Sponsored posts in influencer marketing should be recognizable as such. Hence, in many countries, ad disclosures are part of a code of conduct. Yet there is still ambiguity on how an effective disclosure should look like and what disclosures mean for the brand and for the influencers that use them. In this study, we investigated the effects of two different ad disclosures on Instagram on a) purchase intention for the advertised brand and b) intention toward the influencer. We conducted a 1x3 experiment with N = 248 participants, manipulating the presence of a hashtag disclosure versus a paid partnership disclosure. Findings suggest that only the paid partnership disclosure was able to foster persuasion knowledge. We furthermore found that activation of persuasion knowledge, negative affect, and the trustworthiness of the influencer are important mediators when it comes to the effects of disclosures on purchase intention and intention toward the influencer. And while the paid partnership disclosure had a negative direct impact on purchase intention compared to the control group, considering the mediation path via trustworthiness of the influencer, the disclosure had also positive outcomes for purchase intention and the intention toward the influencer.
Author(s): Delia Cristina Balaban, Babes-Bolyai University; Meda Mucundorfeanu, Babes-Bolyai University; Brigitte Naderer, University of Vienna
