Purpose: Facilitated by image retouch tools, social media influencers can digitally enhance their self-image in product recommendation posts. This paper proposes that image enhancement may serve as a cue for the audience to assess the authenticity of the influencer (“true to oneself”), which further affects the influencer's product recommendation effectiveness (i.e. attitudes toward the post and recommended product).Design/methodology/approach: Experiment 1 examines the effect of image enhancement on consumers' perceived influencer authenticity and product recommendation effectiveness. Experiment 2 considers the moderating role of post type, examining the effects in informational versus storytelling posts.Findings: Consumers perceived an influencer to be more authentic when the image is not enhanced; in turn, consumers reported more favorable attitudes toward the post and the recommended product upon reading the post. The effects are moderated by post type: the effect of image enhancement (through perceived influencer authenticity) exists in posts using an informational message format but is attenuated for those using a storytelling message format.Originality/value: This research enriches the literature on authenticity cues by documenting a novel visual cue and contributes to influencer marketing by identifying a nuanced interactive effect between image enhancement and post type on recommendation effectiveness.

Purpose: A critical step in influencer marketing is influencer outreach, where a brand reaches out to an influencer and forms a partnership. Yet little is known about how factors related to this process might influence the outcomes of sponsored posts. To address this gap, the authors investigated whether, how and when the order of influencers' product use and brand outreach (i.e. use/outreach order) affects post persuasiveness.Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted three experimental studies. Studies 1 and 2 examined the effect of disclosure type (use-first, outreach-later vs. outreach-first, use-later vs. no disclosure) on consumers' responses to the post. Study 3 investigated the moderating effects of compensation disclosure type.Findings: The results revealed that when the influencer used the product before (vs. after) being contacted by the brand, consumers had more favorable attitudes about the product and greater purchase intention upon reading the sponsored posts; perceived information diagnosticity mediated this effect. However, this tendency was mitigated if the influencer disclosed the specific monetary payment from the brand.Originality/value: This research advances understanding of sponsorship disclosure and provides a way to manage its impact on message persuasiveness.

Online retailers worldwide invest beyond their core business of retailing to offer their own delivery services (ODS) to deliver products to customers’ homes through their own logistics network. How does this shift to ODS affect customers’ behaviors and sales performance? When and why do retailers venture beyond their core competence to offer ODS? To explore these questions, the authors analyze 250,055 customer transactions over 10 years across 416 cities and 49 product categories from JD, a major online retailer in China. Using difference-in-differences models, causal mediation analysis, and the synthetic control method, they find that ODS increases customers’ monthly spending by 7.8% and grows city-level sales by 11.9%. This study is the first to quantify the sales impact of ODS and shed light on when and why it works. The findings reveal that ODS has greater value for markets with lower trust levels, infrequent customers, high-risk product categories, and consumers who prefer the focal retailer (versus that of third-party sellers). Causal mediation analysis further reveals that ODS not only improves delivery quality but also builds customer trust, which together increase customers’ monthly spending, purchase frequency, and the number of items ordered.

This research examines how recipients’ efforts to get out of the plight affect the empathy they evoke and the subsequent help they receive from donors. Through three experiments, we find that the higher the efforts made by the recipients to get out of the plight, the stronger the donors’ willingness to donate. This effect is moderated by the need severity of the recipients. The more serious the plight is, the stronger the impact of the degree of efforts on the willingness to donate. This research makes theoretical contributions to charitable giving and provides implications for non-profit organizations on describing recipients’ efforts to get out of their plight.

Purpose: Online retailers are pioneering the incentivization of customers to generate more product reviews by rewarding them. However, little is known about the impact of reward types on customers' review behavior, including review frequency and sentiment. To address this gap, we investigated the effects of different reward types on customers' review behavior and how these rewards influence customers' review behavior.Design/methodology/approach: We collected secondary data and empirically tested the hypothesis by analyzing the change in reward policy. Regression and two-stage Heckman models were applied to investigate the effects, with the latter used to control potential selection issues.Findings: The results revealed that monetary rewards can stimulate customers to generate more positive product reviews. Furthermore, the reward amount has a negative moderating effect on the aforementioned relationship. Additionally, customer tenure negatively moderates the relationship between monetary rewards and review behavior.Originality/value: This study contributes to the understanding of user-generated content motivation and provides managerial implications for reward programs.