Virtual Influencers Versus Real Connections: Exploring the Phenomenon of Virtual Influencers
研究虚拟影响者如何通过社会比较和准社会关系影响追随者，发现拟人化特征引发嫉妒、感激等反应，并扩展了生活世界概念到数字领域，对营销实践有启示。
While growing is interest in the use of social media influencers in digital marketing campaigns, little is known about virtual influencers and their impact on consumers and brands. Virtual influencers are becoming efficient advertising tools. Instead of being simple promoters, however, customers develop complex relationships with virtual influencers. This study seeks to uncover how social comparisons and parasocial relationships manifest within the virtual influencer phenomenon through the lived experiences of their followers. The findings indicate that perceiving virtual influencers’ human-like traits induces some form of social comparison among followers that triggers several responses, such as jealousy, scorn, motivation/determination, and gratitude. Resutls also show that anthropomorphism plays a crucial role in the development of strong relationships between virtual influencers and their followers. Followers experience a paradoxical multidirectionality of parasocial relationships, whereby a co-occurrence of actual multidimensionality (community-based interactions between followers) and a strengthened perceived, but not actual, multidimensional interaction with virtual influencers has been observed. Drawing on followers’ experiences, this study extends Husserl’s lifeworld concept to digital lifeworlds, in which virtual influencers are embedded. This study contributes to influencer marketing by conceptualizing comparisons between humans and virtual influencers and how humans develop parasocial relationships with them.