The world of beauty vloggers on YouTube

A new phenomenon of beauty vloggers on YouTube has exploded and exceeded the viewership of many forms of traditional media. These beauty gurus on the platform are in most cases entrepreneurial women in their twenties, who are trying to get in the beauty genre of new media. Due to their large subscriber’s base and millions of views, it becomes increasingly interesting for corporate beauty brands to partner up with beauty vloggers to promote their products. This level of influence is comparable to those of celebrities and these vloggers are considered to be opinion leaders. Furthermore, product placements in advertising keep evolving due to technological developments and expansion across media outlets. It is valuable for marketers to understand how the level of prominence in product placement effects the overall brand attitude. A multitude of scientific research has been done on the type of endorsers in advertising. There is, however, still some disagreement and discussion about the exact role that celebrity and expert endorsers have on perceived credibility. Furthermore, the comparison between the two types of endorsers in an online context has never been examined yet. Also, little research has been conducted on the effectives of the level of prominence in product placements in vlogs. Drawing on previous literature, a quantitative method using an experimental design with a pre-stimulus and post-stimulus questionnaire was used. The four experimental conditions contained of existing beauty vlogs on YouTube. In the pre-stimulus questionnaire, the level of involvement explained by the elaboration likelihood model was measured. Furthermore, the perceived credibility, overall brand attitude and purchase intention were measured in the post-stimulus questionnaire. In total, 240 female respondents aged 18 to 54 that are interested in beauty participated in the experiment. The findings of this study indicated that both expert and celebrity endorsers have a high perceived credibility. However, when comparing the two types of endorsers, expert endorsers have a significantly higher perceived credibility as opposed to celebrity endorsers across high and low involvement categories. A lower level of prominence in product placement has a significantly more positive effect on brand attitude, as opposed to explicit endorsement for both high and low involvement groups. Furthermore, the findings illustrated that perceived credibility has a negative effect on the purchase intention and the overall brand attitude has a positive effect. The results of this study can serve as a foundation for future studies that aim to research the effectiveness of the type of endorser and the level of prominence in beauty vlogs on YouTube.