The impact of sponsorship disclosure on consumer attitude towards sponsored content and source credibility

Abstract

Influencer marketing is a new marketing tool on social media platforms.Influencers who have a high number of followers, have high influential power andimpact on their followers and others in social media when they create their contents ontheir channels. Brands use influencer marketing to promote their brands and products through user-generated content. When influencers post via the platform, the distinctionbetween non-commercial and commercial content is blurry. Commercial source and intention are unclear. The sponsorship disclosure is important to the consumers to help them access their persuasion knowledge to separate sponsored content from non-sponsored content. Disclosed and undisclosed sponsorship content results in different consumer responses.This quantitative research aims to study the effects of different type sponsorship disclosure on consumer attitude toward sponsored content and consumer perception toward source credibility. A between group experimental design was conducted with Thai Instagram users. 400 respondents were randomly assigned into one of two groups following two types of sponsorship disclosures, which are no disclosure (not hashtag #sponsored displayed) and clear disclosure (with hashtag #sponsored displayed), are measured to identify the effects on attitude towards the content and perception toward source credibility via a mediator of advertising recognition. Data were collected by an online survey and analyzed by descriptive statistics, mediation analysis, and independent sample t-test. The results indicated that clear disclosure (with hashtag #sponsored displayed) leads to an increase in advertising recognition compared to no disclosure (no hashtag #sponsored displayed) causing consumers to develop negative attitude towards sponsored content and lower perception on source credibility.The sponsorship disclosure type effects on consumer attitude towards sponsored content and source credibility were mediated by advertising recognition.These findings would provide managerial implications to marketers to understand the mechanism critical processing to manage disclosure effectiveness for the target audience based on their objectives.