Capturing differences between culturally dissimilar audiences in the authentication of SMIs who organically promote destinations: The large language model approach

Abstract

This study investigates how online users from domestic and international audiences authenticate social media influencers (SMIs) that contribute to building a destination's organic image through creative content about the destination's culture, traditions, heritage, and the life of its ordinary people. The context of the study is a popular Chinese influencer, Li Ziqi, whose videography depicts domestic, day-to-day life in rural areas of the Sichuan province of China. We use an approach that combines the Large Language Model (LLM) prompt engineering with theoretically guided human interpretations of authentication aspects such as genuineness, otherizing, traditionalizing, nostalgia, and existential authenticity. We obtained evidence that authentication through otherizing and existential authenticity, specifically self-reflection and self-discovery, is more prevalent among international followers, while domestic viewers use traditionalizing and nostalgia more. Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) can potentially leverage those differences in perceptions in their marketing communications with respective audiences.