Sixty-three percent of marketers plan to partner with virtual influencers this year, according to a report by the Influencer Marketing Hub. But a new study claims to show how people respond when they realise they are being sold to by a human-like virtual influencer (HVI), compared with one that’s flesh and blood.
Researchers conducted an online experiment with 105 students, who were shown both human and human-like influencer content, and then asked to fill out a questionnaire about the experience.
The questions focused on the participants’ persuasion knowledge — that is, their awareness of being sold to — and how it differed when the influencer was a human-like virtual creation, as opposed to just a human.
Human influencers provoke a straightforward response, in terms of persuasion knowledge: consumers recognise that they are being shown an advertising message (conceptual persuasion knowledge) and this realisation causes them to become more sceptical of the message (attitudinal persuasion knowledge).
But, according to the researchers, this isn’t how it works with HVIs. For a start, consumers have a harder time recognising persuasion attempts by virtual influencers because they are less ready to attribute intentions to ‘mindless entities’.
The other difference is that it’s not persuasion knowledge itself that makes consumers more sceptical of advertising messages from HVIs, rather it’s that consumers are less likely to attribute emotions to virtual influencers.
‘A potential explanation for these opposing forces may lie in the oxymoronic nature of HVIs,’ write the researchers. ‘HVIs are simultaneously seen as fabricated entities that should be distrusted but also as authentically fake representations that could mitigate skeptical beliefs in the face of staged advertising content.’
Ultimately, the researchers conclude, these differences cancel each other out, and there is no obvious advantage or disadvantage — in terms of persuasiveness — to using human or virtual influencers.
The paper does, however, warn marketers to be careful when relying solely on virtual influencers to sell their goods and services, since their lack of emotional connection reduces their effectiveness.
The paper, How does persuasion knowledge differ between humanlike virtual influencers and human influencers?, was written by Lotte Willemsen, Iris Withuis, Marije Brom, and Sophie Boerman, and it is available to read in full, here.
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