Virtual Influencers in Digital Marketing: A Systematic Review of Trust, Authenticity, Engagement, and Consumer Persuasion

Abstract

This systematic literature review synthesizes evidence on virtual influencers in digital marketing, with particular attention to trust, authenticity, engagement, and consumer persuasion. Drawing on a corpus of 82 bibliographic references including 48 core studies organized across four thematic domains, the review employs thematic synthesis to examine how virtual influencers function as digital persuasive agents, how trust and authenticity mechanisms operate, how engagement and purchase-related outcomes are formed, and how boundary conditions shape effectiveness. The findings indicate that virtual influencer effectiveness is conditional rather than universal: it depends on the alignment between persona design, source credibility, product fit, message appeal, platform context, and consumer expectations. While virtual influencers offer strategic advantages in controllability and consistency, their artificiality generates tensions around deception, uncanniness, and persuasion knowledge activation. The review integrates source credibility, authenticity, match-up, parasocial interaction, and elaboration likelihood perspectives into a coherent framework and identifies directions for future research on longitudinal engagement, disclosure standards, and ethical governance.