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Men or Women? Neuro-Marketing Study of Social Media
Influencers
Egle Vaiciukynaite
Digitalization Research Group, School of Economics and Business, Kaunas University of
Technology (KTU), Kaunas, Lithuania
egle.vaiciukynaite@ktu.lt
Abstract: Given the widespread popularity of social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, a new type of independent
endorser occurs known as social media influencers. Social media influencers exhibit their personal life through posts to many
followers and influence their follower’s attitudes and engagement behaviour. However, many firms seek to collaborate with
social media influencers and reach their potential customers through brand sponsored posts. Therefore, the better the
understanding of customer engagement behaviour within brand sponsored posts is fundamental for firms in achieving brand
awareness, new customers or/and driving sales. Customer engagement with social media posts involves active customer
responses (e.g., Like) and passive participation (e.g., view). Yet, little is known about how customers engage with influencer
informational content posts that are sponsored by a luxury fashion brand. There is also scant attention to the gender of social
media influencers, to posts accompanied with a luxury brand product and its influence on customer attention patterns. These
customer attention patterns are gauged by neuro-marketing techniques that are not accessible through traditional
marketing methods. Therefore, this research seeks to examine customer responses to social media influencer posts, focusing
on posts with a luxury brand product, emotional cues of text (i.e., emoji), and influencer gender. The research also
investigates how the gender of an influencer affects how a follower reacts to a post, especially when promoting a brand
product. To examine customer responses, a combination of self-report and eye-tracking methodology was used, where social
media posts by a male influencer generated greater customer attention on a luxury product. However, social media post by
a female influencer generated more customer likes while the post by males generated more customer views. Thus, customers
ignored emotional cues of posts (e.g., heart-eye emoji) which are presented at the end of sentences. Importantly, the paper
provides a pioneering attempt in examining the relationship between features of social media influencer posts and customer
responses.
Keywords: customer engagement behaviour, eye tracking, Facebook, influencer, luxury brand, social media
1. Introduction
Recently, social media has transformed the traditional company’s one-way communication with the customer
into a two-way communication. Traditionally, one-way communication was initiated as a push-type
communication and customers passively consume the company’s message. Whereas, the two-way
communication enables customers to take an active role and express their responses through diverse social
features (i.e. likes, retweet) on social media. Therefore, companies have embraced social media as a way to
engage with their customers and enhance company performance (Kumar et al, 2016; Yoon et al, 2018). While in
general, consumers seek to satisfy social needs and thus, it can contribute to social capital (Ashley and Tuten,
2015).
Social media can include social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), blogs, vlogs, instant messaging and virtual
communities, which are used for different purposes (Chugh and Ruhi, 2017; Pressgrove et al, 2018). For instance,
Twitter is used mainly as a platform for practical information (see study findings by Pressgrove et al, 2018). In
addition, these social platforms can have various types of features that enable interactions among users (e.g.,
see more papers by Keenan and Shiri, 2009; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Kietzmann et al, 2011). Therefore,
interactions between a company and its customers can also be organized on social media. More specifically, this
study is focusing on social networks, namely, Facebook; mainly because it has emerged as the most influential
communication medium for company and customer interaction (Kwok et al, 2017). However, the term “social
media“ is used interchangeably.
Customer engagement, or customer engagement behaviour (CEB), has been widely analysed by academics
(Beckers et al, 2017; Dolan et al, 2016; Harmeling et al, 2017; Hollebeek and Andreassen, 2018; Hollebeek et al,
2014; Schivinski et al, 2016; Yang et al, 2016; Yoon et al, 2018; van Doorn et al, 2010), but there is still no general
agreement about its definition and conceptualisation in literature. Indeed, the term “engagement“ can be seen
as a behavioral construct or even an affective/cognitive and behavioral one (see Schivinski et al, 2016). However,
the aforementioned studies define and conceptualize CEB as a psychological state or behavioral manifestation
beyond purchase, resulting from consumer motivational drivers. One study uses behavioral manifestation of
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CEB and is defined as “the customer’s behavioral manifestations toward a brand or firm, beyond purchase,
resulting from motivational drivers” (van Doorn et al, 2010; p. 253).
The recent literature on various features of company-generated posts mainly focuses on content types and
media types of post (Coelho et al, 2016; Luarn et al, 2015; Tafesse and Wien, 2017). Also, the aforementioned
studies have examined the impact of diverse features of company posts on CEB across one or several social
media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). For instance, Leung et al (2017) analysed a typology of
four-type messages (i.e., video, image, link, word) and six types of message content, namely promotion, product,
reward, brand, information and involvement.
Despite the growing academics’ attention towards diverse features of company posts, still little is known about
company sponsored social media influencers’ posts on social media. Importantly, social media influencers are
opinion leaders with a large number of followers who exhibit their personal lifestyle through posts and engage
with their followers. Additionally, the most recent report by Klear stated that in 2018 there were 2.113 million
Instagram news feed posts that contained the #ad hashtag in comparison with 1.516 million in 2017 (Cohen,
2019). In other words, the influencer provides informational content about company products or services.
Consequently, brands invest in influencers to create and promote their content to their followers on social media
and achieve brand awareness, new customers or/and drive sales. However, a greater understanding of CEB
within the influencer posts is fundamental for companies and needs to be studied.
However, little is known about how customers engage with influencer informational content posts if they are
sponsored by a luxury fashion brand. Specifically, influencer created posts might be more engaging, original
and/or authentic to followers when compared with company informational posts. Additionally, a social media
influencer might be either a man or a woman. However, to our best knowledge, there is no research in social
media marketing literature regarding influencer gender posts. Finally, previous studies have ignored the
linguistic style of posts, particularly, emoticons and emoji. Therefore, the use of emoji can induce the intensity
of a message’s effect (Riordan, 2017).
Despite the significant academic interest in CEB, there is limited research on investigating company-customer
relationships in social media (Yang et al, 2016). Although there are many other aspects that influence post
communication effectiveness on CEB, however what kind of aspects are the most important remains
unanswered. Consequently, the Marketing Science Institute (2018) stated that the most effective strategies that
drive and entail customer engagement with the company is a key area of research priorities. This paper
contributes to this stream of research by offering a deeper understanding of how companies can leverage social
media influencers and enhance relationships with their or new customers.
Therefore, this research aims to explore customer responses to social media influencer posts, focusing on
informational posts with a luxury brand product, emojis, and influencer gender. To investigate customer
responses, a combination of self-report and eye-tracking methodology was used. Therefore, with advanced
technologies, features of posts might be analyzed with a more granulated level of analysis, revealing customer
visual responses to specific cues of posts. The paper is structured as follows: the second section provides a
literature review of CEB on social media, followed by a brief discussion on posts generated by social media
influencers. Based on the literature results, two research questions are offered. The third section provides the
research methodology. The next sections present the research findings, followed by conclusion, limitations, as
well as suggestions for future research.
2. Literature review and hypotheses development
2.1 Customer engagement on social media
Companies leverage social media through their own created or sponsored posts that may attract customer
attention and encourage their actions. These customer actions towards posts entail either active (e.g.,
commenting) or passive (e.g., viewing) participation.
The concept of “customer engagement” has recently begun to gain attention in literature and this research
stream entails a multidisciplinary theoretical perspective, including sociology, marketing, psychology, and
information systems (Phua et al, 2018). While the concept of “customer engagement”, or “customer
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engagement behaviour” (CEB) is a new concept (Moliner-Tena et al, 2019) there is still no general agreement
about its definition and conceptualization in literature. However, there are two different approaches to the
concept of CEB. The first approach conceptualises CEB as a behavioral manifestation beyond purchase, resulting
from consumer motivational drivers and supports the unidimensional view. On the contrary, another approach
conceptualises CEB as a psychological state and uses a multidimensional concept. In this study, the behavioural
manifestation of CEB, which is defined as “the customer’s behavioral manifestations toward a brand or firm,
beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers” (van Doorn et al, 2010; p. 253), is used. Importantly, this
CEB conceptualization is more often used by practitioners (see Yang et al, 2016) and follows the most recent
suggestions by Harmeling et al (2017).
Following the discussion above, the study uses customer views, likes, comments, shares and emotional reactions
as CEB on company-sponsored posts on social media. Therefore, CEB might be affected by various features of
posts.
2.2 Social media influencer posts
Numerous studies have examined various features of company-generated posts, namely; content type and
media of post (Coelho et al, 2016; Luarn et al, 2015; Tafesse and Wien, 2017). For instance, Luarn et al (2015)
have proposed four content types of posts, such as informational, entertainment, remuneration and social posts.
In a similar vein, Coelho et al (2016) have provided five categories of post content: information, advertising, fans,
events and promotion. Importantly, Tafesse and Wien (2017) have provided twelve content types of company
posts, which can be categorised into three categories: informational, transformational (e.g, entertainment) and
interactional (e.g., social). The informational company posts remain one of the key posts and contain information
about the company/brand and/or its products/services (De Vries et al, 2012). In other words, informativeness
entails rational appeals due to its ability to support customers to make an informed decision (Lee and Hong,
2016).
Contrary to company informational brand posts, social media influencers are usually ordinary people and thus,
might have some expertise or interest in various areas, such as healthy lifestyle, food, travel, lifestyle, and
fashion, etc (Lou and Yuan, 2019). Therefore, social media influencers can publish original, authentic content.
Consequently, their content might be more engaging for followers in comparison with brand generated posts.
Additionally, social media influencers might produce posts containing the #ad hashtag, which indicates their
connection to a company/brand or may even omit to indicate the connection.
This research investigates the impact of social media influencer posts on CEB; including views, likes, emotional
reactions (e.g., Love), shares, and comments. It also considers the influence of social media influencer posts on
customer visual responses by using an eye tracking method. Therefore, research questions are generated as
follows:
RQ1: What social media influencer post variables (text and photo) have an impact on customer visual attention?
RQ2: Is there any impact of male or female posts on customer attention patterns (male and female) and CEB?
3. Methods
3.1 A self-report and eye-tracking method
To reveal customer responses (visual and behavioural) directed to two types of social media influencers (male;
female), a combination of self-report and eye-tracking methodology was used. Hence, the current research
advocates a new methodological approach that enables the researchers to answer the aforementioned research
questions.
A self-report was used to collect data about customer profile characteristics and customer behaviour
engagement. Adopted from Jahn and Kunz (2012), Schivinski et al (2016), the descriptive characteristics of
participant profiles were captured (e.g., gender, age, daily social media use, and device, followed social media
brand and/or influencer). Following Schivinski et al (2016) findings, two types of customer participation were
captured. The passive customer participation was captured with the “no action” or “watching/reading only”
option and the active customer participation with eight actions, including Like, Love, Comment, Share, Haha,
Wow, Sad, Angry.
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To reveal the customer level of attention directed to two aspects of social media influencer posts and its
attributes, an eye-tracking method was applied. Eye-tracking provides researchers with an opportunity to collect
an objective assessment of the customer’s visual behaviour through the movement of the customer‘s eyes
related to stimuli displayed on a digital screen (King et al, 2019). This method has some advantages in
comparison with traditional methods. For instance, eye-tracking enables researchers to measure customer
visual behaviours towards specific cues of social media posts, such as how long a customer reads the text of a
post and views the influencer’s face, his/her clothes and etc.
Importantly, eye-tracking provides a huge variety of metrics that can be applied to visual behaviour, although
this research only focused on several measures (i.e., total viewing time in milliseconds for the post, areas of
interest (AOI)) which are recommended in communication studies (King et al, 2019). Despite the eye-tracking
method advantages, the main disadvantage is that users (subjects) should participate in a laboratory setting.
Thus, eye-tracking studies mainly contain a small sample of subjects and results cannot be generalized.
3.2 Stimuli
Facebook was selected as the sample social media platform for this study, because Facebook is the most popular
social media platform and maintained its TOP platform ranking in early 2019 (Cristina, 2019). The post format
was structured in the same way that the Facebook common platform enables users to customize it, therefore
the text was arranged above the image. Importantly, four social media posts were created, two posts acted as
distracters and two social media influencer posts were used for the pilot study. The average quality of the posts
are 4.7 MB. All posts were shown on a computer screen. In this research, a luxury fashion brand and its product
were selected that is highly impacted by social media, as 78% of fashion companies are capitalizing on
influencers (Nickalls, 2018).
3.3 Participants and procedure
Thirteen normal vision participants (7 females; 6 males) took part in this study. They are all experienced with
the use of social media for a minimum of 0.5 hours per day. Participants were students. After the experiment,
all participants received a small tea gift (Green Tea bags) for their participation in the research.
The SMI Remove Eye tracking system was used in the experiment. Each participant was calibrated and then
started to view posts. Participants viewed both influencer posts and posts unrelated to the research and
expressed their engagement behaviour (e.g., like, love, share or comment). Participant eye-movements were
recorded during their viewing of influencer posts. Each participant was instructed to view posts for as long as
they wanted, as they usually do on social media.
3.4 Materials and measurements
The influencer posts were divided into 6 different predefined areas of interest (AOI), such as name/surname
icon, influencer face, luxury brand shoes. The text post was divided into three parts (see Table 1). All AOI were
in a similar size. The eye-tracking measurements used in this research were: (1) total viewing time in milliseconds
for the post (the time in ms that participants viewed the entire post); (2) total visit duration in milliseconds for
the specific AOI of a post (the time duration in ms of all visits within AOI). Importantly, SMI BE Gaze software
has been widely used in previous studies (Desmet and Diependaele, 2019).
4. Analysis and results
Descriptive statistic. A sample of 13 customers (7 females; 6 males) participated in the research. All participants
were active social media users (69.23% spend less than one hour per day on social media). The largest group of
participants were young people aged 18 to 24 years old (76.92%), the other group by age were 25 to 29 years
old (23.08%). Importantly, the participants were also asked to identify what device they usually used to access
the social media platforms, with the majority responding, smartphone (92.3%). The most popular social media
channel was Facebook (69.23% - 9), followed by Instagram (23.07% - 3) and Youtube (7.69 % - 1).
A total of five brands and single social media influencer accounts were identified. The most popular social media
brand among participants were apparel (53.84 % - 7) and cosmetic brands (23.07% - 3). While car and accessories
brands only had a single customer mention. In a similar vein, a female influencer ‘entitled motivated athlete’
was also identified by a single customer. The majority of participants also indicated that they followed the
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aforementioned brands for six months or more (84.62%), followed by three to five months (7.69%) and one to
two months (7.69%).
Descriptive statistics of eye tracking research. The descriptive statistics of the mean fixation duration in ms on
stimuli is provided in Table 1. The results show that there is a difference between the average fixations made on
the elements of a male influencer post compared to a female influencer post. In other words, diverse elements
of a male post, including name and surname, the first and the third part of the text, luxury brand shoes, and
influencer face received more of the participant’s attention in ms (see Table 1).
Table 1: Descriptive statistics of the mean fixation duration in ms on influencer post elements of AOIs
AOI elements
Male influencer, ms
Female influencer, ms
Mean
Std. deviation
Mean
Std. deviation
Predefined
elements
Name/surname
616,08
932,85
286,12
369,12
Text on the left side
1241,89
575,39
393,88
380,99
Center text
974,99
668,59
1365,72
759,01
Text on the right side
454,15
381,747
71,84
165,99
Influencer face
627,33
347,722
374,66
418,2
Luxury brand shoes
510,61
747,75
336,15
307,54
All elements
Total view time of all AOI
5933,58
3214,26
4977,12
2952,07
Notes: N= 13 participants; the main text of the post was divided into three parts.
4.1 RQ1 results
See Figure 1 below for “Heat maps” generated with SMI BE Gaze software of social media influencer posts (left
and right). The “Heat map” is a visual form to present eye tracking results. A heat map uses distinct colours to
indicate the different number of fixations in specific areas of the presented stimuli. The warm colors (red)
indicate a larger number of fixations in a certain area of stimuli, while the area without colour indicates that a
participant did not fixate in a specific area. Fixations indicate the participant’s attention and interest towards
the stimuli (Pentus et al, 2018).
Figure 1: The Figure 1 Heat maps generated with SMI BE Gaze software of social media influencer posts (left and
right) showing where participants paid attention
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Notes: left – male influencer informational post, right – female influencer informational post (N=13). Red
rhombus indicates that the participant made a mouse click on an image.
The heat map of the male influencer post indicates that most of the participants’ attention went to the first part
of the text (left side) and the man’s face (chin). In addition, participants paid attention to a man’s name and
luxury shoes (green color). A limited number of fixations were for the text with emoticon (middle and right side).
In a similar vein, the heat map of the female influencer post indicates that most of the participants' attention
went to the first part of the text (left side) and woman’s face (nose and lips). Interestingly, the emoticon and
emoji did not receive fixations, while the luxury brand shoes on the female influencers post got less customer
attention.
4.2 RQ2 results
ANOVA analysis shows that there is a statistically significant difference between the average female customer
views compared with male views on the male social media influencer post. These findings indicate that females
have a higher likelihood to pay more attention to a male influencer, and have, therefore, a higher probability to
show their passive participation (see Table 2).
Table 2: ANOVA analysis of male or female views and likes (CEBs) on male social media influencer post
Dependent
variable
Gender of
participant
N
Mean
Stand.
deviation
F
Sig.
View
Male
6
0.5
0.5477
5.23
0.033*
Female
7
1.0
0
Likes
Male
6
0.5
0.5477
5.923
0.033*
Female
7
0
0
Note: * p<0.05
On the contrary, males have a higher likelihood to click “Like” towards male influencer posts. Interestingly, the
average fixation time of male subjects on influencer post was 6296.03 ms while the average fixation time of
female subjects was 5622.91 ms. These results enhance a current understanding of customer liking behaviour
by taking into account customer attention responses. Similarly, ANOVA analysis was performed with a female
post. The results do not indicate a significant difference between male or female customer reactions towards
the social media female influencer (see Table 3). Interestingly, males indicate a higher average fixation duration
(6293. 38 ms) in comparison to females (3848.87 ms).
Table 3: ANOVA analysis of male or female views and likes (CEBs) on female social media influencer post
Dependent
variable
Gender of
participant
N
Mean
Stand.
deviation
F
Sig.
View
Male
6
0.5
0.5472
0.056
0.817
Female
7
0.5714
0.5342
Likes
Male
6
0.5
0.5472
0.056
0.817
Female
7
0.4286
0.5342
Note: p>0.05
5. Limitations and future research directions
This pilot study is not without its limitations. Firstly, this research analyzes only two types of social media
influencer posts, namely company-sponsored posts. Social media influencers can create and publish other types
of content. Therefore, a more detailed analysis of posts can be explored. Secondly, the same post (content and
media type) created by an influencer might be autoposted from Instagram to Facebook. Importantly, both
platforms have some differences related to the layout of posts (e.g., the text of the post is under the image on
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Instagram). More specifically, the same content might not work equally across various screen sizes (e.g., ipad,
laptop, smartphone). Therefore, future research should delve deeper into the relationship between different
features of social media influencer posts and customer responses across diverse social media platforms and
screens. Finally, this research followed the behavioural manifestation of consumer engagement on social media.
Hence, future research might define and conceptualise consumer engagement as a psychological state.
6. Conclusions
This research aimed to examine customer responses to social media influencer posts, focusing on posts with a
luxury brand product and influencer gender. The findings indicate that a post by a male influencer can enhance
customer attention on a luxury product. Interestingly, a female influencer post receives more customer likes,
while the post by a male influencer gets more customer views. Importantly, customers pay more attention to
words from the beginning to the middle in a sentence and avoid words which are presented at the end of
sentences.
The findings revealed that most of the participants’ attention went to the first part of the text (left side) and
influencer faces. Thus, male customers spend more time on social media influencer posts. Therefore, the results
convey some meaningful recommendations for both social media managers and social media influencers. Social
media managers should pay more attention to the gender of a social media influencer if they expect to receive
customer attention on a company product. More specifically, female influencer posts can be used to encourage
passive customer participation. Female influencers should always make sure that their generated posts,
especially sponsored product, attracts a customer’s visual attention, which can shape their behaviour further.
In essence, this paper offers a pioneering attempt in examining the relationship between social media influencer
posts and customer responses.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Juratė Danėnienė and Paulius Nezabitauskas from Kaunas Science
and Technology Park for their assistance and lab facilities, and especially my thanks to the SMI Remove Eye
tracking system.
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