Business Commons^™

An Investigation Of Influencer Body Enhancement And Brand Endorsement, Sarah Lefebvre, Kelly Cowart

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Purpose: As the cosmetic surgery industry grows and diversifies, societal beauty standards have shifted to include images of surgically enhanced bodies. With the increased use of influencer marketing, it is important for marketers to understand consumer perceptions of these modified appearances. This research uses the lens of perceived morality to investigate consumer perceptions of cosmetic surgery services and the effect of enhanced body appearance on consumer interest in an endorsed brand. Interpersonal similarity is tested as a boundary condition.

Design/Methodology/Approach: A mixed-methods approach was taken with a qualitative study and two online experiments. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling (N …

Internet Killed The Radio Star?, Atanas Nikolov, Yana Andonova, Yang He

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Radio airplay is still a popular direct-to-consumer (DTC) channel for music products. In this paper, we investigate the effect of radio airplay on album sales, mediated by consumer social media engagement with music artists. Grounded in the cultural production model, as well as the literature on customer engagement and satiation, we propose several hypotheses. We analyze our unique dataset by structural equation modeling (SEM). The results reveal that radio airtime has a bigger impact on album sales of lesser-known musicians than those of famous musicians. Social media engagement mediates the positive effect of radio airplay on album sales; this effect …