An Empirical Study on the Effect of Virtual Influencer Characteristics on Consumer Response

Abstract

Against the background of the rapid development of computing technology and artificial intelligence technology, virtual influencers generated by computer-generated image technology are rapidly emerging on social media platforms. Due to the potential marketing advantages of virtual influencers themselves, more and more brands are choosing to collaborate with them. However, existing research on virtual influencers is still in the exploratory and initial stage. Therefore, this study is based on the characteristic perspective of virtual influencers, combined with the source credibility theory, to study the impact of virtual influencers’ characteristics on consumer response from three aspects: attractiveness, expertise, and trustworthiness. And introduce influencer-product congruence as a moderating variable to explore the boundary conditions of the virtual influencer mechanism. This study used a large-scale questionnaire survey method to obtain corresponding analysis results through methods such as AMOS, PROCESS, and hierarchical regression. The results of this study enrich existing research on social media influencers and artificial intelligence, and provide policy recommendations for electronic commerce and digital business practices.