L’influenceur des médias sociaux : une source d’information crédible ? Facteurs clés de réussite d’une stratégie de marketing d’influence

The rise of ICT has enabled the development of fertile ground for influencer marketing strategies. In particular, product promotion practices by « social media influencers » (SMI). However, not all communication of this kind is always effective. Indeed, internet users are becoming increasingly skeptical of these types of recommendations, considering them biased and lacking credibility due to underlying interests. This has led several SMI to conceal? the advertising nature of their recommendations. However, advertising disclosure is now a legal requirement. In this new context, it is essential to understand how internet users react to brand-SMI advertising partnerships and to identify the factors that encourage the acceptance of this type of communication when advertising disclosure is present. A three-factor experiment with n=868 respondents was conducted to address it. At the end of this study, it appears that the product use by the SMI before the collaboration and the opinions of its audience influence his credibility, the attitudes and behavioral intentions of internet users towards the message and the brand, thus creating positive value of influencer marketing strategies. Against all expectations, this was not noted for the volume of views of the SMI video, an indicator of his popularity.