possibility for future research
in this context. These analyses can be further expanded by understanding the messages and
responses in various contexts. For example, how followers’ responses can be used for
segmentation during crises, new product introductions and other situations. An examination
of messages across different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can
provide useful insights for comparisons. The analysis can also be extended to a business-to-
business (B2B) context by examining LinkedIn and Twitter posts by social media influencers.

Research contributions
One of the main objectives of this research is to conduct a comprehensive and systematic
bibliometric analysis to identify the intellectual structure of this domain. This research also
MIP aims to identify future areas of research for researchers working in the domain of IM. This
39,7 paper helps in the identification of six clusters that provide clear pathways for researchers
who want to increase the depth and breadth of research in this domain. Among the different
clusters identified in this research, the first cluster, namely “mechanism of influencer
marketing,” is particularly important for researchers working in the IM domain as these
papers present different theoretical frameworks. The second important contribution of this
research is in terms of identifying the research gaps and proposing future research directions
998 for all six themes. This includes several aspects like testing of different theoretical
frameworks to explain the mechanism of influence exerted by influencers, understanding the
direct and indirect impact across different social media platforms (also in conjunction with
other marketing tools), understanding diverse persuasive cues across different contexts and
uncovering the customer segmentation schema based on affective, cognitive and conative
messages sent by influencers.
The third research contribution is the identification of dominant research and data
approaches for IM in general and each cluster in particular. Among the 33 papers used for
bibliometric analysis, only two are conceptual and the remaining 31 are empirical, suggesting
that analysis based on data is the dominant paradigm. While the different clusters provide
idea about the popular types of data employed by researchers in examining a particular
theme, overall IM research has employed data from survey (10 articles), dataset (9 articles)
and experiment (7 articles). Data from qualitative research have also been used in five papers.
Among the various papers, there are only two papers that have used data from multiple
sources in their research. This also highlights that there is a need to increase the application of
the mixed-method approach for research in the IM domain. Our research contribution is using
Biblioshiny which–to the best of our knowledge–has not been employed until now for
bibliometric analysis studies in marketing. Our exploration about Biblioshiny showed that till
now its use has not been made for conducting bibliometric analysis in the “Business and
Management” subject area. Given the ease of use and user-friendly interface of the software,
this tool can become a useful resource for researchers conducting bibliometric analysis.

Managerial contributions
This paper presents a wide spectrum of managerial implication. Identification of six clusters
helps in creating a wide body of knowledge that can help practitioners in understanding the
working of IM, thus being useful while employing IM. The emergence of three themes/
clusters, namely “persuasive cues in influencer marketing,” “likability factors of influencers,”
and “authenticity of influencers,” are useful input issues for practitioners. For the
practitioners interested in designing the persuasive cues for the IM campaign, articles in
this cluster can provide useful insights. Similarly, for selecting the influencers in IM, papers in
the fourth cluster (likability factors of influencers) and the fifth cluster (authenticity of
influencers) can be useful. Marketing managers implementing IM campaigns also want to
understand the return on investment to justify the marketing spend. Papers in the second
cluster, namely “measuring the impact of influencer marketing,” will provide valuable
insights to practitioners about different ways in which they can understand the impact made
by IM campaigns. As the impact analysis in the domain was done using data from diverse
dataset sources, such as Twitter (Alp and O € gu
€d€uc€
u, 2018; Zhang et al., 2017), Facebook
(Hughes et al., 2019; Kupfer et al., 2018) and other independent websites like Naver (Chae et al.,
2017) and Amazon (Zhou and Duan, 2015), learnings from papers of this cluster has relevance
for IM campaigns across different platforms.

Conclusion and limitations

This study’s primary objective is to understand the evolving nature of IM and suggest
possible areas of future exploration. The understanding of emerging themes of IM from this
study will help researchers to plan future research in this field. This study, like many other Influencer
studies, has certain limitations. The bibliometric study utilizes Scopus as a single source for marketing:
collecting data, which may have led to excluding publications from other databases. This
may have led to some biases. Future studies may like to work on multiple databases to
a bibliometric
eliminate this bias. Since IM is a relatively new research area (with only five papers from review
years before 2017), similar studies need to be carried in the future to understand the evolving
nature of the topic. Despite these limitations, this study offers an encompassing view of this
field and provides a sound start for researchers who want to explore this topic further. 999

Note
1. A compendium of all outputs for this paper is available with authors which can be made available on
request.

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About the authors

Abhishek is Associate Professor in Marketing Area of IMT Ghaziabad, India. His research interests have
been in the field of marketing communications, e-commerce and digital marketing, promotion planning
and consumer behavior. His current research work looks at role of technology in marketing
communications and advertising issues with public policy implications. He is excited to learn and
discover the opportunities offered by digital platforms with increasing focus on mobile platforms and
technologies. His papers have been accepted for publication in top journals. He has prepared many
simulation games and has written more than 30 cases in different domains of marketing.
Mukta Srivastava is Associate Professor in the marketing area at T A Pai Management Institute,
Manipal, India. She has more than 12 years of academic and research experience. Her research interests
have been in the domain of customer engagement, eWOM and influencer marketing. Her articles have
been published in national and international journals. She has also contributed case studies and chapters
in books from reputed publication houses. She has presented her work in several conferences which
include those at IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Indore and ISB Hyderabad. Mukta Srivastava is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: muktassrivastava78@gmail.com

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