Online Endorsements: A Reflection of the Emerging Authentic Self, or a Maladaptive Façade?

Online endorsements are defined as when a user of social media chooses to click the “like” button of another user’s status, uploaded picture, or shared stories, typically through the social networking website Facebook. While online endorsements began as a way for users to connect with others in their social networks, brands of various products and services began to allow users to “like” pages of the brand with the incentive of providing fans of these pages with continuous updates in their Facebook news feed (Bernritter, Loermans, Verlegh, & Smit, 2017). While many marketing managers are focused on the quantity of “likes” received on a brand’s page as a means of assessing metrics such as brand engagement and word of mouth, the rationale for why users choose to become fans of particular brands as well as the traits of the brands that are chosen to be endorsed have been focused on much less (Wallace, Buil, Chernatony, & Hogan, 2014). Besides being invaluable to marketing and branding companies, understanding why the consumer chooses to endorse certain brands or individuals could explain how the user’s sense of self is being influenced through exposure to social media. For this paper, I will analyze several research studies that were conducted to assess why people perform online endorsements and how this relates to social psychological theories of the self as well as impression management. I will also analyze several studies that focus on the different personality traits and demographics of social media users who are prone to perform this behavior of endorsing other users or brand pages, as well as the characteristics of the objects of these endorsements. Finally, I will draw upon these studies and identify insights that relate to what these findings reveal about how the user’s sense of self is being altered by the consumption of social media.

Despite there generally being a stronger focus on simply determining how to garner more “likes” for fan pages on Facebook, an exploratory study was conducted to investigate the issue of why users choose to become fans of various product pages on Facebook, with the goal of establishing a typology of different fans and their distinct reasons for “liking” pages (Wallace et al., 2014). A web-based survey was distributed to students at an Irish University asking questions about the brands the individual liked in the past on Facebook and they were then assessed based on metrics related to attitudes, such as the degree the brand is self-expressive, loyalty towards the brand, as well the degree of brand love. A cluster analysis revealed four distinct profiles of individuals who are fans on Facebook and the reasons for this behavior, identified as “Fan”-atics, utilitarians, self-expressives, and authentics. It should be noted that the two profiles of users who “liked” the highest number of brands, known as “Fan”-atics and Self-expressives, were each characterized as being highly motivated to “like” brands due to the image creation possible through this behavior. Additionally, it should be recognized that more than half of the total participants were identified as belonging to one of these image creation motivated profiles. Taken together, these results indicate that, despite logic indicating that users primarily “like” brand pages for the functional benefit of receiving updates and news about companies of interest, this motivation constituted only 20% of the participants of this study (Wallace et al., 2014). The ability to express the user’s sense of self to others in their social media network appears to be the primary incentive for users of social media to endorse brands.

While Wallace’s (et al., 2014) exploratory study managed to identify that consumers perform online endorsements for reasons beyond the functional benefits of acquiring information about brands, others studies have performed more definitive research to connect the behavior with social psychological theories of the self. One such study by Hollenbeck and Kaikati (2012) attempted to link self-concept theory with online endorsements. The self-concept is defined as an individual’s perception of him or herself that arises from the beliefs one holds about oneself as well as from the response they receive from others (Baumeister & Finkel, 2010). The theory further contends that people are prone to behave in ways that can either maintain or enhance this sense of self. Hollenbeck and Kaikati (2012) focused on the facets of the self-concept known as the actual and ideal selves, which are simply representations of who the person is in reality versus who they aspire to be or wish to appear to others. The study specifically investigates whether users of Facebook choose to endorse brands in order to reflect to others their actual selves, ideal selves, or both. The study took place over a two-year long period and utilized observational research methods in which 84 undergraduate student volunteers were monitored, with researchers paying particular attention to the brands the participants “liked” on their Facebook profiles (Hollenbeck & Kaikati, 2012). Additionally, participants also recorded their Facebook activity through diaries and were also later interviewed in focus groups as a means of enabling researchers to identify trends regarding why participants were endorsing brand pages. The results of the study found that users were motivated to endorse brands on Facebook as a means of representing both their actual and their ideal selves to their social network. Users represented their actual selves as a means of confirming their self-concept to others by endorsing brands that the person currently uses in their lives.

In contrast with the more straightforward online endorsements that represent the actual self, behavior motivated by the ideal self is less direct. Motivations from the study related to representing the ideal self were divided into two different categories, ideal self-representation and ideal self-presentation (Hollenbeck & Kaikati, 2012). Ideal self-representation is related to self-enhancement, which can take the form of individuals attempting to convey to others what they are capable of or aspire to make their actual self congruent with. One such example of this phenomenon from the study was when one participant reported that they heavily identified with non-profit organizations as a means of conveying to the rest of the world that she aspires to one day be involved in research that can benefit all of society (Hollenbeck & Kaikati, 2012). Although this individual’s actual self is not aligned with this ideal self yet, being able to endorse brands enables this participant to essentially try on this new role, and discover based upon the feedback she receives from her peers, whether this is the type of path she would like to take with her career in the future. In other words, the individual is able to confirm whether he or she wishes to align his or her actual self further with this ideal self, based upon the feedback they receive from other users via social media, a phenomenon known as reflexive evaluation (Drenten, 2012).

The other variant of the ideal self exhibited in the study, known as ideal self-presentation, occurs when an individual attempts to minimize their perceived shortcomings through endorsing specific brands that conceals an unfavorable aspect of the actual self to others (Hollenbeck & Kaikati, 2012). An example from the study of ideal self-presentation was exhibited by a participant who reported possessing an actual self of being reserved and enjoying reading books in his or her free time, but chose to convey his or her more extraverted side on Facebook by endorsing brands that were symbolic for socializing, such as Disney World. This aspect of the ideal self relates to the process of impression management, whereby the user is able to emphasize particular traits to others users in order to elicit a certain reaction, but at the cost of not representing reality, or the actual self (Hollenbeck & Kaikati, 2012). Overall, this study has established that online endorsements are capable of enabling individuals to experiment with role acquisitions as they mature, as well as allowing users to hide who they actually are from their network of peers through the process of impression management.

In addition to online endorsements of brands being motivated and capable of defining the user’s sense of self, findings have also indicated that endorsing other users through social media are motivated by similar factors. A study by Hong, Chen, & Li (2016) investigated whether there existed a correlation between certain personality traits and the behavior of “liking” other users’ statuses or pictures on Facebook. The study utilized a quantitative survey method through the use of an online questionnaire being distributed to participants. The questions inquired about the frequency of giving and receiving “likes” on Facebook, general Facebook usage questions, which served as control questions, as well as demographic and personality traits (Hong et al., 2016). After performing the necessary statistical analyses, it was found that the traits interpersonal generosity and public self-consciousness were both positively associated with the frequency of giving “likes” to other users on Facebook, however, the trait of empathy was not related with this behavior. The study findings imply that, just as with online brand endorsements, endorsements of other individuals are motivated by the opportunity to convey to others a certain image of the self. While this concept of online gift giving was in part correlated with interpersonal generosity, which is an individual’s desire to helps others, the correlation with public self-consciousness, which is an individual’s fixation on the importance of gaining social approval from others, combined with empathy not being correlated, implies that impression management is a strong driver for online endorsements of other users (Hong et al., 2016).

Another important factor for better understanding the underlying motivation for individuals to endorse brands and other users via social media is to examine which characteristics are possessed by the objects of these “likes.” A useful framework for evaluating the traits of which brands or people receive “likes” is the warmth and competence model. This model contends that at an evolutionarily ancient level, people evaluate other individuals based upon the dimensions of warmth, which is the degree of good intention this person possesses, as well as competence, or the ability of the individual to accomplish certain tasks (Malone & Fiske, 2013). It has been theorized that this same basic evaluation criteria is also used by individuals when assessing brands, as people are prone to anthropomorphize brands and the relationships with brands are often conceptualized as sharing similarities with interpersonal relationships.

One study aimed to test the premise of the warmth and competence model and hypothesized that nonprofit organizations will be more associated with the dimension of warmth, which will in turn influence a user’s motivation to endorse this particular brand on social media (Bernritter, Verlegh, & Smit, 2016). After a series of studies in which participants were provided with a brand logo and were then questioned about their perception of the brand as well as their intention to “like” the brand on Facebook, the results found that consumers reported a stronger intention to endorse the Facebook page of nonprofit brands in comparison with for-profit brands (Bernritter et al., 2016). Additionally, the results found that nonprofit brands were described by participants as being higher on the warmth dimension, which could most likely be attributed to the brand being motivated to help society rather than being motivated to earn a profit (Bernritter et al., 2016). Essentially, the study demonstrates that the dimension of warmth or trustworthiness positively affects the consumer’s intention to endorse brands on social media, while competence plays a negligible role in terms of influencing a user to “like” the brand. It should be noted that there was a difference exhibited by participants for their intention to endorse nonprofit and for-profit brands based upon whether the endorsement would be public or private to other users (Bernritter et al., 2016). In the other words, this indicates that in private the user is equally inclined to endorse a brand whether it is a nonprofit or for-profit brand, while in public there is a higher degree of intention for “liking” a nonprofit brand.

Other studies have found that the opposite occurs when the object of a potential endorsement appears to exhibit a low degree of the warmth trait, such as is present for users of Facebook who are high on the trait of narcissism.Narcissists are characterized by a desire to display their achievements to others as a means of obtaining external validation and affirm their self-concept (Choi, Panek, Nardis, & Toma, 2015). This general description of a narcissist is akin to an individual who is low in warmth, but potentially high in competence, as narcissists often experience difficulty with forming deep relationships as they are unconcerned with the interests of the other party and are instead interested in obtaining detached admiration from others (Choi et al., 2015). After measuring the level of narcissism exhibited by participants as well as the number of comments and “likes” received by participants from their Facebook friends, the study discovered that participants that scored high in narcissism were less likely to receive comments and “likes” from other users when compared with other participants who received a low narcissism score (Choi et al., 2015). The results also indicated that individuals on Facebook were largely driven to not endorse another user on Facebook if they possessed the subtraits of narcissism, entitlement and exploitativeness, while other subtraits such as authority and sufficiency were found to not be correlated (Choi et al., 2015). This implies that it is the low warmth that is motivating users to distance themselves from these individuals, while the degree of competency does not influence whether the user is endorsed or not endorsed.

The studies that have been reviewed collectively reveal how the nature of the self is being changed as a result of social media, however, it is debatable whether this change is healthy or not. It appears that for many users of social media, they are experiencing positive effects through endorsing others, such as through ideal self-representation whereby the user is able to reflect an aspect of the ideal self that they aspire to one day have their actual self be congruent with (Hollenbeck & Kaikati, 2012). It can be argued that performing online endorsements enables adolescents to become comfortable with their aspirational self in a relatively safe environment, especially when compared with other methods from the past for identity development, such as drug use or even committing crimes. Additionally, the fact that more users are drawn to well-meaning and altruistic brands high in warmth indicates that more individuals are aspiring to one day have their actual self be defined as an individual with values that can better society rather than focus on more shallow or materialistic motives (Bernritter et al., 2016).

On the other side of this argument, however, it can be argued that the utilization of social media is having a potentially maladaptive effect on the individual’s sense of self, especially if the user is utilizing online endorsements for ideal self-presentation (Hollenbeck & Kaikati, 2012). This process of impression management enables the user to conceal aspects of the actual self that they believe will not be accepted by other individuals, and instead presents a version of the self that is designed to appeal to others rather than serve as an aspirational ideal self. This could lead to a possible identity crisis for the social media user, whereby they are unsure whether their identity is defined as the one that is constructed online to appeal to others or how they behave offline with other people. It can also be argued that users being drawn to endorse brands high on the warmth dimension are driven less by a motivation to aspire to one day better society, but instead by the need to conform to what is accepted by others. The fact that the study by Bernritter found that participants reported feeling compelled to endorse a high warmth brand, such as a nonprofit company, when this endorsement would be public, but did not experience this motivation when the endorsement was private, supports the notion that users of social media endorse warm brands to appear a certain way to other individuals rather than genuinely believing in the company’s mission to help society (Bernritter et al., 2016).

This phenomenon of impression management was found to be especially prevalent in the context of endorsing political parties or candidates via social media. A study investigated whether a user’s anticipated negative impression from others could impact the behavior of “liking” a particular political candidate on Facebook (Marder, Slade, Houghton, & Archer-Brown, 2016). The results revealed that when participants believed that their endorsement would project a negative impression, the user was less motivated to “like” the political party’s Facebook page despite privately endorsing this candidate (Marder et al., 2016). Findings such as these further strengthen the notion that the ability to perform online endorsements is leading to an inauthentic view of other people, whereby their endorsement behavior is influenced by the impressions of other people to the point of the profile not resembling the actual person. This phenomenon could also shed light on the recent surprise victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 election despite projections indicating that Hillary Clinton would win. Due to Trump’s manner of speaking, he could be viewed as a low warmth individual that many wished to dissociate with on social media for fear of being viewed unfavorably by others. Despite not publicly associating with the Trump brand, these same individuals may have privately endorsed Trump’s politics and in fact were comfortable voting for him due to the private nature afforded through the voting process. As this recent event indicates, the images and opinions presented by others on social media can sometimes not be representative of who the person is in reality.

Finally, it is interesting to note that almost all the studies that analyzed online endorsements did so in the context of the social media website Facebook. Further research that examines online endorsements through the use of other social networking websites would help elucidate whether this behavior is always tied to reflecting the user’s sense of self to others. For instance, it would be interesting to determine whether a different website such as Twitter, in which one can follow a brand or another user without it being published on a newsfeed for other users to witness, impacts the degree of authenticity presented by the user. It is possible that the self is changing in different ways if the user is engaging with a different social media website that offer different degrees of privacy.

References

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