The presence of brands online has intensified over the past decade. Previous re-search has found that following online updates from a brand’s Facebook page enhances brand evaluations. As Instagram is emerging as one of the most popular social media plat-forms, we extended previous research by simulating the experience of navigating online on a smartphone while focusing on this platform. Our main goal was to understand if brands with a large number of followers versus brands with a small number of followers are per-ceived differently by consumers. Findings from two studies (Ntotal = 313) suggest that In-stagram brand pages with a large number of followers positively influence purchase inten-tion and brand trust. However, the perceived quality and likeliness to refer the brand to a friend are not affected by the number of followers. Also, we found no significant gender differences across variables.

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