Scarcity, Status, and Social Distance: How Macro Influencers Gain Persuasive Advantage at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Although influencer marketing is widely adopted worldwide, existing studies have predominantly focused on developed economies and assumed economically stable consumption contexts. Yet, the rapidly growing emerging markets, characterized by substantial bottom‐of‐the‐pyramid (BOP) consumers, remain underexplored. To address this gap, we develop a theoretical model of how chronic financial scarcity reshapes persuasion in influencer marketing. Using BOP consumers as a scarcity‐salient context and comparing them with non‐BOP consumers in Bangladesh, we examine the persuasiveness of micro versus macro influencers. Results from a real‐world field study (over 1.3 million impressions and a reach over 500,000) and 4 experiments ( N = 1033), along with 2 additional experiments in the Supporting Information ( N = 574), show that macro (vs. micro) influencers are more persuasive among BOP consumers, because their large follower counts serve as heuristic cues, which in turn enhance their perceived trustworthiness. By contrast, micro (vs. macro) influencers are more persuasive among non‐BOP consumers due to their perceived expertise. Furthermore, among BOP consumers, socially distant (vs. close) macro influencers exert greater persuasive impact due to their higher perceived status. Together, these findings demonstrate that chronic financial scarcity reshapes persuasion by altering the diagnosticity of credibility dimensions and the interpretation of social distance.