Social media influencer marketing: science mapping of the present and future trends Free

Social media platforms have become one of the most sought approaches for marketers to convey and communicate their products to consumers, contributing to its rapid and wide coverage (Cheung et al., 2020). Today, social media users have specific attention and interest in using social media platforms through social media influencers that promote products and services on various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, TikTok and Weibo (Koay et al., 2022). It is considered one of the most influential marketing tools for brands and organizations to communicate their product to consumers (Stubb and Colliander, 2019). Previously, marketers used traditional celebrities such as models, actors and athletes to increase brand values and popularity (Schouten et al., 2021). However, brand owners have now turned to social media influencers to endorse their brands. Compared to traditional celebrities who are talented and gained massive public recognition, social media influencers gained popularity based on their branding on social media platforms (Khamis et al., 2017). Social media influencers are considered endorsers toward marketing brands, products and services.

The concept of social media influencers is the same approach applied by organizations using opinion leaders as marketing tools. Using the influence of opinion leaders in influencing consumers is not new. Opinion leaders are individuals who exert influence on consumers’ attitudes and behavior (Tobon and García-Madariaga, 2021) through word of mouth (López et al., 2022; Schneider and Huber, 2021). The influence exerted by opinion leaders is contributed by their appeal, status or social prestige (Wang et al., 2022). Mass media, including social media, do not directly affect consumers but through opinion leaders who passively influence their behavioral patterns. Previously, celebrities and artist personnel were used to increase marketing communications through a well-established marketing strategy (Knoll and Matthes, 2017). Since the emergence of social media, the appeal and accessibility of influencer endorsement have seen an upsurge increment (Wang et al., 2022). The digital traits of social media influencers can have a greater impact on how users perceive them, their emotions, their intentions and even their actions compared to the physical appearance of the influencers themselves, as stated by Sokolova and Kefi (2020). Kim et al. (2019) suggest that to understand why social media users remain loyal to their preferred influencers it is essential to examine the basic reasons why users consume digital content, such as enjoyment, pleasure, happiness and social interaction.

Some influencers have made social media marketing a career choice (Makrides et al., 2020). Many young influencers have made tons of profits, surpassing normal working jobs. As such, many individuals have opted to become influencers which have attracted the public to rely on their endorsement, recommendations and opinions. Many studies have shown endorsement to increase advertising effectiveness (Schouten et al., 2021; Weismueller et al., 2020). Due to their popularity and effectiveness in communication, many brands realize the benefits of collaboration with social media influencers, either by providing free products or paying them for produced endorsement and product promotion (Vrontis et al., 2021). Despite the importance of social media influencer marketing, understanding the subject, particularly the determinants leading to consumers' engagement with their influencers, is understudied. This gap has led to the need for an in-depth study on social media influencers’ marketing and factors that lead consumers to adopt influencers’ endorsements and recommendation.

The motivation for this review is twofold. First, social media influencers’ crucial role in promoting brands and products. It has become the most dependable consumer decision-making source (Pick, 2020). Social media influencer deals with various subjects, from food, beauty, fashion and travel (Lou and Yuan, 2019; Kanaveedu and Kalapurackal, 2022). Major corporations and conglomerates have used social media influencers to promote brands and products. Their role has changed the marketing landscape and advertisement of products and brands. They have diffused in every cornerstone of the consumer market, proliferating the dependence on influencers in communicating brands to the public. Furthermore, the market segmentation has changed, where the consumers today comprise a much younger generation that relies predominantly on social media influencers. Young consumers rely much on social media influencers as they are hyper-responsive toward influencers’ emotional attraction and limited cognitive skills (Tsen and Cheng, 2021). Influencer marketing is the best approach to engaging young consumers toward brands and marketing communication (Feng et al., 2021). This young adult generation, categorized as Generation Y and Generation Z, was born from 1981 to 1991 and 1992 to 2001, respectively, and are labeled as Millennials (Kadekova and Holienčinova, 2018). Young adults no longer engage in traditional media advertisement but demand interactive and personalized brand experiences (Childers et al., 2019; Fromm, 2019).

Second, there is a need to explore the literature on social media marketing to uncover the knowledge structure of the phenomenon. To the authors’ knowledge, there is a lack of study that applies the science mapping technique, despite the closest being a study by Tanwar et al. (2022). The author performed a bibliometric approach using performance analysis. The study was influential in providing the overall summary of the subject. However, it did not provide the thematic research clusters needed to comprehend social media influencer literature’s current and future state through science mapping. In another bibliometric approach, Abhishek and Srivastava (2021) discovered six main clusters based on three analyses. However, the study did not uncover the clusters in each analysis, with a limited search string applied. The study also used the Scopus database and bounded by evaluating emerging and future trends in the database. In presenting the literature, other past reviews are useful in charting this review direction. De Veirman et al. (2019) present a systematic review of social media influencers and their persuasive power on young followers. Vrontis et al. (2021) present a systematic review of social media influencer marketing by shedding light on its influences driving consumer attitude and behavior. Based on 68 articles, the findings show that multiple predictors influence consumers, with indicative mediators and moderators. Similarly, Kanaveedu and Kalapurackal (2022) systematically reviewed 65 articles from the ABDC list journal by evaluating relevant research themes, theories, methodology and research gaps in influencer marketing. In a quantitative approach, Knoll and Matthes (2017) performed a meta-analysis on 46 studies involving 10,357 participants. Fowler and Thomas (2023) present a scoping review on influencer marketing based on 150 articles, emphasizing emerging themes and trends. However, there is a pertinent gap in this subject related to the determinants and predictors of consumers’ engagement with the influencers. This study enables the mapping of the literature linking determinants toward consumer engagement with social media influencers. Using science mapping enables the exploration of the cognitive and social structure of social media influencer marketing literature depicted by the topological and temporal structure. To further extend the literature based on the knowledge structure, this study presents the following objectives:

• to evaluate the current knowledge structure on social media influencer marketing based on bibliographic coupling analysis;

• to assess the directions and future trends in social media influence influencer marketing based on co-word analysis; and

• to investigate the role of social media influencers in promoting brands and products.

This paper is structured as follows. This section introduces social media influencer marketing and its impact on the public and consumer market. Section 2 outlined the methodology based on bibliometric analysis. Section 3 presents the findings and discussion based on bibliographic coupling and co-word analysis, while Section 4 discusses the theoretical and managerial implications. Section 5 evaluates the limitations and suggestion for future works. Finally, Section 6 concludes the study.

The bibliometric method analyzes a huge volume of scientific data from various bibliographic databases such as Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, PubMed and Dimensions (Donthu et al., 2021). Its popularity can be associated with the rise of bibliometric software such as VOSviewer, Leximancer and Gephi. Bibliometric review infuses rigor in measuring the objectivity in scientific literature to mitigate researcher bias by aggregating multiple opinions of scholars in a particular field (Zupic and Čater, 2015). Bibliometric approach complements the quantitative review method of meta-analysis and the qualitative systematic literature review (SLR) method. The limitation of meta-analysis and SLR is that the number of publications in the analysis should be below 100 (Smith and Sarabi, 2020). Because the bibliometric approach does not require dropping articles in the analysis, the method reduces subjectivity bias. Based on the objectives of this study, two bibliometric analyses are presented to uncover the recent and future trends of social media influencers as follows:

1. Bibliographic coupling: This analysis evaluates the links between two publications based on a third publication. Bibliographic coupling applies similarity among the reference lists to establish a connection between the papers’ references by building the coupling strength of the papers (Budler et al., 2021). Bibliographic coupling categorized these publications into clusters to determine a specific theme based on a specific timeframe (Zupic and Čater, 2015).

2. Co-word analysis: Co-word analysis focuses on the words that appear in publications' titles, abstracts and author keywords to generate the assumption that words that appear frequently form a thematic relationship (Donthu et al., 2021). Co-word analysis can also be applied to evaluate the network themes and their relations representing a conceptual field space (Zupic and Čater, 2015). Therefore, it can be used to predict future trends by predicting the forthcoming trajectories (Fauzi, 2022).

We employed the following search string (Table 1) to identify the keywords related to social media influencers, influencer marketing and its related terminologies in the WoS Core Collection on January 24, 2023. The search was used in the “TS” search option that captures publications based on the keywords found in the title, abstract and keywords only. Bibliometric studies have relied on the two most dependable bibliographic databases, WoS and Scopus, where the former is more rigorous and robust (Vera-Baceta et al., 2019). The search was only limited to journal publications, excluding conference proceedings, books, book chapters, editorials and other publications that had not undergone extensive peer-review process. To perform the science mapping analysis, VOSviewer version 1.6.18 was applied.

The search was performed on January 24, 2022. The initial search returned 1,112 documents. After filtering only journal publications, the search returned to 917 journal publications. The number of citations received was 12,465 and 8,187 (without self-citation). The average citation per item was 13.59, with an h-index of 52. The number of publications and citations is shown in Figure 1. A significant volume of publications has been produced since 2013. Since then the numbers increased significantly and exceeded more than 100 publications starting in 2019. Similarly, citations have increased throughout the years and are expected to increase with the number of social media influencer marketing studies.

From the 917 documents, the analysis produced 51 documents that achieved a threshold of 54. The threshold is dictated by performing several trials on the dataset in producing the most appropriate number of clusters in the mapping analysis. A threshold of 51, 52 and 53 were applied at the lower end, and 55, 56, 57 and 58 were applied at the upper end until a threshold of 54 was concluded, producing the most robust clusters mapping. A too-high threshold would lead to over-filtering with few publications retained in the clusters, while too low would lead to underfiltering with too many generated clusters (Geng et al., 2020). Because bibliographic coupling relies on the coupling strength between the documents, the most influential publications are listed based on the total link strength (TLS). The highest documents with bibliographic coupling are Weismueller et al. (2020) (197 TLS), Kay et al. (2020) (196 TLS) and Schouten et al. (2021) (174 TLS). Table 2 presents the top 10 documents in the analysis, ranked based on the TLS.

Subsequently, the bibliographic coupling network map produces five significant clusters (Figure 2). The clusters indicated that three (red, green and purple) are closely interrelated, indicating a closely related theme. While Clusters 3 and 4 (blue and yellow) are more separated, showing an isolated theme in social media influencer marketing:

• Cluster 1 (red): Cluster 1 with 12 documents is labeled as “brand engagement through social media influencers.” Brand presence on social media takes many forms, where social media influencers have become one of the most substantial approaches in marketing (Voorveld, 2019). Ki and Kim (2019) discovered factors that persuade the consumer to adopt brands, which include attractive, prestigious, expert, informative and interactive content. These five aspects of influencing posts affect the attitude and behavior of consumers to mimic social media influencers. Jiménez-Castillo and Sánchez-Fernández (2019) studied the influential role of social media influencers on brand recommendation via electronic word of mouth. The result suggests that social media influencers increase consumers’ expected value and behavioral intention to recommend brands, ultimately generating brand engagement. Jin et al. (2019) discovered that exposure to social media brand posts led to consumers' trustworthiness and elicited positive attitudes toward endorsed brands. This, in turn, made them feel stronger toward influencers' social presence.

• Cluster 2 (green): Cluster 2 with 12 documents is labeled “Credibility of influencers through parasocial relationship.” Credibility in the context of social media influencers is the perception of followers on the trustworthiness and reliability of the influencers. Sokolova and Kefi (2020) learned that influencers’ homophily (the degree of individual tendency to bond with similar others), a determinant of parasocial, influences parasocial interaction (PSI). However, physical attractiveness has no evidence of impact. Subsequently, both influencers’ credibility and PSI impact participants’ purchase intention. Schouten et al. (2021) in their study on celebrity versus influencer endorsement discovered that consumers trust influencers more than celebrities due to their similarities and identification. Reinikainen et al. (2020) evaluated the parasocial relationship (PSR) between the audience and their influencer that forms perceived credibility, affecting brand trust and purchase intention. Parasocial identification was found to be a significant predictor of influencer endorsement outcome (Shan et al., 2020). Parasocial was also found to mediate between influencer congruence and attitude, engagement and purchase intention.

• Cluster 3 (blue): Cluster 3 with 12 documents is labeled as “Female influencers.” Female influencers have become an interesting segment in social media influencers’ research and contributed to marketing on a female-gender basis. Abidin (2016) presents a view on the emergence of influencers through semi and professional selfie producers. These influencers are bloggers, generally young women between 18 and 35 years old and are self-taught endeavors. Berryman and Kavaka (2017) discussed the celebrification of beauty vloggers Zoe “Zoella” Sugg, one of the overtly feminized channels on Youtube. She produces videos on lifestyle, fashion and beauty-related topics. The study discusses the Youtuber’s success through her gender predispositions and celebrity effects that depend on the process of commodification through intimacy. In a different context, Chae (2018) studied female social media users’ envy toward social media influencers. Users’ exposure to influencers’ social media, interest, public self-consciousness and self-esteem were significant predictors of envy toward influencers.

• Cluster 4 (yellow): With seven documents, Cluster 5 is labeled “Marketing through Instagram influencers.” Instagram has become one of the significant platforms for influencers. De Veirman et al. (2017) suggest that Instagram influencers with many followers are more likeable due to their popularity. The findings also suggest that if the influencer follows a few accounts themselves, it can impact their likeability. Djafarova and Rushworth (2017) discovered that Instagram celebrities significantly influence young female consumers' purchasing behavior. Consumers also regard them as having high credibility, making Instagram powerful with the term “instafamous.” In another study, Djafarova and Trofimenko (2019) examined the impact of source credibility, self-presentation and behavior toward micro-celebrities endorsement via Instagram. Users perceived instafamous credible when they abide by criteria and portray good self-presentation.

• Cluster 5 (Purple): With seven documents, Cluster 4 was labeled as “Paid and sponsored influencers endorsement.” Brand and business owners rely on influencers by sponsoring them to deliver their product communication to the public and followers. Dhanesh and Duthler (2019) discovered that followers’ awareness of paid endorsement by social media influencers is related to ad recognition, leading toward their purchase and e-word-of-mouth intentions. De Veirman and Hudders (2020) discovered that sponsored disclosure, when compared to nondisclosure, negatively impact brand attitude and, subsequently, skepticism, thus affecting the influencer’s credibility. Influencers posting genuine product recommendations with no relationship to the brand have higher positive customer attitudes. Stubb and Colliander (2019) examined how impartiality in influencer product posts affects consumers’ responses based on three disclosure types (impartial vs explicit sponsorship vs no disclosure). Findings show that an impartial product post is perceived as a nonadvertised product compared to sponsored product, thus generating message credibility.

The following Table 3 presents the summary of the bibliographic coupling analysis with five cluster numbers and color, labels, number of publications and representative publications.

The co-word analysis analyzes 3,437 keywords, where 50 met a threshold of 26. Similarly, the threshold was finalized after several trials were performed in the co-word science mapping analysis. The highest co-occurred keywords are social media (331 occurrences), impact (214 occurrences) and influencer marketing (195 occurrences). Other relevant keywords include word of mouth, communication and Instagram. These words suggest that the themes are related to the evolution of social media’s role in modern communication. Table 4 present the top-15 keywords in the co-word analysis.

The network structure of the co-word analysis (Figure 3) shows three clear and distinct clusters. These clusters are labeled based on the authors’ inductive interpretation of each cluster according to the keyword’s relationship:

• Cluster 1 (red): Cluster 1, with 22 keywords, is labeled “Maximizing the potential of digital engagement.” This cluster presents the prevalent role of social media and virtual communities in engaging consumers by shaping opinions and driving actions. The cluster explores the benefits and barriers of leveraging these platforms through influencers’ content creation through the strategic use of social networks to maximize engagement and achieve intended goals. Through social media influencers, strategies can be developed to increase customer engagement. Drummond et al. (2020) propose four social media marketing capabilities (connect, engage, collaborate and co-ordinate) deriving eight digital engagement strategies and 15 tactics. These digital engagement strategies influence entrepreneurial firms’ marketing approach and customer interaction. Through automated text analysis, Delbaere et al. (2021) discovered that social media influencers act as brand engagement with their followers based on cognitive processing, activation and affection dimensions. Within healthy food consumption engagement, the image of healthy (vs unhealthy food) associated with an influencer leads to strong engagement and a higher likelihood of recommending the product (Abell and Biswas, 2023). The engagement occurs due to the greater identification with the influencer in the image associated with healthy food. Relatively, Myers et al. (2022) discovered that sponsorship disclosures, brand logos, mentions of money and sponsorship overall saturation content lead to reduce engagement. These multiple predictors toward brand and product engagement require further in-depth studies to understand their underlying factors.

• Cluster 2 (green): With 15 keywords, Cluster 2 is labeled “The power of persuasion in digital marketing.” This cluster is centralized on how digital marketing strategies can effectively influence consumers. Social media influencers can leverage strategies such as sending impactful messages, creating trust and source credibility, product appeal and physical attractiveness. Marketing based on social media influencers should also be transparent and follow ethical code by comprehending the various interplay between elements. Masuda et al. (2022) developed a framework based on the theory of persuasion by examining consumers’ PSR based on three personal attributes (attitude homophily, social attractiveness and physical attractiveness) and three characterizations (perceived expertise, trustworthiness and PSR) as predictors of purchase intention. PSR strongly influenced purchase intention relative to other characterizations and the three personal attributes. On the other hand, Lou (2022) demonstrated that persuasion knowledge leads to positive advertising outcomes elucidating from the psychological mechanism of verification of cross-validation, positive bias and inspirational internalization.

• Cluster 3 (blue): With 12 keywords, Cluster 3 is labeled “Effective communication and trust in marketing.” This cluster highlights the critical role of transparency and clear communication in marketing. Effective communication is built through trust with the audience through disclosure and persuasive approach that are ethical and abiding principle of good marketing. Ultimately, communication in marketing aims to promote services or products by building relationships with customers. Sponsorship disclosure on social media is processed as persuasion knowledge (Kim and Kim, 2021). The message posted through sponsorship enables social media users to recognize the post as an advertisement and process it as persuasion knowledge (Boerman et al., 2017). Social media influencers are considered unique forms of e-word of mouth by disclosing personal information as part of their marketing and promoting of products (AlRabiah et al., 2022).

A summary of the co-word analysis is presented in Table 5, comprising cluster number and color, cluster labels, number of keywords and representative keywords.

Because social media influencer marketing is regarded as a new front of marketing, there are many theoretical perspectives that can be derived from this phenomenon. First, the role of PSR within social media influencer marketing. PSR is derived from the theory of PSI, defined as the enduring relationships formed between users and mediated performers (Horton and Richard Wohl, 1956). The relationship between two parties formed an illusion of intimacy perceived by the followers, taken for a real interpersonal relationship (Dibble et al., 2016). In many instances, both terminologies of PSI and PSR are used interchangeably (Escalas and Bettman, 2017). PSR is the socioemotional bond between media personnel and audiences (Giles, 2002), where PSR reflects a long-lasting relationship (Dibble et al., 2016). On the other hand, PSI is the audience’s perception of exposure to media production (e.g. advertisement). PSI and PSR as a construct have gained immense importance in the influencer–follower study in social media. The construct positively influences the target group to deliver marketing outcomes toward brand development (Rasmussen, 2018).

The PSR in social media influencers exhibit the same characteristics as celebrities, where the interactions between followers and their influencers lead to pseudo-friendships perceived by the followers (Yuan and Lou, 2020). According to Bhattacharya (2022), PSI is a one-sided “friendship” where the followers are influenced by the influencer’s persuasion knowledge, attractiveness, perceived closeness, believability and familiarity with the followers. Among these predictors, followers are usually attracted to persuasion knowledge which has been extensively studied (Breves et al., 2021; Kim, 2022; Lou, 2022). Persuasion knowledge is regarded as the most important component toward social media influencers due to its direct impact on consumers’ perceptions. Despite that, other predictors should be extensively studied as the future generations’ preferences differ, especially the dynamic changes in interest and passion among the younger generation.

The managerial implications suggest that a crucial aspect of social media influencers is related to trust toward social media influencers. It can be associated with Cluster 2 in bibliographic coupling (credibility of influencers through PSR) and Cluster 2 in co-word analysis (the power of persuasion in digital marketing). The aggregated findings suggest that social media influencers are the new norm and approach to how people acquire knowledge and information on services and products in the market. It has become the primary channel for the consumer market and a bridge toward interdisciplinary practices for business owners. Relying on the importance of influencers in endorsement and product marketing, this study provides practical guidance in selecting endorsing marketing and influencer’s strategies on social media. The aspect of sponsorship activities is largely important toward the appreciation of influencer-sponsored content, as it should be from the perspective of ensuring transparency in sponsorship disclosures (Lou, 2022). Transparency and clear disclosures will ensure followers’ trust and satisfaction (Dhanesh and Duthler, 2019). Followers develop the same level of trust in digital influencers as in their friends (Shamim and Islam, 2022). Moreover, followers interpret influencers’ messages as highly authentic (Trejo-Pech and Thach, 2021). Thus, organizations and brands considering using influencer marketing must be meticulous in conveying the message, as followers’ trust is highly associated with how influencers communicate and deliver the message to the public. Consumers disfavor the feeling that they are being misled and mistreated by influencers. Brand owners should develop transparent and ethical advertisements to capture followers’ interest (Vrontis et al., 2021).

The social media influencers’ role is to create digital engagement. Digital engagement reflects the tangible measure of success based on consumer cognitive and affective responses (Chen et al., 2022). It was reported that marketers rate digital engagement as high as 85% as the most crucial metric to measure influencer marketing (Influencer Intelligence, 2020). There have been many documented strategies to enhance digital engagement for interaction in relationships and networks among influencers and followers. Drummond et al. (2020) suggested potential business-to-business strategies by delivering on the message content, message co-creation, SM as a problem-solving activity, message reach, SM as activity structure, resource provider and resource.

Digital engagement among influencers leads to the issue of intimate self-disclosure. It is defined as someone who communicates with others by sharing intimate personal information (Leite and Baptista, 2022). Intimate self-disclosure describes one level of intimacy toward a specific area of an individual’s life. Studies that have examined intimate self-disclosure on social media have produced a range of conclusions. It has been shown to enhance the feeling of connection (Utz, 2015), friendship (Kim and Kim, 2020), authenticity (Ferchaud et al., 2018; Nah, 2022) and perceived closeness (Lin and Utz, 2017). This intimate disclosure leads to positive interaction between influencers and followers, leading the audience to comment, like and share influencers’ social media posts (Reinikainen et al., 2020). However, some studies show that intimacy self-disclosure leads to followers’ reduced attraction (Baruh and Cemalcılar, 2018) and reduced trust (AlRabiah et al., 2022). Thus, influencers and business owners should evaluate the form of intimate self-disclosure to ensure that the action would be appropriate for viewers and followers. Influencers should not overshare, as it could bring more damage to their credibility than moderate and low intimate self-disclosure (Leite et al., 2022).

Several limitations are identified throughout this study. First, we have not exhausted the terminology concerning social media influencers. Other terms such as “virtual influencers,” “video influencers” and “celebrity influencers” were not used in this review and would probably result in slightly different findings. These specific terminologies used in the literature, such as video influencers, might have rendered different research streams (Chen et al., 2022). Future studies should integrate these terminologies to capture the wider scope of influencer marketing in general and celebrity marketing in specific. This study also limits to journal publications only. The reason for excluding other types of publications is to ensure that all the articles are quality. Only peer-reviewed publications are included in the science mapping. Past studies using bibliometric analysis have adapted similar exclusion for the same reason (Bernatović et al., 2022; Fauzi et al., 2023). Limiting only journal publications and leaving out other types of publications such as books, book chapters, editorials and white papers would determine the quality of the review (Budler et al., 2021; Khaldi and Prado-Gascó, 2021).

Several gaps are identified in this study, produced from the clusters in the bibliographic coupling and co-word analysis. Cluster 1 (brand engagement through social media influencers) and Cluster 2 (credibility of influencers through PSR) suggest a gap in consumer trustworthiness in their engagement and PSR with social media influencers. Cluster 3 (female influencers) poses gaps in consumers’ perceptions of male and female influencers. Clusters 4 and 5 signify a crucial gap between paid and sponsored influencers’ endorsement through currently anticipated social media such as TikTok. In co-word analysis, gaps presented include persuasion and engagement through digital marketing (Clusters 1 and 2) and effective marketing through social media influencer marketing.

Future works should investigate the impact of influencer marketing on consumers based on well-proven theoretical foundations (Abhishek and Srivastava, 2021). These theories include the theory of involvement, uses and gratification theory, signaling theory, two-step flow model and similarity attraction model are missing in the literature (Kanaveedu and Kalapurackal, 2022). These theories should be adapted carefully from well-proven theories based on the current study context (Sulaiman et al., 2022). Understanding from the theoretical base facilitates researchers on the theoretical underpinning of the phenomena. Furthermore, future studies should uncover the different roles of genders in social media influencer marketing. Genders are attributed to different preferences based on the platforms and content and the difference in attitude toward persuasion knowledge, the credibility of influencers and disclosure (Tanwar et al., 2022). In line with social identity theory, Hudders and De Jans (2022) discovered that female consumers perceived themselves to be more familiar and similar to female influencers compared to male influencers, leading to stronger PSI.

When discussing social media influencers, the basis of marketing must be addressed. The current analysis differs from what has been presented in past studies (i.e. Vrontis et al., 2021) that synthesize social media influencer marketing through a systematic review. In contrast, this study aggregates past studies to present the topological and temporal structure of past studies through the basis of science for future work. From the consumer point of view, social media influencers must be seen from the essential marketing mix of 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion). Although social media influencers represent the new approach toward marketing, they must address the imminent need of the 4Ps. Social commerce has shown that the marketing mix considerably impacts consumer value (Wu and Li, 2018). This evidence strongly justified that social media influencers should address the basis of the marketing mix, where future studies could be further explored. Furthermore, apart from the marketing mix and financial and monetary perspective, social media influencers’ role in nonfinancial variables is crucial in developing social enterprise. They possess high potential in communicating sustainable development issues about climate change, pollution and ecological ecosystems that can benefit humankind for future development. For instance, social media influencers can relate and direct views toward understanding sustainable development goals and the green economy when communicating about specific products or brands. People will be more aware and educated through social media influencers, apart from looking into dollars and cents.

This paper presents a state-of-the-art bibliometric review of social media influencer marketing as an Avant Garde approach to marketing in the digital era. Using two analyses, bibliographic coupling and co-word analysis, this study uncovers the knowledge structure of the most recent and future trends of social media influencer marketing. From the analysis, this study contributes to the up-to-date approach of marketing through social media influencers as one of the critical components of omnichannel in e-commerce. Business owners and practitioners must adapt various marketing and sales channels by presenting a consistent and unified experience for consumers. With the current in-store, online and mobile channels, social media influencer marketing should be integrated and embedded to engage and acquire new consumers to sustain business in the digital market. This subject has developed a crucial insight that can benefit academia, government agencies, stakeholders and business owners in engaging and establishing PSR between social media influencers and recurrent and prospective consumers to stay relevant in the highly competitive digital market.

This research was supported by research fund from the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia under the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme FRGS/1/2022/SS01/UMP/02/2 (UMP SA Grant no. RDU220137).

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interest.

Availability of data and materials: Data will be provided upon request.