Content marketing in e-commerce platforms in the internet celebrity economy

TLDR

Social media and live streaming have made internet celebrity endorsements a common content‑marketing strategy for e‑commerce sellers, yet studies on the economic value of user‑generated and marketer‑generated content remain scarce. This study aims to quantify both first‑ and second‑order effects of internet celebrity endorsements on e‑commerce marketing outcomes. The authors use cross‑sectional regression and a panel vector autoregressive model, complemented by look‑ahead propensity‑score matching, to assess the economic value of celebrity endorsements and the dynamics between content‑marketing behaviors and sales. Results show that marketers’ content‑generation efforts and their interactions with consumers significantly boost e‑commerce sales, while fan‑community interactions produce additional second‑order effects.

Abstract

Purpose With the popularity of social media and, recently, live streaming, internet celebrity endorsements have become a prevalent approach to content marketing for e-commerce sellers. Despite the widespread use of social media and online communities, empirical studies investigating the economic value of user-generated content (UGC) and marketer-generated content (MGC) still lag behind. The purpose of this paper is to contribute both theoretically and practically to capture both first-order effects and second-order effects of internet celebrity endorsements on marketing outcomes in an e-commerce context. Design/methodology/approach This study conducts a cross-sectional regression to evaluate the economic value of internet celebrity endorsement, and a panel vector autoregressive model is adopted to examine the relationship between celebrities’ and consumers’ content marketing behaviors and e-commerce sales performance. The authors also adopt look-ahead propensity-score matching technique to correct for selection bias. Findings The empirical results show that the content generation efforts of marketers and the interaction behaviors between marketers and consumers will significantly influence the e-commerce sales, which refers to the first-order effects of internet celebrity endorsement. Moreover, interactions within the fan community exert second-order effects of content marketing on sales performance. Originality/value This paper provides new insights for e-commerce retailers to evaluate the economic values of internet celebrity endorsement, a new content marketing practice in e-commerce platform.