Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-10-2021

Abstract

Consumers use social media to create content, generate online word-of-mouth, and communicate with brands and other consumers. Consumers engage with influencers who deliver content that is timely, entertaining, and interesting to them. Many influencers have a truly global following across the world. However, there is little research on international aspects of social media influencers. Our paper leverages Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to study consumer engagement using a novel dataset of global sustainability influencers. Our results indicate that the cultural distance between the influencer and the followers is an important driver of engagement in a nuanced way. While the level of superficial, light engagement is not affected by the cultural distance between an influencer and her followers, the level of deep engagement increases when an influencer and her followers are culturally close. The effect is more pronounced for followers in countries where environmental concerns are considered more important.

Comments

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journal of Global Marketing in 2021, available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08911762.2021.1895403. It may differ slightly from the final version of record.

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

Taylor & Francis

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.