Social media entrepreneurship: A study on follower response to social media monetization

Abstract

This paper studies a new group of entrepreneurs which has emerged on social media platforms, i.e., social media entrepreneurs. Arguing that followers are critical stakeholders in social media platforms, we examine how they respond to the monetization efforts of social media entrepreneurs. We draw on self-determination theory to explore how the authenticity of social media entrepreneurs is affected by their commercialization activities and to explore mechanisms that can help them address the authenticity penalty imposed by their followers. We use the Tanya Burr YouTube beauty and fashion channel as our empirical setting to show that sponsorship is associated with followers imposing a penalty, whereas affiliation links and own-brand promotion do not lead to a negative follower response. Our findings show that the negative effect of sponsorship on follower responses can be mitigated by revealing and concealing strategies. We discuss the contribution in terms of the digital media entrepreneurship literature and self-determination theory.