Influencer marketing and the ‘gifted’ product: framing practices and market shaping

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the development of the market for influencer marketing in Sweden. It does so by focusing on the issue of ‘stuff’ sent to influencers. Such exchanges can be framed in different ways: e.g. stuff sent for the purpose of earning media, or as compensation for a marketing service. Drawing on the notion of framing in Callonian economic sociology, the paper identifies three ‘framing practices’: (1) framing the sending of stuff to influencers in individual exchanges, (2) reframing exchanges to put them in new light, or (3) preframing how exchanges ought to be performed. In efforts to frame exchanges of stuff, their broader context, and how stuff should be taxed, influencers, marketing professionals and the Swedish Tax Agency contribute to shaping the market for influencer marketing.

KEYWORDS:

• Influencer marketing
• market studies
• market practice
• framing
• taxation

Introduction

Markets do not simply appear as unintended consequences of economic exchange but gradually form, coalesce, stabilise, and change through shaping efforts undertaken by different stakeholders (Geiger et al., 2014; Humphreys, 2010; Lee et al., 2018; Maciel & Fischer, 2020). According to Callon (1998), one key aspect of this process is the framing of economic exchange, which temporarily disentangles the parties and objects of exchange from their environment and determines what is taken into account and what is excluded from consideration. As several studies show, disagreement between actors concerning how to best frame (economic) exchanges is not only common across market contexts but also consequential for market development. For example, the market for digital music has been characterised by conflicts between music framed as freely shared resource versus music framed as marketable intellectual property (Giesler, 2008). Likewise, the donation of eggs, sperm, and other bodily materials can be framed as gift giving or as commodified market exchange (Hartman & Coslor, 2019; Roscoe, 2015). Further, conceptualisations of the sharing economy as collaborative consumption versus on-demand economy frame the provision of services such as ridesharing as true sharing or as market exchange, respectively (Chimenti, 2020). Both Giesler (2008) and Chimenti (2020) stress the importance of these framing conflicts for understanding the overall development of the markets they study, and Hartman and Coslor (2019) suggest that market actors rely on the strategic framing of exchanges to navigate the institutional complexity created by contradictory frames. In this paper, we explore how multiple framing efforts contribute to shaping the market for influencer marketing in Sweden.

Over the past 15 years, marketers have come to acknowledge the ability of ‘influencers’ to affect consumer decisions (Ye et al., 2021). Influencers are ‘everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual narration of their personal lives and lifestyles’ (Abidin, 2016, p. 3), and whom marketers recognise as influential. To capitalise on the clout of influencers, marketers sponsor posts, guest appearances at events (Abidin, 2016), and other forms of collaborations (Rundin & Colliander, 2021), but also seek to benefit without offering compensation (Wolf & Archer, 2018). Much of the attraction of influencer marketing lies in its position at the intersection of commercial and personal relationships (e.g. Cocker & Cronin, 2017; Petersson McIntyre, 2020). Despite increasing formalisation, influencer marketing remains based on – and creates tensions concerning – intimacy, authenticity, and sincerity (Duffy, 2017; Petersson McIntyre, 2020). These tensions are linked to different ways of framing influencer marketing exchanges.

The growth of influencer marketing has taken place in tandem with the creation of a market for such services. This has led to changes in the marketing system, including new ways of working for marketing professionals, new third-party intermediaries (Stoldt et al., 2019), and a blurring of lines between public relations (PR) and advertising (Wolf & Archer, 2018). In addition, it has presented challenges for advertising regulators and other authorities, notably concerning ad marking and hidden advertising (Colliander & Erlandsson, 2015) but also, as we show in this study, in terms of taxation. One longstanding controversy in influencer marketing concerns the sending of ‘stuff’ to influencers. This practice involves advertisers and PR agencies sending products and other items to influencers. We use the term ‘stuff’ to avoid an overly rigid description: that which is sent can be referred to as gifts, compensation, samples, review copies, etc. It is precisely this ambiguity of stuff that motivates our study. Examples of stuff range from clothes and makeup to luxury items like watches and electronics, to services such as travel or beauty treatments.

Our study maps the different ways in which involved actors frame this circulation of stuff (cf. Zelizer, 2000) within the Swedish market for influencer marketing. From a PR perspective, stuff is sent for the purpose of earning media, e.g. by packaging stuff in visually pleasing ways, senders hope that recipients will be inspired to feature them in their channels. Alternatively, stuff sent may be framed as compensation for a marketing service (C. Davies & Hobbs, 2020; Navarro et al., 2020). Furthermore, we find that the Swedish Tax Agency and advocates for professionalising influencer marketing suggest yet other frames. The regulatory role of the Agency creates a situation where one actor is tasked with determining the nature of these exchanges, leading to ethnographically productive conflict and friction. While many actors advocate increased formalisation (i.e. explication of rules and processes), they do not fully agree about what this means for the sending of stuff. Rather, the stakeholders propose different frames that focus on fair compensation, clear division of responsibilities, or smooth exchanges. We explore how these competing efforts of framing the sending of stuff contribute to shaping the market for influencer marketing.

Relying on Callon’s (1998) notion of framing, we suggest that the way in which an exchange is framed is the outcome of concrete activities, which we refer to as ‘framing practices’. We distinguish three types of framing practices: framing, reframing, and preframing. Framing refers to enacting a frame for the purpose of consummating a specific exchange, as when a sender proposes products as compensation for a specified number of social media posts or, alternatively, presents a product as something for the influencer to try, with no obligation to post about it. Reframing, then, refers to efforts to cast new light on past exchanges and their context, as when the Tax Agency rules whether the interactions between a marketer and an influencer count as taxable exchange. Finally, preframing refers to efforts that seek to define how actors ought to frame future exchanges they engage in, as when advocates of influencer professionalisation encourage influencers to not accept stuff as compensation. Our exploration is guided by two questions:

• How do senders, recipients and third parties frame the sending of stuff to influencers?

• How do framing practices contribute to shaping the market for influencer marketing?

The paper is structured as follows: Next, we review previous research on influencer marketing. We then present our theoretical lens for studying market shaping through framing practices. After that we outline our methodology. Our findings describe the framing practices of senders, recipients and third parties and identify four proposed frames for the sending of stuff to influencers. We then discuss how framing practices are employed in efforts to shape markets. Finally, we summarise our contribution to the market shaping and influencer marketing literatures.

Previous research: ambiguities in the influencer market

Research on influencer marketing has grown significantly in recent years. While the main topic has been the efficacy of influencer marketing campaigns (Hudders et al., 2021; Vrontis et al., 2021; Ye et al., 2021), research has also explored the emergence and practices of influencer marketing. This includes attention to (1) influencer work (e.g. Abidin, 2016; Duffy, 2017); (2) influencer marketing relationships (e.g. Stoldt et al., 2019; Wellman et al., 2020); and (3) the tensions between PR and marketing logics within this field (e.g. Wolf & Archer, 2018). These three streams of research have highlighted several ambiguities about influencer work, influencer marketing relationships, and marketing work. However, research has had little to say about the ways in which these tensions are managed in situations where different perspectives need to be reconciled.

Studies of influencer work focus on influencer content and the work of producing it. Influencer content encourages engagement and follower responses (Ge & Gretzel, 2018), creates intimacy (Berryman & Kavka, 2017; Petersson McIntyre, 2020) and expresses contrived authenticity and reflexivity (Abidin, 2016). Research on the experiences of influencers highlights the strain of having to produce content and the pressure to be ‘always on’ (Duffy, 2017), and their demanding and ill-defined work (Ashman et al., 2018). Petersson McIntyre (2020) notes how influencers manage the relation between themselves as performing individuals and the personas they perform – turning displays of intimate disclosure into entrepreneurial activity. The extant research suggests that influencer work involves significant pressures in combining personal expression and commercial obligations.

Research on influencer marketing has also studied the relationships between influencers, followers, and marketers. Scholarship exploring the relationship between influencers and their followers includes how YouTubers’ charisma is shaped and upheld by their community of followers (Cocker & Cronin, 2017; Reinikainen et al., 2020), how influencers consider issues of privacy (Archer, 2019a), and the emotional labour that influencers and their followers undertake vis-à-vis each other (Mardon et al., 2018). Research on influencers’ relationships to buyers of marketing services has highlighted the desire of many influencers to receive compensation for posting about products and brands (Archer, 2019b; Archer & Harrigan, 2016). Marketing and PR practitioners, on the other hand, seek control and influence (Archer & Harrigan, 2016), stressing that influencers provide authenticity and trustworthiness through their intimate relationship with followers (Childers et al., 2019). While influencers offer new possibilities for firms to communicate and relate with consumers, recent research also notes that arrangements between buyers and sellers of influencer services are often characterised by significant open-endedness, e.g. over the extent of buyers’ and influencers’ control over campaigns (Borchers & Enke, 2021). While previous scholarship has pointed out these ambiguities involved in influencer marketing, there is a paucity of work on how ambiguities play a part in ongoing and changing market practice.

Some research within this relational stream has highlighted the nature of influencer marketing as an emergent field where the connections between influencers, marketers and audiences are still taking shape. Influencers are yet to develop a formalised code of ethics but often rely on an ethics of authenticity in navigating decisions regarding brand collaborations (Wellman et al., 2020). Childers et al. (2019) note that advertisers still lack a cohesive view of how to approach influencer marketing as part of campaigns and that its value remains unclear. Stoldt et al. (2019) suggest that while influencer marketing builds on established practices of marketers working with journalists, journalists and influencers differ in important ways in their professional norms and practices related to content production, financial models, and professional ethics. The changing work of PR professionals is the focus of a third stream of research, dealing with the ways in which the emergence of influencer marketing is challenging established distinctions between PR and paid marketing.

PR work has traditionally sought to secure ‘earned’ media coverage for clients. The concept of ‘earned’ media signifies media exposure that a company does not directly control as distinct from ‘bought’ media like advertising and ‘owned’ media like a company’s own channels (see Stephen & Galak, 2012). The use of gifts in PR predates influencer marketing; PR agencies have long offered products and services to journalists and celebrities, free of charge (Naulin, 2016; Stoldt et al., 2019). Naulin (2016) describes the efforts of French PR agents to gift in ways that maximise the frequency and quality of reciprocation. For example, by contacting the journalists before and after sending stuff, to check for interest and to see if the journalist plans to write something, the agents seek to exploit the implicit obligations that come with gift giving, while steering clear of suggesting a market exchange. Avoiding a market exchange framing is crucial, as journalists see receiving compensation from those they cover as a breach of journalistic ethics (Naulin, 2016; Stoldt et al., 2019). Influencers, on the other hand, are responsible for generating their own income and tend to believe that they can both receive payment from a brand and produce ethical content reflecting their personal opinions (Stoldt et al., 2019; Wellman et al., 2020). According to Naulin (2016), PR agents might ask a blogger to agree to a counter-prestation (see Mauss, 1925/2005) before receiving a costly item. Indeed, research has suggested that the incorporation of influencer marketing into PR work, given that PR agents sometimes use products as payment or offer monetary compensation to influencers, is challenging the clear separation between PR and paid marketing (e.g. C. Davies & Hobbs, 2020; Navarro et al., 2020; Wolf & Archer, 2018). In negotiating these competing logics, the framing of the sending of stuff to influencers remains a key point of contention.

Taken together, the reviewed studies begin to illuminate the formation of a market for influencer marketing. However, as a marketing form in flux, the market for influencer marketing is still negotiated. From the perspective of communications professionals, influencer marketing is difficult to organise as it straddles distinctions between PR and marketing, and relationships are often open-ended. While differences between PR and marketing approaches have been noted, the practical work of navigating these logics in specific exchanges remains unclear. In short, further research is needed on the connection between practices of framing market exchanges and the shaping of the market for influencer marketing, including the role of intermediaries and regulating actors. Research has had little to say about the ways in which these tensions are managed in situations where different perspectives need to be reconciled.

Conceptual starting points: studying market shaping through framing of exchange

Markets are continuously shaped by a broad range of actions. The literature on market shaping (e.g. Nenonen et al., 2019, 2021; Sprong et al., 2021) emphasises purposive actions of (groups of) actors to ‘change market characteristics by re-designing the content of exchange, and/or re-configuring the network of stakeholders involved, and/or re-forming the institutions that govern all stakeholders’ behaviours in the market’ (Nenonen et al., 2019, p. 618). In addition to such purposive efforts, however, markets are also shaped by actors’ attempts to improve their own position, as well as ordinary acts of making do in the market (Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2007).

Markets are thus the combined outcomes of multiple direct, indirect, and unintended shaping efforts that are not necessarily aligned. The resulting tensions and controversies have been variously theorised as multiplicity (Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2006), competing orders of worth (Finch et al., 2017), and institutional complexity (Dolbec, Arsel, et al., 2022; Dolbec, Castilhos, et al., 2022; Ertimur & Coskuner-Balli, 2015), and have been shown to be consequential for how markets develop. For example, Giesler (2008) describes how a market characterised by competing logics evolves through a series of tenuous institutional compromises. Organisations (Dolbec, Castilhos, et al., 2022), brands (Ertimur & Coskuner-Balli, 2015) and consumers (Husain et al., 2019) conform to competing institutional logics, often through the dual strategies of decoupling and hybridising incompatible practices. Reconciling competing logics or orders of worth in moments of exchange demands ‘considerable, pragmatic and often costly work’ (Finch et al., 2017, p. 87). Sometimes this involves questions on the nature of the exchanges themselves, as actors can disagree on whether a sphere such as education (Dolbec, Castilhos, et al., 2022) or egg donation (Hartman & Coslor, 2019) is best organised through market exchanges. We approach the organising of exchanges through the concept of framing.

Building on the work of Goffman (1974), which places emphasis on how interactions are shaped by how they are contextualised, or ‘framed’, Callon (1998) suggests that economic exchanges are distinguished from other workings of the world through ongoing acts of framing. Goffman (1974) sees the notion of a frame as the way in which one may answer the question ‘what is going on here?’: essentially, the frame establishes kinds of activity and their boundaries. The interactions that are of interest to Callon (1998) are economic exchanges that form part of markets, but the separation of economic phenomena from other activities is not given (but rather the outcome of framing). Specifically, Callon argues that framing makes calculation possible by (temporarily) disentangling the agents and goods involved from their environments. This framing process establishes what the object of exchange is, who the relevant parties are, the mode of their interaction, as well as when an interaction begins and ends. As such, framing makes it possible to distinguish market exchanges as interactions of a certain kind. For Callon, the at times disinterested, at times calculative actions of people are not explained by inherent selfishness or calculativeness, nor are they explained by different relationship types or sectors of activity. Rather, Callon suggests that the formatting – or framing – of specific relationships orients agents towards calculativeness or disinterestedness, i.e. towards market exchange or gift giving. Gift giving, according to Callon, is distinguished from market exchange by framing that excludes the return gift from consideration.

Some markets see simultaneous efforts at market exchange framing and other forms of framing. Previous research has explored the contested status of market exchange framing in the paid donation of human eggs (Hartman & Coslor, 2019), in subsistence markets (Mwiti & Onyas, 2018), and in the sharing economy (Chimenti, 2020). This research highlights the different ways in which the relationship between market and non-market frames of exchange can be configured. Hartman and Coslor (2019) explore the rhetorical framing strategies that intermediary agencies use to relate to the competing frames of gift giving and commodified market exchange. On the one hand, they find that these agencies’ donor recruitment ads frame egg donation ‘as being just like a job’ (p. 414). This frame represents an assimilation of the logic of gift giving by the logic of market exchange: ‘If egg donation is “just like a job”, rather than primarily altruistic, monetary and other compensation is both natural and fair’ (Hartman & Coslor, 2019, p. 414). On the other hand, they also find that many ads propose a form of hybrid rhetorical frame, combining elements of market exchange and gift giving (Hartman & Coslor, 2019). Likewise, Mwiti and Onyas (2018) find hybrid frames of exchange in subsistence markets. Finally, Chimenti’s (2020) study of the sharing economy showcases the range of different frames proposed by ridesharing platforms: pure market exchange, collaborative sharing of resources, or a hybrid frame.

This scholarship informs our study in three important ways. First, it points to the participation of a variety of actors in the processes through which exchanges are framed. Hartman and Coslor (2019) highlight the strategic efforts of intermediary agencies in framing egg donation and suggest that IRS classification of compensation as taxable income and the placement of donor recruitment ads in the ‘jobs’ section of Craigslist both support the intermediaries’ framing of egg donation as being ‘just like a job’. Framing is done by buyers and sellers (Mwiti & Onyas, 2018), intermediaries and authorities (Hartman & Coslor, 2019), and platforms (Chimenti, 2020). Second, it points at the occurrence of framing controversies. Actors with a strong vision for a particular market can question the accuracy and/or appropriateness of other actors’ proposed frames, as when the ridesharing community in Chimenti’s (2020) study accuses other players in the market of ‘sharewashing’, or rhetorically framing the exchanges they enable as sharing while in practice setting up market exchanges. Third, Hartman and Coslor (2019) hint at the contribution of exchange framing controversies to broader market shaping processes when they highlight that framing egg donation as ‘just like a job’ contributes to legitimising the market for commercial egg donation.

To further explore the contribution of multiple actors to the framing of exchanges, the role of framing controversies, and the links between the framing of exchanges and broader market shaping processes, we turn our attention to framing practices. Callon (1998) emphasises that framing is ongoing, never done once and for all. Crucially, the successful framing of an economic exchange is an achievement that relies on various sociomaterial means such as rules, contracts, currencies, methods of measurement and calculation, and physical marketplace arrangements. Hence, Callon’s conception of framing is not purely rhetorical or discursive but involves investments in material arrangements that allow parties to treat an economic exchange as a discrete event. We use the noun ‘frame’ to denote a particular way of framing an exchange, e.g. an earned media frame. With ‘framing practices’, we refer to all activities involved in enacting such frames.

We distinguish three types of framing practices (see Figure 1). First, framing refers to enacting a frame for the purpose of consummating a specific exchange. This concept is aligned with the original Callonian framing concept. In the simplest of cases, framing involves a seller proposing a frame and a buyer accepting it, but framing can also involve the parties proposing different frames, as well as the participation of other human and non-human actors. For example, both intermediary agencies and the Craigslist category of ‘jobs’ take part in framing the interactions between an egg donor and prospective parents (Hartman & Coslor, 2019). Second, reframing refers to efforts to cast new light on past exchanges and their context. The purpose of reframing is to reinterpret and provide an alternative answer to the question ‘what is going on here’ based on already consummated exchanges. Conversely, we label the third type of practice preframing to highlight that it proposes how actors ought to frame future exchanges they engage in (and therefore, how they should understand what is going on). The sharing community in Chimenti’s (2020) study engages in reframing when they suggest that commercial ridesharing platforms facilitate market exchanges rather than sharing. The community’s message that ridesharing should not involve market exchanges is an attempt at preframing. The three concepts of framing, reframing, and preframing align well with the conceptualisation of market practices proposed by Kjellberg and Helgesson (2006, 2007). The original Callonian framing concept links to the notion of exchange practices, defined as the concrete activities that contribute to realising specific economic exchanges. The proposed concept of reframing relates closely to representational practices, defined as activities that contribute to depicting markets and their workings. Finally, the proposed concept of preframing aligns with the notion of normalising practices, defined as activities that contribute to establishing normative objectives for markets. We suggest that this expanded vocabulary of ‘framing’, ‘reframing’, and ‘preframing’ is useful for exploring how different actors seek to frame (and hence contextualise) exchanges, and how such efforts contribute to shaping their market context.

Figure 1. Framing practices: illustration of framing, reframing, and preframing of exchanges.

Methodology

The paper is based on ongoing fieldwork on the development of the Swedish market for influencer marketing. It draws on a range of qualitative data generated by participant observation with the Swedish Tax Agency, interviews with market actors, content from social media and other online sources, media articles, and documents. Participant observation (C. A. Davies, 2008) with the Tax Agency included sitting in on four work meetings dealing with the issue of taxation of influencer services from 2019–2022, undertaken both remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic and on site in Stockholm and Gothenburg. We also took part in the Agency’s dialogue seminar with representatives of the influencer industry, dealing with the issue of taxation of influencer services, and followed Tax Agency representatives to an industry summit and a breakfast seminar organised by a Stockholm PR firm.

Besides regular conversation with tax agents, we have undertaken 22 recorded interviews with 26 respondents working in various positions with influencer marketing (see Table 1). These interviews were helpful in defining issues and lines of reasoning across the many kinds of involved actors and offered useful explications of the stakes involved in shaping the market for influencer marketing. Participants were selected based on relevant experience, having a high profile within the industry, or expertise and formal responsibilities. Recruitment was pragmatic: often we identified interlocutors in documents or on social media, approached people during events, and routinely asked for recommendations for further sources during interviews. Such a snowball recruitment approach works well within Sweden’s relatively small business networks.

Table 1. Interview participants.

Interview person(s)	Pseudonym	Organisation	Duration	Format
Influencers
Influencer chef	Imogen	Self-employed	1h 04min	In person
Influencer, blogger	Iris	Self-employed	1h 04min	In person
Influencer, blogger	Ingrid	Self-employed	1h 37min	Online video
Book influencer	Isla	Hobbyist	24min	Online audio
Influencer, influencer network staffer	Inga	Influencer network	1h 06min	Online video
PR professionals
PR consultant	Patricia	PR Agency	1h 01min	In person
PR consultant	Pia	PR Agency focused on food industry	1h 07min	In person
PR consultant	Phoebe	PR Agency	56min	In person
PR consultant	Paula	PR Agency focused on culture sector	57min	Online video
Brand representatives
Brand manager	Bill	Wine importer	58min	In person
Marketing manager	Brian	Clothing brand	1h 09min	In person
PR manager	Barbara	Bedlinen brand	39min	In person
Industry experts
Advertising consultant	Edwin	Advertising agency	59min	In person
Industry analyst	Eric	Advertising industry organisation	51min	In person
Industry expert, activist	Edgar	Non-Government Organisation	45min	Online video
Teacher of influencer media production course	Edina	Adult education institution	1h 01min	Online video
Influencer platform executive	Emile	Influencer platform	51min	In person
Regulators
3 Advertising ombudsman representatives	Rose; Rita; Rebecca	Advertising industry self-regulation organisation	1h 07min	In person, group interview
2 Consumer protection agents	Rachel; Rosalie	Consumer protection agency	56min	Online video, group interview
Tax agent	Rune	The Swedish Tax Agency	28min	In person
Media professionals
Blogger covering social media and influencers	Maya	Online news site	1h 48min	In person
2 Journalists covering influencer marketing	Mia; Marie	Industry news media	58min	Online video, group interview

To capture the formation and formalisation of influencer marketing we have also collected and analysed a range of documents and online content. This includes books on influencers and influencer marketing (e.g. Hörnfeldt, 2018), as well as newspaper articles on the subject from 2007 until 2022. Further, we have followed and analysed blog posts and open Instagram accounts, and gathered documents such as government reports and recommendations, as well as information published by the Tax Agency on its website.

As such, we have worked with a broadly ethnographic methodology (C. A. Davies, 2008), drawing on a wide range of sources, while being attentive to the context and generation of research materials. Such a holistic approach allows for comparing different traces, perspectives and viewpoints, as the juxtaposition of partial accounts contributes to a richer understanding of a studied phenomenon. Based on Kozinets’s (2019) notion of ‘netnography’, we see acts of researching online as an active engagement, integrated with rather than separate from offline phenomena. Materials have been produced by two of the authors, with analysis shared between all authors. Fieldwork materials are primarily in Swedish. All fieldwork quotes are from materials in Swedish and have been translated by the authors.

Analysis has consisted of close reading, content coding and thematic elaboration of research materials for sections, statements or situations dealing with exchange, taxation thereof and tensions expressed over such practice (Saldaña, 2021). This has produced a range of ethnographically rich strings, which were then thematically analysed jointly by the authors. More specifically, we analysed the material with attention to the different proposed frames and framing practices involved (Callon, 1998; Goffman, 1974), assuming an agnostic stance regarding the nature of actors in relation to the network (Latour, 2007; Law, 2004). This means that we have followed how exchanges, rules, actors and relationships are defined and proposed in the material. In order to protect the identity of our interlocutors, we have used pseudonyms for the quoted interview participants according to their roles, e.g. influencers are given names starting with ‘I’ (see Table 1).

Findings: framing the sending of stuff to influencers

Many different market actors take part in framing the sending of stuff to influencers. Framing that seeks to consummate exchanges is primarily done by the senders of stuff: PR professionals and marketers. Influencers, as recipients of stuff, often play a more reactive role; either accepting the sender’s proposed frame or refusing the offer of stuff. However, these are not the only actors seeking to frame stuff sent to influencers. Defining what goes on in these exchanges matters for advertising regulators deciding on the rules for ad marking, alcohol industry stakeholders discussing the legality of product samples sent to influencers, tax authorities dealing with the taxation of stuff, and influencers and others advocating for professionalising influencer marketing. While these actors are not necessarily involved in the consummation of particular exchanges, they bring forward interpretations of what is actually going on when stuff is sent to influencers – engaging in reframing. Further, they promote frames that they consider to be aligned with regulation or with their vision of the market – thereby engaging in preframing. As the most long-standing controversies around the sending of stuff to influencers in Sweden have concerned taxation and the professional role of influencers, we map the framing practices of the Swedish Tax Agency and advocates of influencer professionalisation.

In this section, we first describe senders’ framing practices, focused on the consummation of successful influencer marketing exchanges. Senders propose two alternative frames, which we refer to as the earned media frame and the bought exposure frame. We then go on to describe the framing practices, primarily reframing and preframing, of the Tax Agency and influencer professionalisation advocates, and their proposed frames of taxation and professionalism. Table 2 compares the four proposed frames.

Table 2. An overview of the proposed frames identified in the study.

Proposed frame	Earned media	Bought exposure	Taxation	Professionalism
Primary proponents	PR professionals	Marketers	Tax Agency	Influencer advocates
Role of stuff	Means for content production; Cause of delight.	Compensation; Free products	Compensation (salary or benefit) or work tools.	(Poor) compensation or means for content production.
Role of sender	Relationship builder	Buyer	Marketer with commercial intent (responsibilities partially determined by the frame enacted by the parties to the exchange).	Supporting or exploiting party
Role of recipient	Content producer; Consumer.	Service provider; Influential consumer.	Influencer (responsibilities partially determined by the frame enacted by the parties to the exchange); Consumer	Serious content producer or freebie-seeker; Professional marketer or vulnerable newcomer.
Expectations on reciprocation	Implicit	Explicit	Explicitness of expectations irrelevant for taxation.	Explicitness of expectations matters.
Emphasised value	Inspirational value of stuff as delight and content	Value of stuff to the recipient as consumer; Recognition as influencer.	Economic value of stuff; Value to the average consumer.	Economic value of content; Value of stuff downplayed.
View on calculation	Discouraged	Calculation in terms of a consumer getting a deal	Assumed. Promotes inclusion of taxes in calculations.	Encouraged to ensure fair compensation.
Relationship to the frames of market exchange and gift giving	A type of gift frame distinguished from market exchange.	A hybrid frame: a market exchange frame that may strategically draw on the earned media frame.	An expansive market exchange frame.	A market exchange frame: Condemns the bought exposure frame and condones the earned media frame.

Framing exchanges of stuff: the proposed frames of earned media and bought exposure

The senders of stuff primarily engage in framing to ensure the successful consummation of exchanges. We identify two proposed frames: PR professionals propose an earned media frame while marketers propose a bought exposure frame. While both frames build on established practices in PR and media buying, framing particular exchanges still requires effort. The two sections that follow outline the concrete activities through which senders seek to frame the sending of stuff as earning media and buying exposure, respectively.

Framing the sending of stuff as earning media

Pursuit of earned media predates the rise of influencer marketing and has parallels in publishing and celebrity endorsement (Childers et al., 2019; Martínez-López et al., 2020; Naulin, 2016). Earning mentions in blogs became part of the work of Swedish PR agents in the period 2005–2010. Bloggers and other social media content producers started to receive the same kinds of invitations, press releases, and packages as journalists. As these groups developed into influencers, PR agencies became involved in ‘paid’ influencer marketing as well, offering monetary compensation in return for social media posts. However, the practice of sending stuff to influencers remains, and has become increasingly established in the organisational routines of PR professionals. Owing to its roots in earlier PR practices, the proposed frame of earned media bears resemblance to the way in which stuff sent to journalists has been framed, identified by Naulin (2016) as a gift frame.

In the days when blogging was considered a hobby rather than a possible line of work, recipients were simply happy to be noticed and to get ‘free stuff’, and packages could be sent to them without much forethought. Today, a lot of work goes into increasing the chances of a desired response. This resembles the efforts directed at journalists described by Naulin (2016) and involves carefully selecting recipients, assessing interest before sending something, packaging the product to produce the desired response, checking in afterwards, and monitoring counter-prestations. The PR professionals in our study, as well as those in Naulin’s (2016) study, avoid monetary compensation and contractual obligations to instead gift in ways that maximise the likelihood of reciprocation.

The earned media frame enacts the role of the sender as a relationship builder. On the topic of selection, Pia explains: ‘I can, without much in-depth research as I know the market, know for whom this is a good product, for whom this isn’t interesting for real’. (Personal interview.) Once PR agents have identified the potential recipients, they typically make contact to check interest. Our interlocutors describe introducing the product and asking the influencer whether they are interested in receiving it or testing it. Phoebe emphasises: ‘If you just send out a gift without having agreed [to send something] or having paid them for it, they won’t publish anything unless you’re extremely lucky’. (Personal interview)

A lot of effort can go into packaging items in a visually appealing way to increase the likelihood of social media posts. Often, the focal product is complemented by other items and information. For example, a cream cheese might come with a sandwich recipe, freshly baked bread, ‘something wonderfully green sticking up’, and a nice basket (Pia, personal interview). Packages often include handwritten notes and can be personalised by, for example, printing the name of the recipient on the cover of a notebook. Indeed, Pia suggests that the recipient should ‘almost’ feel like they are receiving a gift. Iris, a blogger who has been active in Sweden for over a decade, notes that PR firms show care to send her the right things:

Early every year, all the PR firms send out a questionnaire where you give your sizes for everything. When I started getting things, maybe ten years ago, […] I could get odd, huge clothes. Stuff that was completely irrelevant and that they had only found somewhere. Now you get really fancy, like, tailor made things. […] And it feels so … everything is handwritten: ‘I saw this and I thought of you. You would look great in this’ and like ‘these clothes could be matched’, you know. Amazing, like. It feels caring, and that’s really smart of them. (Iris, personal interview)

While Iris recognises the ‘smart’ strategy involved, her appreciation of stuff received focuses on the delight and care involved.

The packaging of items, and the earned media frame, addresses the influencer both as a professional content producer and as an individual consumer, or as Pia suggests: ‘you feel you’ve received free content or a free experience’. While a visually appealing package might delight the influencer as an individual, it can also offer valuable content to the influencer in their professional role. A beautiful package is good content for Instagram. The earned media frame enacts stuff as both a means for content production and a cause for delight.

When done well, the proposed frame of earned media keeps expectations on reciprocation implicit. While PR agents cannot demand a counter-prestation, social nudges may come in the form of checking in – Patricia notes that she will not contact influencers to ask when they will be posting content, but that she might get in touch to see if a recipient of a product enjoyed it or has questions, as a reminder (see Bourdieu, 1991 for more on the role of timing of reciprocity in interaction). Many PR agents monitor the resulting social media posts, and often include them in their reports to clients. The quality of the counter-prestations also matters for the future relationship between the PR agent and the influencer. PR agents tell us that they might follow up on freely offered content with offers to do paid collaborations. While Paula maintains that she does not follow the resulting social media posts that carefully, she suggests that some book influencers might be ‘blacklisted’ by publishers because ‘they want to have everything and that sometimes maybe no review pops up, rather you’re just building someone’s private library’ (Personal interview). Possibly, then, lack of reciprocation leads to not being sent further stuff, at least if there is a pattern, and at least for book influencers who as hobbyists have low status compared to both traditional media and professional lifestyle influencers.

Distinguishing between the earned media frame and the bought exposure frame, a type of market exchange frame, is important for PR professionals. While PR agents work with market exchange frames in other parts of their work (i.e. when offering influencers monetary compensation), they typically shun it when sending stuff. For instance, the PR agents that we interviewed avoid requiring explicit counter-prestations. Pia explains:

If I were to […] write to a person ‘I’ll send this to you, and it would be great if you posted it on your channels’. Then I would feel like I’ve placed an order and then basically the person on the other side could start calculating ‘the value of this kit is SEK400 (EUR37). Now she expects me to, this person or this agency, to post this. Oh, so I need to take a good picture, I need to style it in a nice way’ and blah blah blah and then SEK400 is very poor compensation for the work and the publicity that you get in return. And there are many PR agencies that are very bad at this when they, well, make demands of a person. Because if you make it a requirement, there needs to be a payment involved. (Pia, personal interview)

To Pia, the calculative frame (Callon, 1998) implied by bought exposure is problematic as it may reveal to the influencers that they are poorly paid for their work. In contrast, the earned media frame discourages calculation, instead leveraging the social obligations of gift giving. In interviews, Imogen professes to sometimes accept items because she feels refusing would be a personal slight, and Iris acknowledges the social awkwardness of refusing a gift.

Framing the sending of stuff as bought exposure

Like the practice of seeking earned mentions in blogs, the practice of paying with stuff goes back to the early days of influencer marketing. Over time, the use of stuff as compensation has seen both increased formalisation and wider application linked to strategies relying on less established influencers. For example, Swedish watch company Daniel Wellington and phone case brand iDeal of Sweden have both received praise as influencer marketing pioneers for their strategies which are heavily reliant on paying influencers with stuff (Lundin & Winberg, 2019). Intermediary actors such as micro influencer marketing platform Boostified have attempted to both provide the infrastructure for companies looking to purchase influencer services with stuff and for influencers wishing to pay in-store with their Instagram posts (Caesar, 2019).

The bought exposure frame represents a type of market exchange frame. It enacts explicit expectations on reciprocation: A rejected collaboration offer, shared by an insulted influencer on Instagram Stories, promises ‘free product(s) and will be free shipping’ in exchange for ‘1 Instagram feed post + 1 Instagram story (with a link sticker/swipe-up link)’ (fieldnotes). This offer clearly states what is expected from the influencer in return for the stuff. The bought exposure frame, as exemplified by the above offer, clearly frames the stuff as compensation. At the same time, the wording ‘free product(s)’ suggests a different identity for stuff. Presumably, the characterisation of stuff as ‘free’ aims to direct attention away from the work involved in producing the required counter-prestation – unsuccessfully in this case as the prospective recipient questioned the fairness of the deal.

The bought exposure frame enacts the sender of stuff as a buyer of influencer marketing services. Brian, who works as a marketing manager at an international clothing brand, describes a large campaign that involved offering hundreds of influencers gift cards in exchange for social media posts. He describes weighing in factors such as the number of followers, average likes and comments, as well as brand fit in deciding whether to offer an influencer a GBP100 or 200 gift card. Influencers who accepted were directed to a special version of the brand’s online store where they could use their vouchers to buy selected garments to feature in their social media posts.

The bought exposure frame proposes two different roles for the recipient. On the one hand, the recipient is a service provider producing social media exposure in exchange for stuff. On the other hand, the bought exposure frame often treats recipients as influential consumers paying for stuff with social media posts. This is evident in the clothing brand’s shop-like interface and in Boostified’s explicit references to paying with posts. The bought exposure frame seeks to promote calculation in terms of a consumer getting a good deal. This is also evident in the email exchanges between senders and prospective recipients. A collaboration offer shared by an influencer on Instagram Stories promises the recipient a 35% discount if buying three posters and a 50% discount if buying five or more posters in exchange for a picture posted together with a discount code (fieldnotes). When the influencer confronted the company, pointing out that this deal would mean the influencer in fact pays to be able to advertise the company, the company countered that recipients usually appreciate the ‘cheap posters’ and the opportunity for collaboration. The prospective sender’s reply makes visible how the bought exposure frame, in addition to emphasising the value of stuff to the recipient as a consumer, highlights the value of being recognised as an influencer. Likewise, offers evoke recognition of the recipient as an influencer when they rely on wordings linked to the activities of more established influencers, using labels such as ‘collaboration’, ‘sponsorship’, and ‘ambassador’.

Even if it firmly frames the sending of stuff as market exchange, the bought exposure frame may still incorporate earned media strategies. For instance, by maintaining informal contacts, personalising messages, emails, etc. Further, both Brian and Barbara (PR manager at a premium bedlinen company), highlight the importance of making the influencer feel chosen. They stress the personal touch created by contacting influencers directly via email, rather than via a PR agency or an influencer marketing platform. When asked if influencers were willing to commit to the deal with a bed linen set as the only compensation, Barbara replied that contacted influencers were certainly motivated ‘as a set is about SEK9,000 (EUR848) … That was enough as payment’ she added, as the company had not ‘watered down this system’ so influencers ‘felt they had been extremely carefully chosen’. (Barbara, personal interview) By strategically drawing on aspects of the earned media frame, marketers propose a hybrid frame that combines market exchange and gift giving (see Hartman & Coslor, 2019; Mwiti & Onyas, 2018).

Reframing and preframing exchanges: the proposed frames of taxation and professionalism

The issue of sending stuff to influencers is a concern for both the Swedish Tax Agency and advocates of influencer professionalisation, though neither are directly involved in consummating these exchanges. The Tax Agency is engaged in reframing and preframing the sending of stuff because determining what goes on in these exchanges is consequential for their taxation. The Agency proposes a taxation frame that seeks to realise taxable exchanges. Professionalisation advocates (some of whom are influencers or journalists, and as such potentially recipients of stuff) are engaged in reframing and preframing the sending of stuff because determining what goes on in these exchanges matters for their vision of strengthening the professional status of influencers. The advocates propose a professionalism frame that seeks to improve the standards and position of influencer work. The two sections that follow map the concrete activities through which the Tax Agency and advocates of influencer professionalisation have sought to reframe and preframe the sending of stuff, as well as other actors’ reactions to these activities.

Reframing and preframing taxable exchanges

The Swedish Tax Agency recognises that senders and recipients frame the sending of stuff in two different ways, as either earning media or buying exposure. The extent to which the frame enacted by senders and recipients matters to the Tax Agency has evolved over time. The Agency’s interest in stuff sent to bloggers became public in February 2009, when a tabloid ‘revealed’ that the Tax Agency was monitoring blogs in order to detect tax fraud (Julander, 2009). Early media coverage distinguished between a product received as ‘compensation for work performed’ and a product received ‘without having asked for it’ and suggested that while the Tax Agency saw the former as something that ‘must of course be taxed’, the fiscal treatment of the latter was under investigation (Pettersson, 2009). The same year, the Agency arrived at an expanded definition of stuff as taxable that amounted to extending a market exchange frame to all sending of stuff, irrespective of the frame enacted by senders and recipients. The explicit or implicit nature of the counter-prestation is thus not a factor. This taxation frame assumes calculation and promotes the inclusion of taxes in the calculations of senders and recipients. A 2009 investigation argued that companies do not give to bloggers ‘out of pure generosity’ but ‘for purely commercial reasons’. Since then, the Agency’s reframing has remained constant. In 2019, the Agency wrote:

A product or service that you receive from a client or a company because you are an influencer is not considered a tax-free gift. It is compensation for your work as influencer […] – it is enough that you have accepted the product and kept it, and that the sender hopes that you will advertise the contents. (Skatteverket, 2019)

While the Tax Agency reframes all sending of stuff as market exchange, the frame enacted by the sender and the recipient matters for determining the more precise identity of stuff as well as how the Tax Agency defines the roles and responsibilities of sender and recipient.¹ When the parties to the exchange enact the bought exposure frame, the taxation frame defines stuff as salary, the sender as an employer, and the recipient as an employee. Consequently, the sender is expected to report the payment of compensation to the Agency (if the value of stuff together with other compensation to the same recipient amounts to at least SEK100 (EUR9) during the calendar year) and pay employer contributions (if the value of stuff together with other compensation to the same recipient amounts to at least SEK1,000 (EUR95) during the calendar year). When the parties to the exchange enact the earned media frame, the taxation frame does not assign these responsibilities to the sender. Instead, the recipient is responsible for including the stuff in their tax declaration as taxable benefits. In either case, it is the assumed commercial intent of the sender that defines the exchange as market exchange and stuff as compensation. Likewise, the taxation frame always views the recipient as an influencer, receiving stuff in that role.

However, the taxation frame also recognises the role of the recipient as consumer. Stuff is taxable because it is seen as having personal value to the recipient. This is evident when the Tax Agency writes that stuff lent to influencers is to be seen as a taxable benefit if it is ‘products that are typically purchased by consumers for private use’ (Skatteverket, 2020). An exception to the Agency’s reframing of all stuff as compensation are products considered as tax-free work tools. A product lent to an influencer is seen as a tax-free work tool when ‘the product is of essential importance for the recipient to be able to perform their duties’ and the benefit is ‘of limited value to the recipient and difficult to distinguish from the usefulness for the task’ (Skatteverket, 2020). This exception does not question the Agency’s characterisation of these exchanges as market exchange but rather justifies the tax-free status of work tools with the absence of private consumption value.

To ensure the compliance of senders and recipients with the taxation frame, the Swedish Tax Agency seeks to preframe the sending of stuff through information and industry dialogue. This is part of a wider effort towards tax compliance (Björklund Larsen, 2018). Much of the reasoning for the Agency’s focus on influencers was expressed by tax agents as oriented around shaping young social media users’ willingness to pay tax, as well as stifling unfair competition from tax avoidance and mitigating the risk of tax error. In order to achieve these goals, the Agency issued press releases and set up dialogue sessions with the influencer marketing industry. Such efforts were described to us both as opportunity to gather input and identifying if there were issues over taxation that needed to be addressed.

In connection to the Tax Agency’s announcement that influencer marketing would be one of its focus areas for tax compliance during 2019, detailed information was released targeting ‘influencers and bloggers’ and structured into questions and answers:

I have received products, do I have to pay tax?

Yes. The basic rule is that you pay tax if you keep a product irrespective of whether you advertise it or not. What you must pay tax for is the market value, i.e., the price you would have had to pay had you bought the product – it can be anything from inexpensive products to designer jeans and mobile phones.

You also have to pay tax for products that you have received but you give away, sell, save or raffle off to your followers, the value does not matter.

You do not need to pay tax for a product you return or do not pick up. This should also apply if an item you received clearly has lacked value for you both privately and in your professional activity and has seen no other use. You should then state, when filing your tax return, which items you have received that you have not reported as income. (Skatteverket, 2019)

The Agency website specified that influencers must pay tax on received stuff they use, give it away, or raffle it off. This includes travel (except business trips), free breakfasts, lunches, and dinners (but not refreshments like coffee, pastries, and fruit), discounts (that are used) and gift bags. The Agency takes an inclusive, if not all-encompassing stance on what constitutes taxable exchange. In addition to providing information about tax rules, the Tax Agency can conduct audits to ensure compliance. While both senders (Karlsson, 2020) and recipients (Ericson, 2019) have been audited, and have had to pay additional taxes, audits are rare, and many recipients consider the threat of audits as largely theoretical.

The Tax Agency’s preframing has had an effect. For example, some PR agents have started to inform recipients of their responsibility to pay tax on items received (and their value). Our influencer interlocutors sometimes discuss how to account for the stuff they receive for their tax return. However, a range of contestations around the Tax Agency’s reframing and preframing practices have been raised over time. Such attempts at reframing the issue involve influencers arguing that they have not asked for stuff, or that the stuff received is actually work tools. Many influencers stress that they should not have to pay tax for such items: the argument is that it is ‘unfair’ or ‘unreasonable’ that ‘you are supposed to pay tax for something you haven’t asked for or where you haven’t promised something in return’ (Ingrid, personal interview).

Influencers’ attempts at reframing have varied significantly over time, from a scattered range of early arguments to more precise contestations in the Tax Agency’s dialogue seminar. In 2010, the Tax Agency’s push for bloggers to declare stuff received as income garnered attention in both news media and blogging communities. In the debate, stuff appeared open to different reframings, with bloggers and media commentators proposing several different accounts, even within the same text. Bloggers and media commentators often compared the stuff received by bloggers to the review copies, samples, and invitations received by journalists (Skott, 2010). Commentators both drew similarities and distinctions between the two groups, with some suggesting that the stuff received by journalists was a matter of ‘press ethics and credibility’ rather than taxation (Creutzer, 2010). Generally, the articles and blog posts referred to stuff sent to bloggers as ‘gifts’ or ‘presents’. One group of bloggers wrote an opinion piece reframing themselves as particularly well-connected consumers, willing to tell others about their ostensibly private consumption practices. The argument was that ‘blogging as such is not a job but a lifestyle, a way to share what is going on in one’s life. And […] that this is not something you can tax’ (Hjertén, 2010).

While early controversies around taxation could question the market exchange frame of the Tax Agency, reframing stuff as gifts, or blogging as a lifestyle, this has given way to reframing efforts that do not question the market exchange frame but rather focus on questioning the value of stuff to the recipient as consumer. Some influencers argue that they receive stuff in their capacity as influencers and do not personally benefit from it. In the dialogue seminar with the Agency, one influencer claimed they were ‘working twenty-four-seven’, with no time to benefit personally from the stuff sent to them. This questions the taxation frame’s definition of the recipients as influencers and consumers, emphasising the influencer role alone. Others focus on specific stuff not being valuable to them due to the large quantities received or a mismatch with their taste, lifestyle, or diet. While this brings to the frame individualised consumer value, the taxation frame highlights economic value – stuff is taxed based on market value – and value to the average consumer. A related dilemma was brought up by a tax agent during our fieldwork. An expensive oven had been lent by a home appliance brand to a food influencer, replacing her regular oven. The influencer argued that the new oven did not provide a benefit over her temporarily unavailable private oven. Influencers and the Agency often differ in their views regarding the boundary between private use and business use. As tax agents like to point out, the Agency’s interpretations have yet to be tried in court. Often the information from the Tax Agency has a dual message: on the one hand, stressing that ‘it’s really quite simple’. On the other hand, agents try not to precede court decisions, in instances where questions get technical. While the rules are clear in principle, the exact boundaries of their application are not.

In dialogue and breakfast seminars, influencers and marketing professionals express frustration around how the Agency failed to grasp ‘how things are done in the business’. Essentially, this is an example of how industry professionals take issue with how the Agency’s proposed frame translates to the framing practices involved in consummating exchanges. Over time, however, industry practice in Sweden appears to have shifted towards informing influencers about their fiscal obligations. Yet, there were also calls on the Agency to contribute to bringing order to the industry. For instance, in the dialogue seminar we took part in, PR agency representatives urged the Tax Agency to set up a system for reporting transactions. During work meetings and in conversations with the Tax Agency, this suggestion has been repeatedly dismissed by agents. The Agency does not wish to ‘organise the market’ but seeks to preframe its exchanges for tax compliance.

Reframing and preframing professional exchanges

In 2010, influencer marketing, not yet known by this name, was still very much an emerging field. While many bloggers earned much of their blogging income from banner ads and contracts with blog portals, covert advertising was common since being included in blog content was recognised as valuable to marketers. However, many questions regarding who would capture this value and through what means remained open. This was reflected in the plurality of frames suggested by bloggers in response to the prospect of taxation, as discussed in the previous section. In the years that have followed, several efforts have been made at professionalising influencer work. For example, a professional network was founded in 2014 under the name Better Bloggers by Linda Hörnfeldt, rebranding as Influencers of Sweden in 2016. In 2018, Hörnfeldt, published a handbook for influencers (Hörnfeldt, 2018). She also runs an online course and influencer certification programme. In addition, influencer courses have been offered in Sweden by a beauty magazine, an upper secondary school, and an adult education institution. While efforts of professionalising influencer work have dealt with various aspects of being an influencer, relating to different frames of sending and receiving stuff is a recurring topic. The professionalism frame proposed by influencer advocates seeks to improve the standards and position of influencer work.

Professionalisation advocates’ reframing of stuff depends on the frame enacted by senders (and recipients). For them, exchanges framed in line with the earned media frame are not controversial. As such, their reframing of these exchanges tends to reproduce many aspects of this frame. Especially, influencers and influencer advocates working in content areas where influencers publish ‘reviews’, such as books, beauty products, and alcoholic beverages, support the earned media frame. The ideal influencer in these areas is described as a serious content producer with passion and expertise in the subject. Review copies and product samples help these influencers produce better content by allowing them to compare a larger number of goods or review new products before launch. In other areas of content, stuff is reframed more ambiguously as PR packages and deliveries. In any case, the professionalism frame considers stuff, when framed by the sender as earning media, as means for content production and sees the sender as a party supporting the recipient in such work.

While professionalisation advocates envision the recipient in the professional role of an independent reviewer, they acknowledged that not all recipients live up to this ideal. A long-time advocate for beauty influencers argues that the growing number of influencers has coincided with a decrease in seriousness:

I have always said that influencers are almost as competent and have just as much integrity as journalists. It was true for a long time but is not anymore. There are still credible influencers but there are even more freebie-seekers who put themselves before their followers. (Norman, 2019)

This advocate of beauty influencers, a journalist, further discusses recipients’ betrayal of the professionalism frame in a series of Instagram Stories. She suggests that when influencers merely show off stuff they have received or publish posts thanking the sender, stuff appears as something that is of private benefit to the influencer rather than as a tool that helps the influencer better serve their audience. The professionalism frame, like the earned media frame, distinguishes between market exchange and gift giving. However, the professionalism frame emphasises that the recipient receives stuff in professional rather than private capacity. The influencer advocate writes:

Don’t publish content just to show that you HAVE RECEIVED press packages! It has no value to the reader, is unserious and it is precisely because of such behaviour that the Tax Agency thinks that you should pay tax for the value of these press packages! Put it in context! Have an opinion! Help your follower, not yourself! (@kickinorman, Instagram Stories, 2022)

Here, influencers’ betrayal of the professionalism frame is proposed as the reason why the Tax Agency wants to tax these packages.

While they condone the use of the earned media frame, advocates of influencer professionalisation condemn the use of stuff as compensation, or the bought exposure frame, and seek to reframe these exchanges. For those who emphasise the independent reviewer role, the freedom of the influencer to independently decide on content is key, which means that an influencer should not agree to post about stuff as a condition for receiving it. More often, however, the use of stuff as compensation is reframed as exploitation. This reframing relies on a conceptualisation of the influencer as a professional marketer rather than a professional reviewer. This form of professionalism is suggested by influencers and influencer advocates who emphasise the value that entrepreneurial influencers provide to paying clients. According to this market exchange frame, the valuable work of influencers deserves fair compensation beyond the stuff that is sent to them. The professionalism frame sees stuff as poor compensation. At the same time, professionalisation advocates highlight that it is often newer and smaller influencers that get these offers. Hörnfeldt (2022) calls paying with stuff ‘a deeply strategic and manipulative strategy’ that seeks to make micro-influencers ‘feel special and chosen, while the companies actually take advantage of them without paying either market wages or employer contributions’. She labels micro-influencers ‘modern black-market workforce who not only have their time stolen – but also their integrity’. When the sender proposes the bought media frame, the professionalism frame sees the sender as an exploiter and the recipient as a potentially vulnerable newcomer. Professionalisation advocates see accepting products as payment as selling oneself short or ‘working for free’. The fact that the recipient is taxed for the value of received stuff is brought in to further bring to light the exploitation of influencers; worse than ‘working for free’, the tax-paying influencer has to ‘pay to work’.

In order to bring to light the exploitation of influencers, influencers and influencer professionalisation advocates sometimes call out companies that pay with stuff. In an act of reframing, this can involve an influencer posting a picture of an email on their Instagram Stories, often with a caption explaining why the offer is bad, sometimes followed up by the influencer’s reply to the company. Sometimes these posts tag professionalisation advocates such as Kicki Norman and Linda Hörnfeldt, and often are shared by them. In addition to naming-and-shaming exploitative companies on social media, professionalisation advocates have worked with traditional media to bring up the problem (Olheden, 2022).

To address the problems of exploitation and lack of seriosity, influencers and influencer professionalisation advocates engage in preframing. This involves creating professional norms for influencers, encouraging them to decline offers of stuff as payment. These norms are discussed in forums such as social media discussions, courses, and books. In her influencer handbook, Hörnfeldt (2018) argues that accepting stuff as payment is bad for both the influencer and the industry as it contributes to the slashing of prices. Likewise, advocates of reviewer-influencers suggest that accepting stuff as payment harms the credibility of all reviewer-influencers, as it plays into the imagery of bought opinions. The professionalism frame, as a market exchange frame, promotes calculation. Through preframing, professionalisation advocates encourage forms of calculation that ensure that the influencer is receiving fair compensation, considering the value they provide, but that also incorporate the broader interests of the professional group. Furthermore, influencers and influencer advocates seek to establish norms for companies sending stuff. In social media posts and in interviews with traditional media, they implore marketers to offer monetary compensation. In a series of Instagram Stories, a beauty influencer criticising the use of stuff as compensation, suggests that, rather than pay with stuff, companies with small budgets should rely on a PR approach and send samples to influencers. In other words, she promotes the use of the earned media frame and a clear separation between market exchange and gift giving. In February 2022, Therese Lindgren, one of Sweden’s leading influencers, unveiled a widely publicised list of demands for collaboration partners that, among points related to sustainability work, included a demand that any company with which she is to collaborate needs to ‘comply with relevant laws and regulations that apply to advertising collaborations as well as give remuneration and not in products’ (Nilsson & Rågsjö Thorell, 2022). Finally, influencers have sought support with the Tax Agency. In a meeting with the Agency, two influencers called for the Agency to take a more active role in reigning in marketers that pay with stuff by means of audits. The Agency’s response was noncommittal, stressing the need for continued work with existing national and EU legislation and thanking them for an informative dialogue.

Discussion

This inquiry into the sending of stuff to influencers in Sweden has focused on attempts to frame these exchanges and the market (or non-market) context in which they take place. Callon (1998) suggests that the consummation of economic exchanges relies on the successful linking up and separation of actors, objects, and practices from the rest of the world into a distinct exchange of goods. Our inquiry into the changing market for influencer marketing shows actors working both to redefine exchanges and to locate them within broader circumstances. It also identifies efforts by actors to more proactively frame exchanges that are yet to come, thus linking our study to the growing body of research on market shaping (e.g. Humphreys & Carpenter, 2018; Lee et al., 2018; Nenonen et al., 2019).

Taken together, our empirical account offers an empirically based answer to our first research question concerning how different actors engaging with influencer marketing frame the sending of ‘stuff’ to influencers. We identify four different ways of framing the sending of stuff to influencers – or four proposed frames – and shed light on the means through which these frames are enacted. The proposed frames are summarised in Table 2. Senders seek to frame stuff in ways that achieve the desired response: visibility in the influencer’s channels. To achieve this, two different frames are proposed. The earned media frame of PR agents, in Callon’s (1998) terms, resembles gift framing in that it excludes the counter-prestation expected from the influencer. What is expected in return is left unsaid to discourage calculation. Moreover, the marketers’ proposed bought exposure frame defines what is given (e.g. number and type of products) and what is expected in return (e.g. number and type of posts). Influencers can accept or decline these offers or propose an alternative frame, as some influencers do when offered stuff as compensation. The Tax Agency and professionalisation advocates propose two additional frames. The taxation frame proposes that, ultimately, the commercial intent of the senders means that all sending of stuff to influencers is really market exchange and hence taxable. Alternatively, the proposed frame of professionalism, in general, espouses a market exchange frame that asks whether an influencer is compensated in accordance with the value they provide. This frame recasts the bought exposure frame as exploitation, while at the same time condoning the PR agents’ earned media frame. Like previous studies (Chimenti, 2020; Hartman & Coslor, 2019; Mwiti & Onyas, 2018), we find several ways in which the relationships between market and non-market frames of exchange are configured. The proposed frames range from the purified gift frame of earning media and the expansive market exchange frame of taxation to the hybrid frame of bought exposure and the separation of market exchange and gift giving in the professionalism frame. We show that the proposed frames differ in a number of dimensions that include the implicit versus explicit expectations on reciprocation but also distinct understandings of the roles of senders and recipients and emphasis on different types of value.

As for the means through which frames are enacted, our conceptualisation of framing practices as sociomaterial allows us to shed light on the diversity of these activities. The means differ between framing, reframing, and preframing. Further, different actors are differently equipped in their framing practices. Senders’ framing efforts are both material and rhetorical and involve interactional as well as infrastructural work. Material framing includes PR agents’ gift-like packaging of stuff as well as brand managers’ contracts and gift cards. Rhetorical framing, in the case of the earned media frame, includes the use of labels such as ‘review copy’ or ‘PR package’. The bought exposure frame, on the other hand, sometimes relies on hybrid rhetorical framing (Hartman & Coslor, 2019), utilising vocabulary associated with the earned media frame (e.g. ‘gift’), paid influencer marketing (e.g. ‘ambassador’) and a consumer frame (e.g. ‘free delivery’, ‘cheap posters’). Interactional framing involves communication between the sender and the recipient, typically via email. In the case of the earned media frame, it involves checking for interest before sending something. In the case of the bought exposure frame, it revolves around setting expectations. Infrastructural framing work refers to the creation of tools that facilitate the enactment of specific frames in framing practices. For example, compiling a database of influencers’ preferences and sizes allows PR agents to match stuff with the right influencers in the way required by the earned media frame. The creation of a dedicated online store interface supports the large-scale enactment of the bought exposure frame. The concept of infrastructural work links framing to preframing, as it highlights how organisational and professional best practices and guidelines, as norms for framing future exchanges, are implemented through the creation of infrastructures.

Reframing involves creating and distributing representations. The Tax Agency reframes the sending of stuff in internal documents and external communications, including press releases, presentations, web pages, and statements to media. In addition, the audits conducted by the Agency involve reframing past exchanges, with the potential consequence of upward adjustments to the tax owed by influencers and/or businesses. In emphasising that the rules concerning the taxation of stuff are yet to be tried in court, the Agency suggests that it is the legislature and judicature that hold the ultimate power to reframe exchanges. Professionalisation advocates seek to reframe the sending of stuff through social media posts, books and other written materials, courses, and statements to media. Reframing efforts can point to clashes between other market actors’ rhetorical and material framing strategies, as when the Tax Agency suggests that calling something a gift does not make it a gift (see also Chimenti (2020) on how a sharing community accuses commercial ridesharing services of ‘sharewashing’). In their preframing efforts, both the Tax Agency and professionalisation advocates rely on means similar to those used for reframing, like when they communicate rules and norms to senders and recipients. The Tax Agency, however, does this from a position of formal authority with legal backing and the (rather hypothetical) threat of audits, while the professionalisation advocates mainly build on experience and connections. Beyond communicating rules and norms, preframing could conceivably include more direct attempts at enforcing rules and norms, as is done by the senders through infrastructural framing. Indeed, influencers have called on the Tax Agency to create an automated system for the reporting of stuff by senders, but the Agency has considered this infrastructural framing as being beyond their remit.

Our second research question concerns how framing practices contribute to shape markets. First, we argue that framing contributes to shape markets by allowing for the consummation of particular exchanges formatted according to the interests of successful framers. Market actors can use framing to encourage specific forms of calculation, as when marketers frame stuff as something that influencers receive for ‘free’, or to discourage calculation, as PR agents do when they rely on the earned media frame. Framing can also seek to establish particular exchanges as legitimate, as also noted by Hartman and Coslor (2019). Naulin (2016) suggests that this is the case when PR agents use gift framing when they send stuff to journalists. A journalist can legitimately accept review copies and product samples from PR agents, whereas receiving products as compensation would be a breach of journalistic ethics. Given the moral qualms of reviewer-influencers over stuff as payment, it is conceivable that the earned media frame does such legitimising work at least in some influencer marketing exchanges. Framing of exchanges can also play a role in navigating the applicability of regulation. While the rhetorical framing of stuff as ‘gifts’ has become a futile strategy for avoiding taxation, the choice between the earned media frame and the bought exposure frame does play a role in determining the sender’s payroll tax responsibilities and the requirement for ad marking. Framing can serve attempts to avoid taxation and other forms of regulatory responsibilities – but only if the proposed frame resists reframing.

Issues related to calculation, legitimacy, and regulation are also at stake in reframing and preframing. We argue that reframing contributes to shaping markets by bringing to light perceived problems in them. We see representations as both informing efforts to propose rules and norms for how a market should function – you cannot address a problem if you have not shown that it exists – and shaping how the parties engaging in exchanges understand these interactions (Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2007). The Tax Agency’s reframing of sending stuff makes visible the possibility of tax error in the market for influencer marketing. The professionalisation advocates’ reframing represents a market where big business takes advantage of the unpaid labour of budding influencers. Finally, we argue that preframing contributes to shape markets by allowing market actors not directly involved in exchanges to take part in formatting these interactions. The Tax Agency seeks to address the problem of tax error by incorporating taxation into the framings of senders and recipients. The professionalisation advocates strive to both address the problem of exploitation and build a professional market for influencer marketing. To this end, they advocate responsible framing practices.

Just like other market practices, the work to frame exchanges and markets relies on translations between exchange, representational and normalising practices (Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2006, 2007). Accordingly, the level of success in shaping a market (Nenonen et al., 2019) through framing depends on how reframing and preframing efforts translate to framing for the purpose of consummating exchanges. Influencers seeking to professionalise the market face the challenge of bringing the steady inflow of new and inexperienced influencers into the fold. The willingness of small-time influencers to accept stuff (Duffy, 2017), at least before becoming more established, hinders much of the professionalisation efforts proposed by influencer spokespersons. Similarly, the preframing efforts of the Tax Agency rely on influencers falling in line. To succeed in imposing its version of a strict market exchange frame, the Tax Agency must contend with ongoing relationships between PR and marketing professionals and influencers, with the organisational routines of the former, and the steady inflow of new and inexperienced practitioners in the latter group.

Previous research on influencer marketing has suggested that the incorporation of influencer marketing into PR work is challenging established distinctions between PR and paid marketing (C. Davies & Hobbs, 2020; Navarro et al., 2020; Stoldt et al., 2019; Wolf & Archer, 2018). Indeed, the PR agents in our study commonly manage paid influencer marketing campaigns as well as work with influencer PR. Notably, the PR agents do not appear bothered by this combination. We see parallels with the strategy of decoupling (e.g. Dolbec, Castilhos, et al., 2022). PR agents seem capable of separating the part of their work that involves offering monetary compensation to influencers from the part that involves the traditional PR tactics of seeking earned media. We suggest that the framing of exchanges plays an important role in this decoupling of practices. Framing the sending of stuff in such a way that avoids a market exchange frame helps separate these exchanges from the PR agents’ other interactions with influencers.

While the blurring of boundaries between PR and paid marketing is not an issue for the PR agents in our study, it is productive of opportunities and tensions in the market. Some marketers make strategic use of a hybrid frame that combines a market exchange frame with allusions to established PR practices – a practice reframed as exploitation by influencer professionalisation advocates. Likewise, tensions are revealed when influencer advocates represent some influencers as betraying the professionalism frame’s separation of paid marketing and earned media when they accept stuff as payment or showcase stuff without providing value to their audience. The Tax Agency struggles to ensure the compliance of other market actors with its proposed frame that, to a large degree, erases the distinctions between PR and paid marketing. It is through framing, reframing, and preframing market actors seek to capitalise on or resolve the tensions between logics.

Conclusions

We have investigated the ongoing shaping of the market for influencer marketing in Sweden, focusing in particular on the practice of sending ‘stuff’ to influencers and how this practice is framed. This extends previous insights about the role of framing in the organising of markets (Callon, 1998) and suggests that market framing, while always involving a measure of purification, does not produce homogenous markets (Fourcade & Healy, 2007). Instead, we have shown how a heterogeneous set of actors employ a range of framing practices pertaining to specific exchanges as well as to their broader market context. This is consistent with the view of framing as a temporary suspension or bracketing of certain links to the world outside (Callon, 1998). Depending on framing, different links are taken into account and suspended, leading to an emphasis on some consequences and a suppression of others. Further, it suggests the importance of translations between proposed frames. We propose that our conceptualisation of framing practices as framing, reframing and preframing will be especially useful for exploring other markets that are characterised by competing proposed frames of exchange. Examples could include the sharing economy, markets for bodily goods such as sex cells, organs, and breastmilk, as well as marketisation processes where an area moves from non-market to market organising (Çaliskan & Callon, 2010; Dolbec, Castilhos, et al., 2022).

Our exploration of competing and hybrid frames involved in sending influencers stuff contributes to a wider scholarship stressing ambiguities and open-endedness in influencer marketing (e.g. Duffy, 2017; Petersson McIntyre, 2020). This adds to previous scholarship on influencer marketing as demanding (Abidin, 2016) and ill-defined work (Ashman et al., 2018), by showing the efforts of a range of actors, to establish what kind of exchanges are (and should be) going on (Borchers & Enke, 2021). Research on influencer marketing should continue to look beyond the measurement of communication effects (Hudders et al., 2021; Vrontis et al., 2021; Ye et al., 2021), not least as the continued efficacy of influencer marketing in this respect depends on the outcomes of framing practices. Importantly, rather than simply navigating pre-existing but different logics, the involved stakeholders produce, and can act to maintain, a range of such logics. From a strategic perspective, then, they should be asking what kind of market for influencer marketing they desire.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council under Grant number [2018-01093]; and Jan Wallander’s and Tom Hedelius’s foundation as well as Tore Browald’s foundation under Grant number [P18-0219].

Notes on contributors

Johan Nilsson

Johan Nilsson is an interdisciplinary researcher at the Center for Market Studies at Stockholm School of Economics. He holds a doctorate in Technology and Social Change from Linköping University. His research focuses on how markets, technology and knowledge shape human relationships.

Riikka Murto

Riikka Murto is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Market Studies, Stockholm School of Economics. Her research focuses on the relationships between marketing, markets, and society. Current projects explore the emergence of the Swedish market for influencer marketing and trace changing ideas of gender in marketing research and practice.

Hans Kjellberg

Hans Kjellberg is Professor of Marketing at Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden. His research focuses on economic organizing, particularly the organizing of markets. Recent publications include articles in EPA: Economy and Space, Journal of Business Research, Socio- Economic Review, Marketing Theory, and JAMS. Current projects include a comparative study of valuation and pricing of cancer drugs, a study of how online influencers redefine commercial and social relations, and a project on value conflicts in Nordic forestry.

Notes

1. Whether or not the recipient has a registered business also influences the Tax Agency’s precise understanding of the roles of stuff, sender, and recipient. Here, we discuss the details of the taxation frame as they apply to recipients who do not have a registered business. In either case, the Tax Agency applies a market exchange frame to the sending of stuff, so this is of little significance for our analysis.