Digital Engagement on Social Media: How Food Image Content Influences Social Media and Influencer Marketing Outcomes

Social media is emerging as a powerful platform for marketing communications. More than half of the world's population, companies, influencers, and celebrities use social media platforms to promote a desired image and advertise ideas and products. Social media users and influencers document many different aspects of their lives to the public. In that regard, one type of product prominently portrayed on social media is food. The present research investigates how the type of food (healthy vs. unhealthy) featured next to a person in a social media ad or influencer post impacts online engagement. The results of four studies, including a field experiment on Facebook, reveal that an image of a healthy (vs. an unhealthy) food adjacent to a person leads to higher engagement and higher likelihood to try a recommended product. This effect is driven by greater identification with the person in the image when the adjacent food is healthy (vs. unhealthy).