Impact of Social Media Influencers on Purchase Intention: A Study on The Impact of Social Media Influencer Variables on The Purchase Intention of Buyers

Abstract

With modern technology taking over the world social media platforms have now become more popular than ever before. Surfing through different social media platforms and consuming various forms of content through social media has become a staple in people’s everyday lives. Since the role of social media has increased so significantly, there has also been an increase in the number of content creators across different social media platforms. These content creators or social media influencers have successfully monetized their content and have established their audience base. This successful engagement with their followers have led to many brands acknowledging these social media influencers as a viable source of product endorsement. This study explored whether few characteristics related to the social media influencer influences the purchase intention of their audience. This study adapted a questionnaire (Sokolova & Kefi, 2019) and the questionnaire was administered online to the participants. The characteristics chosen for this study were credibility, attitude homophily, physical attractiveness, social attractiveness and para social interaction. To see if there exists a relationship between these characteristics and purchase intention a correlational study was conducted. It was found that credibility, physical attractiveness, social attractiveness and para social interaction had a moderate positive correlation with intention to purchase, while attitude homophily displayed a weak positive correlation with purchase intention.