Influencer Authenticity: To Grow or to Monetize
研究了社交媒体网红在增长粉丝与变现之间如何权衡真实性，发现网红早期保持真实，后期变得不真实，且名人比纯网红更早转向不真实。
Social media influencers can grow their number of followers by endorsing products that are authentic for their social media persona or, alternatively, monetize their followers by endorsing a wider variety of products. We develop a dynamic model in which an influencer continuously decides whether to be authentic as she balances increasing awareness with generating revenues from sponsored posts. We derive conditions in which the influencer is authentic during an early growth phase, but she becomes inauthentic once a large enough fraction of potential followers are aware of her. Celebrities become inauthentic at a lower awareness level than pure social media influencers. If posts can go viral, the influencer initially is inauthentic as she hopes to go viral, she later becomes authentic to grow awareness rapidly, and she eventually becomes inauthentic again. This paper was accepted by Raphael Thomadsen, marketing. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.03479 .