Source Effects, Hedonic Value and Parasocial Relationship of Influencer Marketing in Taiwanese Tourism Industry
Basic Proposal Logic
Similar with what you have written before, this proposal is a regression-based research. The main aim is to examine the casual relationship between influencer characteristics (source effects), content characteristics (hedonic value), customer characteristics (parasocial relationship) and customer attitude.
Things Needed before You Start
Literature Pack
Knowledge on Multivariate Regression (Even Better Structural Equation Modelling)
Step-by-Step Guide
1. Introduction (400)
In this section, you need to outline the research background on travel influencers. You could mention their role and relevance in Taiwanese tourism industry, certain successful or unsuccessful stories related to travel influencers, or the market potential for travel influencers.
In addition, you need to write concisely about your theoretical stories and your identified gap (mainly from literature review).
The most important piece is (based on gap) to formally state your research aim and objectives. The aim can be “to examine the main influencer, content and customer characteristics of influential marketing with respect to customer attitude in Taiwanese tourism industry’. The research question can be ‘to test the causal relationship between influencer attractiveness, trustworthiness, expertise, message hedonic value, customer parasocial relationship and customer attitude’, as well as ‘to explore whether such causal relationship is contingent upon customer demographics’ (sub-sample analysis).
Finally, you give a brief outline for the rest of the proposal.
2. Literature Review (1800)
The overall logic of literature review works like this. First, you briefly describe the concept of travel influencers. Second, you examine the persuasiveness of influencer marketing within the tourism industry. Benchmarked against the ‘persuasiveness of influencer marketing in general, the research gap lies on the fact that knowledge about what influencer, content, customer characteristics lead to best customer attitude is seriously lacking. Third, you search for literature outside tourism industry and come up with research hypotheses.
2.1. Travel Influencer (100)
Mostly describe here. Simply lay out what travel influencer and its relevance
2.2. Persuasiveness of Influencer Marketing in Tourism Indust
ry (600)
Here, you should critically evaluate previous literature on what factors contribute to influencer marketing effectiveness Within tourism industry. You could find certain papers in the literature pack. For instance, Yilmazdogan, Dogan, Altintas (2021) look at source effect and parasocial relationship. Asan (2022) develops the ‘Travel Influencers’ Impacts Scale’. Le and Hancer (2021) also examines the source effect and wishful identification. For a more comprehensive review, please consult the meta-analysis by Sesar, Hunjet and Kozina (2021).
After you read through the papers WITHIN the tourism industry, you will get the feeling that the area of persuasiveness of influencer marketing in tourism industry is a new area, and there is limited evidence that could pinpoint which factors are most relevant for customer outcome. Such research gap is more evident if you look at the ‘persuasiveness of influencer marketing’ in general, from Ye, Hudders, De Jans and De Veirman (2021). The ‘Theme 1’ lists all the possible factors.
2.3. Source Effect (500)
[For the remaining parts, we isolate three persuasiveness characteristics, namely source effect, parasocial relationship and hedonic value of message, that we think are most relevant for Taiwanese travel influencer market. For each characteristic, we outline the theory or concept, critically evaluate relevant empirical evidence in general and come with research hypothesis. Here, you are freely to google the key words, unbounded by tourism industry]
[Note: source effect is a must. If you want to change the other two factors, please do so. I choose hedonic value to capture the content characteristics of influencer marketing, parasocial relationship to capture customer characteristics, see ‘Theme 1’ by Ye, Hudders, De Jans and De Veriman (2021)]
For instance, source effect include social attractiveness and social credibility. The well-known literature on the source effect include Ohanian (1991), Rossiter and Smidts (2012) and Hoffner and Buchanan (2005). There are also abundant empirical evidence generally supporting the validity of source effect. Surely, to be critical, you could discuss the counter-evidence. At last, you come up with research hypothesis like ‘perceived physical attractiveness of travel influencers is positively related to customer attitude’.
2.4. Hedonic Value of Message (300)
Follow similar structure with 2.3.