Influencer marketing and health repercussions: a literature review on the impact of influencers on eating behaviour and body self-perception

The aim of this article is to review the scientific literature regarding the impact of influencer marketing on eating habits and the development of attitudes related to body cult. For this purpose, the authors conducted a systematic review to identify empirical articles focused on influencer marketing strategies related to food or body cult published within the last ten years. Using specific keywords, 80 articles were retrieved from PubMed, Scopus, and WoS databases. Finally, a content analysis of 34 selected articles was performed. The findings show that the most common objective of these studies was to examine the characteristics of influencers in terms of message effectiveness, followed by assessing the impact of influencers on eating behaviours. Regarding study results among influencer marketing strategies on eating habits, no article included positive conclusions on influencer marketing and food.