Social Influencers and Healthy Nutrition: The Challenge of Overshadowing Effects and Uninvolved Consumers

In this study, the researchers investigate the issue of social influencers as endorsers of healthy nutrition. This issue is highly underexplored and involves two aspects that might pose a special challenge: (1) overshadowing and (2) consumers’ lack of involvement in healthy nutrition. Based on an experiment that included 289 valid observations, the researchers tested two influencer archetypes, namely, an attractive influencer and a sporty influencer. The data were analyzed with structural equation modeling in SmartPLS. For the attractive influencer, the researchers found a small overshadowing effect. The sporty influencer did not elicit any overshadowing. Furthermore, the sporty influencer appeared to have more favorable effects on highly involved consumers. The opposite was true for low-involved consumers: the attractive influencer had a stronger impact. Based on these surprising results, the researchers propose implications for theory and practice.