Selling the self, selling the brand: Orchestrating influence in the creator economy

This main objective of this dissertation is to illuminate the two sides of the same coin within influencer culture: investigating, on one hand, how influencers shape consumers’ perceptions and behaviors, and on the other, unveiling the hidden costs that sustain the act of influence. Across three research projects conducted using a mixed-methods approach, a sequential investigation is employed. The first Essay repositions the role of influencers in brand strategy within the highly idiosyncratic environment of video-based social media. It shows that, in this context, consumers prioritize brand personality self-congruity and perceptions of influencer effectiveness over emotional attachment to the influencer. This highlights how influencers must continuously manage two identities: their own self-personality and the brand’s personality, and how their persuasive power depends on aligning both successfully, which can create strategic challenges for brands. To bypass these identity tensions from a structural perspective, the second Essay explores an alternative model of influence in which the self is not implicated: virtual (non-human) influencers who can fully embody the brand’s desired identity. More specifically, it examines whether these new endorsers can achieve comparable levels of effectiveness and how audiences respond to them. Building on these external mechanisms of influence, the third Essay turns the attention inward to explore the lived experience of creators themselves. Altogether, these three research projects offer an integrated, multi-level perspective, linking consumer behavior, brand strategy, and creator labor, ultimately encouraging both scholars and practitioners to rethink the “selling the self, selling the brand”