Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Mar 18;14(3):243.
doi: 10.3390/bs14030243.

A Comprehensive Overview of Micro-Influencer Marketing: Decoding the Current Landscape, Impacts, and Trends

Jie Chen  1 , Yangting Zhang  1 , Han Cai  1 , Lu Liu  1 , Miyan Liao  1 , Jiaming Fang  1
Affiliations
Review

A Comprehensive Overview of Micro-Influencer Marketing: Decoding the Current Landscape, Impacts, and Trends

Jie Chen et al. Behav Sci (Basel). .

Abstract

This research provides a comprehensive overview of micro-influence marketing, analyzing the characteristics of influencers and the mechanisms of their impact. A systematic review was conducted, encompassing 2091 citing articles and references across 74 studies involving 95 research institutions and over 12,000 samples. Employing an interdisciplinary approach that integrates insights from computer science, information science, communication, culture, psychology, sociology, education, business, and management, this study outlines the distinct features of micro-influencers. These features include performable authenticity, affinity expressed through consistency and transparency, musical and artistic media talent, and competitive individual traits. The research synthesizes antecedents of trust and attachment mechanisms commonly employed in influencer theory, taking an objective standpoint and minimizing emphasis on audience engagement and perception to trigger influence. The findings highlight that followers' pursuit of self-branding, driven by self-consciousness, social consciousness, credibility, and social presence, significantly influences the impact of self-expressive products on the audience's purchase intention. The research contributes to micro-influence marketing theory by integrating mechanics, offering practical implications for micro-influencers, and suggesting future research agendas.

Keywords: affinity; authenticity; consciousness; credibility; influence theory; micro-influencer marketing; social presence.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram illustrating the literature selection process.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Annual distribution of articles.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Keyword co-occurrence network.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Distribution of countries studied.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Distribution of research institutions.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Summary of the product types.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Clustered view of co-cited references.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Integrated model of the impact of micro-influencers.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Baumeister R.F., Leary M.R. Writing Narrative Literature Reviews. Rev. Gen. Psychol. 1997;1:311–320. doi: 10.1037/1089-2680.1.3.311. - DOI
    1. Zupic I., Čater T. Bibliometric Methods in Management and Organization. Organ. Res. Methods. 2015;18:429–472. doi: 10.1177/1094428114562629. - DOI
    1. Merigó J.M., Mas-Tur A., Roig-Tierno N., Ribeiro-Soriano D. A Bibliometric Overview of the Journal of Business Research between 1973 and 2014. J. Bus. Res. 2015;68:2645–2653. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.04.006. - DOI
    1. Rowley J., Sbaffi L. Academics’ Attitudes towards Peer Review in Scholarly Journals and the Effect of Role and Discipline. J. Inf. Sci. 2018;44:644–657. doi: 10.1177/0165551517740821. - DOI
    1. Nightingale A. A Guide to Systematic Literature Reviews. Surgery. 2009;27:381–384. doi: 10.1016/j.mpsur.2009.07.005. - DOI

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.

LinkOut - more resources