Ensuring Transparency in Influencer Marketing: A Fair Competition Law Analysis Incorporating Insights from Psychology and Business Administration

Influencers are individuals with a large following on social networks who earn money by promoting products to their followers. As it is often of interest to followers to know which companies produce the products favored by the influencer, additional products are recommended without any payment involved. The issue of whether such unpaid endorsements must be marked as advertising under § 5a VI UWG 2015 has been a subject of debate in literature and case law. The findings of this study indicate that EU law already dictates the conclusion that unpaid endorsements do not need to be labeled. An additional emphasis is placed on applying knowledge from psychology and business studies to develop, support, or counter legal arguments.