GETTING IT RIGHT- UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL CUES ON VIRTUAL INFLUENCER’S CONTENT

Virtual influencers (VIs), computer-generated alternatives to human influencers (HIs) seem to drive social media engagement (SME) effectively. Extant literature on what factors drive this engagement is minimal. The present study fills the gap by unveiling the content-related factors responsible for driving higher engagement in VIs’ content. Building upon the literature on VIs and social cues, we propose a conceptual framework that postulates that the presence of social cues leads to higher user engagement, mediated by perceived anthropomorphism and subsequently by VI’s credibility. Data collection and analysis were done in two phases. The paper reports the findings from the first phase. The findings show that VIs’ video content drives more SME than VI’s image content. Also, video content of VIs with social cues generates greater SME than content without social cues. In the second phase, we will undertake three online survey-based experiments with different social cues.