Source Credibility and Emotions generated by Robot and Human Influencers: The perception of luxury brand representatives

Social Robots are increasingly encroaching into our daily lives by interacting with humans on the Internet. Luxury brands use Social Media Influencers to create brand awareness and enrich their emotional values. As the first study on a trending and largely unexplored topic, this paper aims to better understand the perception of Social Media Human Influencers and Social Media Robot Influencers by luxury brand representatives using the Source Credibility model, including Social-Emotional elements. Our study deepens our understanding of Brand-to-Social Media Influencers' relationships, mobilizing the wheel of emotions to analyze perceived emotions when using Social Robots to promote brand content and values. The study mobilizes a qualitative approach including 13 semi-structured interviews with luxury brand representatives. Our findings add to the Source Credibility model by identifying that Perceived Humanness enriches the brand perception analysis of Social Media Influencers. Our results also highlight the key emotions expressed by luxury brand representatives during their collaboration with both Human and Robot Influencers, favoring the acceptance of RI for luxury brands' future social media communications.