With the raise of artificial intelligence (AI), a new form of influencers has entered the proposition of marketing strategies for brands. Virtual influencers (VI’s) have shown their potential for brands in general, fashion lifestyle, or fashion luxury, even being more impactful in specific aspects than traditional influencers. Zooming in on sports, the VI space has been discovered by some brands already, yet for lifestyle sports products only. The performance sports products environment is still untouched. This study aims to identify the potential goals to be achieved for sports brands creating human-like virtual influencers to implement in their performance range of products strategy.

In the past decade the level of prosocial behavior has raised some concerns, whereas an empathic concern, one of the main predictors of prosocial behavior, is decreasing. Lack of empathy and less forgiving attitudes are one of the main characteristics of entitlement Entitlement, or feeling of deserving more than others, is negatively related to pro-social behavior (Campbell et al., 2004). In H1, we suggest that entitled individuals engage in prosocial behavior more when there is an opportunity to self-enhance vs. when there is no opportunity to self-enhance.