Description
Over the past years, influencer marketing has emerged as a cornerstone strategy for brands across various industries. According to recent reports, influencer marketing spending worldwide has increased from 29.14 billion USD in 2022 to 34.08 billion USD in 2023 (Statista, 2023). Particularly within the hospitality sector, influencers have become essential sources of information for prospective travellers who increasingly rely on them for inspiration and guidance. Nowadays, about 11% of adults worldwide follow travel influencers when planning trips (TheB2BHouse, 2023), while 84 percent of Americans consult travel influencers for recommendation on trips (Statista, 2023).
Considering the large marketing budgets that are at stake, it is of uttermost importance that destination management organizations (DMOs) and hospitality industry players, as well as travel influencers themselves, understand what actually drives their impact on travellers’ destination choices.
Our study explores the antecedents of travel influencers’ impact on their followers’ travel options. Based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM, Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), our research model takes into account three categories of factors: (a) the characteristics of the source (i.e., influencer’s perceived attractiveness, trustworthiness, expertise, and popularity), (b) the characteristics of the message (i.e., the attractiveness of the published content), and (c) perceived follower-influencer similarity.
According to the ELM theory, prospective travellers engage in two routes of processing messages about tourism destinations: central and peripheral. In the context of influencer marketing, influencers’ perceived characteristics act as peripheral cues on which followers rely to make judgments, especially when they lack the motivation or ability to process information (e.g., extensive research on travel destinations). Furthermore, whether followers engage in central route processing (motivated and capable of processing information; e.g., actively planning a trip) or rely on peripheral cues, the attractiveness of the published content (e.g., informative descriptions, stunning visuals etc.) becomes crucial. Moreover, if followers perceive a high degree of similarity between themselves and the influencer, this acts as a central cue that facilitates deeper cognitive elaboration, making the influencer’s recommendations more relevant and applicable for the follower.
However, these factors cannot be considered universal, irrespective of the followers’ generational cohort membership. People from different generations are expected to engage in different ways with brands (Yoon et al, 2009), and this extends to influencers as well. Consequently, followers’ generational cohort can moderate the relationships in our model.
To empirically test our model, we conducted an online survey involving 788 social media users (including 307 members of Generation Z, and 395 of Generation Y), following at least one influencer who publishes content about tourism destinations.
To measure our constructs, we employed and adapted established scales for assessing influencers’ perceived attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise (Wiedmann & Mettenheim, 2021), as well as for evaluating the perceived follower-influencer similarity (Lou & Kim, 2019), and the attractiveness of the published content (Seçilmiş et al, 2022). To measure influencers’ impact on destination choice, we capitalized on the scale developed by Ong et al (2022) for travel intention, altering and complementing it to fit the travel influencer context. Additionally, we employed an original scale to assess influencers’ perceived popularity, referring to the number of followers, likes & comments.
Due to the model’s predictive nature, to analyse the data we employed partial least squared structural equation modelling (Hair et al, 2021) and bootstrapping-based multi-group analysis (Sarstedt et al, 2011).
Our results revealed nuanced insights into the drivers of influencers’ impact on their followers’ destination choices. Notably, we found that influencers’ perceived attractiveness and popularity do not actually impact the extent to which influencers determine destination choices, for neither generation, while influencers’ perceived expertise is significant and similarly important for both generations.
For Gen Z members, the influencer’s perceived trustworthiness is insignificant as a factor, while the attractiveness of the published content plays an important role in determining destination choice. However, for Gen Y, the situation is reversed: the attractiveness of the published content does not actually influence destination choice, but rather the perceived trustworthiness of the influencer.
Even though perceived follower-influencer similarity significantly impacts the extent to which influencers determine destination choices, for both generations, this factor was found to be much more important for Gen Y, being the most important driver of influencers’ impact within this generational cohort.
References
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- Ong, Y. X., Sun, T., & Ito, N. (2022) Beyond Influencer Credibility: The Power of Content and Parasocial Relationship on Processing Social Media Influencer Destination Marketing Campaigns. In Proceedings of the ENTER 2022 eTourism Conference, January (pp. 110-122). Springer International Publishing.
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- Statista (2023) Influencer marketing worldwide. https://www.statista.com/study/28362/influencer-marketing-statista-dossier/
- Statista (2023) Share of adults who looked to travel influencers for recommendations in the United States. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1250506/usage-of-travel-influencers-for-recommendations-us/
- TheB2BHouse (2023) Influencer Marketing: Key Statistics, Trends, Data for 2023. https://www.theb2bhouse.com/influencer-marketing-statistics-trends-data/
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