Playfulness vs. Professionalism
Khalfallah, D., & Keller, V. (2025). Authenticity, ethics, and transparency in virtual influencer marketing: A cross-cultural analysis of consumer trust and engagement: A systematic literature review.
Acta Psychologica, 260, 105573. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.105573
Khalfallah and Keller provide a timely and useful systematic review of virtual influencer marketing by focusing on three concepts that now sit at the center of the field: authenticity, ethics, and transparency. The review synthesizes 51 articles published between 2020 and 2025 and examines how virtual influencers affect consumer trust and engagement across cultural contexts. This is especially valuable because virtual influencer research is expanding quickly, yet much of it remains fragmented across technology, marketing, and media studies. The article’s main contribution is its integrative framing: it does not treat authenticity, ethics, and transparency as separate topics, but as interdependent conditions shaping how audiences respond to AI-generated personas. The cross-cultural angle is also important, since consumer perceptions of artificiality, disclosure, and credibility are unlikely to be universal. For a literature review, this source is highly useful as a mapping article. It helps establish what is already known, where tensions remain unresolved, and which areas require further research. It also supports arguments that virtual influencer effectiveness cannot be assessed only through engagement metrics; ethical legitimacy and disclosure norms matter as well. A strength of the article is that it captures the newest phase of scholarship, when concerns about AI, trust, and authenticity are becoming more urgent. Another strength is its explicit attention to culture, which adds nuance to a field that often generalizes too quickly. A limitation is that, as a systematic review, it depends on the quality and scope of the studies it includes. Even so, this is a strong foundational source for any project examining virtual influencers through the lenses of trust, ethics, and audience response.
Kim, D., & Wang, Z. (2024). Social media influencer vs. virtual influencer: The mediating role of source credibility and authenticity in advertising effectiveness within AI influencer marketing.
Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, 2(2), 100100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbah.2024.100100
Kim and Wang offer an important comparative study of human and virtual influencers by examining how source credibility and authenticity mediate advertising effectiveness. Using a between-subjects experimental design, the authors compare human influencers, human-like virtual influencers, and anime-like virtual influencers. This design is especially valuable because it avoids treating all virtual influencers as one homogeneous category. Instead, it shows that type and visual style matter when audiences evaluate AI-driven endorsers. The article’s central contribution is its focus on the mechanisms behind effectiveness. Rather than simply asking whether virtual influencers work, it investigates why they work or fail, with source credibility and authenticity acting as explanatory pathways. For a literature review, this source is highly relevant because it connects virtual influencer research to classic persuasion variables while also addressing emerging AI marketing contexts. It is especially useful for showing that authenticity remains central even when the influencer is known to be artificial. The article also helps explain why some virtual influencers may appear persuasive despite lacking human identity: audiences still respond to cues of credibility and coherent presentation. A major strength is the experimental comparison across influencer types and message contexts, which gives the study conceptual precision. It also contributes to the growing literature differentiating human-like and stylized virtual agents. A limitation is that experimental settings may simplify how audiences encounter virtual influencers in everyday platform use. Even so, this article is a strong source for demonstrating that advertising effectiveness in AI influencer marketing is mediated by familiar trust-related constructs, even as the nature of the communicator changes.
Kim, D. Y., & Kim, H.-Y. (2021). Trust me, trust me not: A nuanced view of influencer marketing on social media.
Journal of Business Research, 134, 223–232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.05.024
Kim and Kim provide a foundational account of how trust forms in influencer marketing and why that trust matters for downstream outcomes. Drawing on social exchange theory and reciprocity, the study examines whether source characteristics such as expertise, authenticity, physical attractiveness, and homophily operate as relational resources in building follower trust. It then links trust to loyalty, product attitude, and purchase intention, while also testing relationship strength as a moderator. This article is especially useful because it treats influencer marketing as a relationship process rather than a one-off advertising exposure. That makes it highly relevant for literature reviews interested in authenticity, loyalty, and the longer-term mechanisms behind persuasion. A key contribution is the finding that trust mediates the effects of several influencer characteristics on marketing outcomes, while physical attractiveness does not appear to play the same role in relational trust formation. This helps refine the common assumption that appearance alone drives influencer success. The moderation result is also valuable, because it suggests that the influence of authenticity and trust depends partly on the strength of the follower-influencer relationship. For a literature review, this source works particularly well as a bridge between interpersonal communication theory and marketing performance. It helps explain why authenticity matters not only symbolically but behaviorally, through trust. A limitation is that the study does not directly address newer issues such as virtual influencers or platform governance. Still, it remains one of the clearest and most influential studies on trust in influencer marketing and is essential for explaining how credibility-related perceptions translate into loyalty and purchase-oriented outcomes.
Koles, B., Audrezet, A., Guidry Moulard, J., Ameen, N., & McKenna, B. (2024). The authentic virtual influencer: Authenticity manifestations in the metaverse.
Journal of Business Research, 170, 114325. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114325
Koles, Audrezet, Guidry Moulard, Ameen, and McKenna make a major contribution to virtual influencer research by asking a deceptively difficult question: how can something fictional be perceived as authentic? Using the Entity-Referent Correspondence Framework of Authenticity, the article explores the different ways authenticity manifests in the context of virtual influencers. This is a highly valuable intervention because much early research treated authenticity as a human trait and therefore struggled to explain why audiences respond positively to artificial personas. The article helps resolve that problem by showing that authenticity in virtual settings is not necessarily about biological humanness; it can also emerge through coherence, narrative consistency, symbolic meaning, and relational fit. For a literature review, this source is particularly important because it expands authenticity theory beyond traditional influencer studies. It demonstrates that authenticity remains relevant in metaverse and CGI-based environments, but it may take different forms than in human influencer marketing. The article is also useful for connecting branding, identity construction, and technological mediation. A major strength is its conceptual richness. Rather than merely testing whether people “like” virtual influencers, it develops a more sophisticated language for understanding why such figures may still feel genuine to audiences. This makes it especially helpful for theory sections addressing authenticity in AI or metaverse contexts. A limitation is that the conceptually ambitious nature of the paper may make it less directly measurable than experimental studies. Even so, it is one of the strongest sources for explaining that virtual influencers are not simply fake substitutes for humans, but meaning-producing agents whose authenticity can be manifested and interpreted in distinctive ways.
Liao, J., & Chen, J. (2024). The authenticity advantage: How influencer authenticity management strategies shape digital engagement with sponsored videos.
Journal of Business Research, 185, 114937. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.114937
Liao and Chen extend authenticity research by examining how influencers strategically manage authenticity in sponsored videos and how those strategies affect digital engagement. Rather than assuming authenticity is a stable personal quality, the authors treat it as something actively constructed through message design. This perspective is especially useful because it reflects how influencers operate in commercial platform environments, where persuasion and self-presentation must be balanced constantly. The study finds that authenticity management shapes engagement and that this relationship depends on several contextual factors. Influencer competence strengthens the effects of two-sided messages, sponsorship disclosure affects engagement, and influencer-brand fit weakens the effect of self-identity construction. These findings make the article particularly relevant for literature reviews examining the tension between persuasion and perceived genuineness. A major strength is that the article connects authenticity management directly to behavioral platform outcomes rather than stopping at attitudes or self-reported perceptions. This gives it strong relevance for studies of sponsored content performance. It is also a useful bridge between earlier qualitative authenticity theory and newer quantitative work on engagement. For research on virtual or AI influencers, the article remains relevant because it shows that authenticity is best understood as a set of communicative strategies and signals rather than as a purely innate human property. A limitation is that engagement does not necessarily capture deeper trust or long-term loyalty. Even so, this is a strong and current source for arguing that authenticity can be strategically managed in commercial content and that such management plays a measurable role in how audiences interact with sponsored media.
Pushparaj, P., Kushwaha, B. P., & Prashar, S. (2025). A systematic literature review of virtual influencers in marketing using bibliometric analysis.
International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 22, 631–662. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12208-025-00441-0
Pushparaj, Kushwaha, and Prashar provide a broad bibliometric and systematic review of virtual influencer research in marketing, making this article a highly useful overview source. The study analyzes 182 documents extracted from Scopus and uses VOSviewer and Bibliometric R tools to identify publication trends, thematic clusters, and major research directions. This is valuable because the virtual influencer field is growing rapidly and can be difficult to organize without synthesis work of this kind. The article’s contribution lies in its ability to map the field rather than test one narrow hypothesis. For a literature review, that makes it especially useful in early sections that need to show how scholarship has developed, which topics dominate the literature, and where important gaps remain. It can also help justify why virtual influencer research deserves separate attention from broader influencer marketing studies. A major strength is the scale of the review and its use of bibliometric methods, which can reveal patterns in authorship, keywords, and conceptual concentration that are not obvious from reading individual papers. The source is also helpful for identifying the rise of themes such as authenticity, trust, engagement, AI, and ethics. Another advantage is that it offers a structured summary of an emerging field that is still scattered across journals and disciplines. A limitation is that bibliometric analysis is better at mapping the literature than evaluating the substantive quality of each study. Even so, this article is a strong anchor source for showing the growth, priorities, and knowledge structure of virtual influencer marketing research and for positioning a project within that expanding scholarly landscape.
