Keywords

1 Introduction

1.1 A Subsection Sample

A new kind of word-of-mouth has emerged due to the prevalent use of Web2.0. Social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Microblog, provides opportunities for ordinary consumers to get thousands of followers [1]. Ordinary people who shows his or her talent on the social media can earn the fame and become influential in shaping the follower’s perceptions and attitude. This new actor category through new media are named as “digital influencer”, “social media influencer”, “micro-celebrity” by scholars from media, communication, marketing and information systems [1,2,3,4]. Although no conclusive term is achieved by scholars yet, the “grass-root” and “niche” nature of those influencers are agreed by all scholars. The grass-root nature emphasizes that the influencer’s “ordinary” origin, and the niche nature emphasizes that the influence of the micro-celebrity is effective only among the followers. Among them, the blogger is identified as an important kind of micro-celebrity.

A blogger endorses for multiple brands on social media and the economic value is huge [1, 4]. For example, Indy Clinton (Instagram account: indyclinton), a student is Austrilia, started to share her personal life on Instagram when she was 15 years old. Currently she has reached 104000 followers. She endorsed for the sponsored brands on Ins, and one piece of her endorsement post is charged for more than 750 dollars [5]. The endorsement phenomenon goes beyond the fashion context and nationality. Wenyi (micro-blog account: wenyi) is a food blogger in China’s Microblog. The blogger was initially a housewife and received no academic training as a chef. She cultivates people how to cook home-made meals and shared her family lives with the followers. She is quite famous as she reaches more than 482000 fans. In 2015, Wenyi endorsed for a chopping board in her micro-blog, and 22.5 million RMB sales revenue in a single day is due to Wenyi’s endorsement [6]. Given the success of blogger endorsement is new and of economic importance, it is important to understand why the blogger endorsement can be so effective.

Literature on attachment suggests that follower’s intention to buy is influenced by celebrity attachment, which is built through the celebrity’s frequently responses to the consumer’s needs. As to celebrity attachment, we refer to the cognitive and emotional bonding with the celebrity [7, 8]. Followers who build strong attachment with celebrities are willing to allocate more resources to the celebrity, and the attachment outcomes are crucial for the endorsement effectiveness [8]. Thomson [9] suggests that strong attachment towards the celebrity is a key predictor of trusting relationships, and is parsimonious proxy for consumer-brand relations. Loroz and Braig [10] found that celebrity attachment is beneficial to commitment, trust on the endorsed brand, as well as intention to buy.

A few studies discuss the success of blogger endorsement effectiveness and identified several significant factors. Although those factors are useful to understand the success of blogger endorsement, they are pieces of findings and lacks of theoretical guidance. For instance, Gannon and Prothero [11] studies the influence of selfies on perceived authenticity on bloggers using an in-depth interview without theoretical implications. Furthermore, although current blogger studies mentioned blogger is a specific kind of celebrity, but much of the research hasn’t combine the celebrity endorsement literature into their works. Among the few, Lee and Watkins [12] apply the celebrity attractiveness model into their study and discuss the influence of social attractiveness, physical attractiveness and attitude homophiles on blogger’ intention to buy. In a word, the literature lacks of theoretical guidance and are pieces of findings on blogger endorsement studies.

This paper draws from attachment theory to illustrate how bloggers leverage social media to make the endorsement more effectiveness. Both the celebrity endorsement literature and blogger endorsement literature has made considerable progress in identifying important factors that may influence the endorsement effectiveness. For instance, in celebrity endorsement literature, attractiveness, credibility, fitness between the celebrity and the product, celebrity identification, role modeling is considered as the key factors of persuasion outcomes. In blogger endorsement studies, the social media enabled factors, such as blogger’s self-disclosure, blogger’s responsiveness, the blogger’s selfies, attitude homophily are considered respectively. Although these findings are useful, theoretically based knowledge is underdeveloped yet. We review that enabling, enhancing and gratifying the follower’s need of self can increase the attachment toward the blogger. Further, we show those characteristics derived from theory are important to generate attachment and follower’s intention to buy.

To foreshadow this work, blogger’s characteristics and activities are divided into three sub-groups: to fulfill follower’s need of self-enabling, to fulfill follower’s need of self-enriching and to fulfill follower’s need of self-gratifying. To examine those features inspired by attachment theory, we summarized features into the enabling needs, enriching needs and gratifying needs respectively. We planned to conduct a survey to test whether the effects of these features are valid.

2 Theoretical Development

2.1 Attachment Theory and Relevant Studies

Attachment theory is developed from parent-infant relationship. Its main proposition is that when someone is in his childhood, survival is the basic need. He would like to seek for protection from environmental treats and maintain the sense of safety. As a result, he would like to build emotional bonding with people who are responsive to his needs [13]. Attachment also widely exists in a man’s adulthood. When an object is responsive to one’s specific needs, a satisfied and committed relationship is built then [9]. As human being have the tendency to maintain such intense relationship, they are mentally willing to allocate emotional, cognitive and behavioral resources towards the attachment target [14].

Although the original attachment theory stresses on close and intimate relationships, scholars from consumer psychology extends attachment study to marketing contexts. In marketing research, the attachment targets can be the target firm [15, 16], the employee [17], a specific brand [18,19,20,21], a human brand [9, 10, 22], or even a place [24]. For instance, Park et al. [18] considers brand as the attachment target. In this paper, they seperated “brand attachment” from “brand attitude strength” and empirically develops “brand-self connection” and “prominence” as two dimensions of brand attachment. Thomson [9] considers human brand as the attachment target. They study human brand attachment and proposed that need for autonomy, need for relatedness and need for competence are three antecedents of human brand attachment.

2.2 Consumers’ Emotional Attachment to Bloggers

The terminology adopted in the literature regarding attachment varies. Some researchers used the term “emotional attachment” [10, 17, 24]. Some researchers used the term “attachment” [8, 20]. Some even use the terms “brand love”, “intimacy” or “affection” [22, 25,26,27]. In our study, we adopt the term “emotional attachment” to refer to followers’ emotional attachment towards bloggers.

Here we define blogger attachment as the strength of the emotional and cognitive bond linking the blogger with the follower’ self. Although the terminology differs, the intensions and meanings those terms tend to express is identical. That is, they describe the extent to which the attachment target is linked to a person. To talk about attachment in general, Park et al. [18] stress on the “connection” nature of attachment, that is, to what extent is the attachment target part of the consumer. Emotional attachment emphasizes the emotional factors of this bond. The emotional attachment stream proposes that attachment is an emotion-laden and target specific bond. Thomson et al. [9] develop “connection”, “passion” and “affection” as three dimensions to capture the emotional features of attachment.

According to Park et al. [18], attachment is the strength of bond connecting the individual and the targeted attachment group. Thomson et al. [9] suggests that emotional brand attachment reflects the bond between a consumer with a specific brand and the bond itself involves feelings toward the brand. Brand attachment consists of three emotional components: affection, passion and connection. Park et al. [8] extended the idea that brand attachment not only include the emotional bond but also the cognitive bond. Based on that notion, Park et al. [18] proposed brand attachment as the power of the bond linking the self with the brand. Brand-self connection and brand prominence are two critical factors to measure brand attachment.

Based on different theories, scholars find antecedents to predict attachment. Thomson [9] started by suggesting the fulfillment of three basic psychological needs (autonomy, relatedness and competence) as the predictors of attachment strength. Other studies [8, 15] found that enabling, gratifying and enriching the self are key antecedents of brand attachment. Orth et al. [28] considered human personality and brand personalities key antecedents of attachment. Malär et al. [19] suggest that self-congruence with brand personality has implications for consumers’ emotional brand attachment.

2.3 EEG Needs

This paper aims to use attachment theory to explain why the blogger sells. More specifically, attachment theory propose that an individual will generate emotional attachment towards an object when the object is able to fulfill this individual’s EEG needs (self-enabling needs, self-enriching needs, and self-gratifying needs). The underlying assumption is that individuals tend to link himself with people who is considered as responsive to their needs [29, 30]. Parallel, bloggers, who is trying to build emotional and cognitive bonding with the followers, must be highly responsive to followers’ needs.

Part et al. [8] developed a conceptual framework to identify three kinds of needs (functional needs, symbolic needs and hedonic needs respectively) that is crucial to build the emotional and cognitive bonding. Functional needs (self-enabling needs) refers to a person’s desire to enhance the self-efficacy and to achieve the mastery goal. Symbolic needs (self-enriching) needs means a person is willing to identify and express his real and ideal self [31]. Hedonic needs (self-gratifying needs) refers to a person’s need to be involved in playful entertainment and hedonic pleasure [8].

Celebrity can provide varies resources to help the follower to fulfill the above desired needs. First of all, the blogger is an expert in a specific domain, thus he can offer credible information in this domain and cultivate people [32]. By following the blogger, the blogger can obtain more knowledge and feel more confident in this area. Secondly, the blogger is socially or physically attractive, his image is incorporated with some aspirational meanings for the follower. By following the celebrity, the follower’s self will be expressed and enriched. Thirdly, the blogger will disclose himself, communicate with the follower and even share light-hearted jokes and videos. Thus, the followers can gain great pleasure and entertainment.

In this research, we adopt Part et al.’s [8] identification of needs, and build the research model based on self-enabling, self-enriching and self-gratifying. To be more specific, we recognize blogger’s characteristics that is under the umbrella of the above three needs. We posit that:

  • Credibility (i.e. expertise and trustworthiness) of the blogger is factor that enable the follower’s self-enabling needs.

  • Role-modeling of the blogger is factor that enable the follower’s self-enriching needs.

  • Blogger attractiveness, self-disclosure, responsiveness and light-hearted entertainment providing are factors that enable the follower’s self-gratifying needs.

Figure 1 illustrates the proposed research model.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Conceptual model

Full size image

3 Hypotheses

3.1 Self-enabling Factors and Attachment Towards the Blogger

Learning from the knowledgeable and trustworthy blogger, the follower feels more confident on decision making and thus the need for enabling self is satisfied [33]. Thus, credibility of the blogger is a key self-enabling factor. A person feels enabled when a sense of efficacious and capable self is created [8]. Thus, any factor that is beneficial to create an efficacious and capable self could be considered as self-enabling factors. In the context of blogger endorsement, the blogger is considered as an expert in a specific domain and people believe in his authenticity [1, 33, 34]. When the blogger endorses in this specific domain, the follower will perceive the endorsement is based on professional knowledge and credible [35].

  • H1: Credibility of the blogger increases the follower’s attachment towards the blogger.

3.2 Self-enriching Factors and Attachment Towards the Blogger

The blogger is considered as a role model by the follower. On the one side, the follower has the need to enhance himself and to be classified into a certain social group [1]. On the other side, the blogger is perceived to have huge similarities with the follower’s ideal self [36]. The blogger is considered as a role model by the followers. In the process of learning from the blogger’s taste and preference, the follower’s self is enriched. Thus, Role modeling can be considered as a key factor of self-enabling.

  • H2: Role modeling of the blogger increases the follower’s attachment towards the blogger.

3.3 Self-gratifying Factors and Attachment Towards the Blogger

Attractiveness includes both physical attractiveness and social attractiveness, such as personal traits, intellectual skills and lifestyles [12, 37]. The attractive of a blogger can make the follower release from heavy daily works and obtain positive emotions [38]. Thus, attractive blogger is able to gratify the follower, thus lead the follower to build physical connections with the blogger.

  • H3: Attractiveness of the blogger increases the follower’s attachment towards the blogger.

Interpersonal communication is a key driver of attraction as it enhances a person’s need for self-gratifying [39]. In the blogger-follower relationship context, blogger’s responsiveness is a crucial aspect of communication [3, 40]. Responsiveness of the blogger refers to the blogger’s response frequency and immediacy behaviors, such as a quick reply on the follower’s comment. As the frequency of response increases, the follower is likely to perceived more communication willingness from the blogger. The follower enjoys the communication with the blogger, thus his gratifying needs is satisfied to some extent.

  • H4: Responsiveness of the blogger increases the follower’s attachment towards the blogger.

Self-disclosure is another crucial aspect of interpersonal communication. It is defined as the exposure of one’s information to another [41]. People tend to build intimate connections with another one who disclose a lot to himself [42]. This finding can be applied in many contexts, such as romantic relationships, consumer-brand relationships and also celebrity-follower relationships [43, 44]. In social media, the blogger releases diversified self-disclosure information to his followers, including personal lives, work-related things and attitudes on public affair [45]. By perceiving blogger’s self-disclosure, the follower his attachment towards the blogger is strengthened.

  • H5: Self-disclosure of the blogger increases the follower’s attachment towards the blogger.

For many people, to gain light-hearted entertainment is their motivation to follow a celebrity [38, 46]. In social media context, the blogger releases jokes, narrative stories and interesting videos, which can make the follower relax. Thus, the relaxed follower enjoys in the lighted-hearted entertainments, the need for gratification is satisfied.

  • H6: Light-hearted entertainment providing of the blogger increases the follower’s attachment towards the blogger.

3.4 Attachment Towards the Blogger and Purchase Intention

People tend to allocation more resources to the attachment target [14, 47]. In the blogger endorsement context, when the follower builds cognitive and emotional attachment towards the blogger, he is more likely to generate positive attitudes on the blogger’s behaviors, for example, endorsement. Thus, the intention to be persuaded will increase.

  • H7: The follower’s attachment towards the blogger increases purchase intention.

4 Proposed Methodology

To test the research model, an online survey is planned to be conducted. A questionnaire will be designed to measure the independent and dependent variables. 20 bloggers will be selected randomly on microblog. For each blogger, 200 of their followers will be selected randomly to ask if they would like to participate in the online-survey.

5 Conclusion

This research tends to explore the question that why micro-celebrity endorsement is effective. To be more specific, we select blogger as a typical kind of micro-celebrity to conduct the following research. According to the attachment theory, we believed that a blogger who is capable to fulfill the followers’ self-enabling, self-enriching and self-gratifying needs can encourage the followers to build strong emotional attachment with this blogger. Furthermore, the follower’s emotional attachment towards the blogger can thus positively influence their purchase intention.

While the empirical test is under design in current stage, we propose that several results will be empirically tested. The credibility, including both expertise and trustworthiness dimension, is supposed to influence followers’ attachment towards the blogger as self-enabling factors. The blogger’s role modelling is supposed to influence followers’ attachment towards the blogger as self-enriching factors. The blogger’s attractiveness, self-disclosure, responsiveness and lighthearted entertainment providing are supposed to influence the follower’s attachment towards the blogger as gratifying factors.

These findings will generate several theoretical and practical implications. This research is one of the first papers studying the blogger endorsement effectiveness. It focuses on the question that why blogger endorsement is effective by investigating the antecedents and the influencing mechanism. In term of theoretical contribution, this paper identified several unique antecedents of blogger endorsement effectiveness, which are different from the classical celebrity endorsement literature. Moreover, this research highlighted the importance of follower’s emotional attachment towards the blogger, which is less mentioned in celebrity endorsement literature. This research also has practical implications. From the firm side, it provides important indicators for firms to identify suitable bloggers to endorse the products. From the blogger side, with the guidance from this research, the blogger can learn how to make use of their economic value strategically.