Product placement 2.0: “Do Brands Need Influencers, or Do Influencers Need Brands?”

An online experiment examined the effects of Instagram posts’ source types and product-placement types on brand attitude and credibility perception. A 2 (source: brand versus Instagram influencer) × 2 (product placement: product-only [explicit product placement] versus influencer-with-product [moderate product placement]) between-subjects factorial experiment (N = 304) tested the effects of the two manipulated factors on source credibility,...