How sentiment volatility of influencer product recommendation posts affects customer engagement

Social media influencers’ involvement in product promotion is a popular trend. The effectiveness of their product recommendation posts largely depends on customer engagement. Influencers organize sentences of different sentiment valence in a specific sequence when offering products’ basic information, sharing usage experiences, and providing product evaluations in the product recommendation posts, resulting in dynamic changes in sentence sentiment valence, that is, sentiment volatility. Drawing on narrative transportation theory, an investigation—combining an analysis of 12,849 influencer product recommendation posts on the Xiaohongshu platform (Study 1) and a further controlled experiment (Study 2) — reveals that sentiment volatility negatively affects customer engagement and this effect is driven by narrative transportation. Additionally, Study 1 indicates that the influencer type (micro- vs. macro-influencers) and product type (search vs. experience goods) have moderating effects. Our study advances sentiment research in influencer marketing and offers practical insights into narrative sentiment strategies for influencers’ product recommendations.