ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH (eWOM): HOW SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS AFFECT CONSUMERS’ PURCHASE INTENTION

Abstract

With the growth of social media nowadays, a new type of celebrity known as social media influencers has arisen. Social media influencers are more prominent than typical celebrities in that they developed their online character and renown through the creation of content on social networking platforms. Through their credibility, trustworthiness, and attractiveness, social media influencers could influence their audience to purchase products or services they recommended through eWOM virality. However, some social media influencers promote criminal scams among their followers, have fake followers/fake likes, low saturation rate, and non-disclosure of sponsorships which have caused the concerns. Therefore, this study intended to measure the effect of social media influencers (credibility, trustworthiness, attractiveness) on consumers' purchase Intention with eWOM virality as moderator. The researcher developed an online questionnaire through Google Form to collect the data from 200 respondents of young adults between 18 to 30 years old with convenience sampling. By using SPSS, the researcher performed descriptive analysis, regression analysis (linear regression and multiple regression), and T-Test on the collected data. Consequently, the result findings demonstrate that all the variables were statistically significant towards this research objective, and hypothesis, and successfully answered this research question. These findings may be used as a reference for business and marketing specialists to properly manage and execute their communication strategy.