Para-social Interaction in Social Media and Its Marketing Effectiveness

Abstract

The rapid development of social media（such as live streaming, short videos, Vlogs, etc.）has attracted scholars’ attention to the theory of para-social interaction. Different from traditional media, social media provides new research ideas and content for exploring this kind of interaction between social media personae and consumers due to its characteristics of instant communication, interactivity, novelty of content, media personalization and social media scenario.Through literature reviews, this paper summarizes the psychological mechanism of para-social interaction in social media. Para-social interaction is distinguished from real social interaction by how it is influenced by social media. Media personae’s characteristics, consumers’ characteristics, and social platform characteristics, all of which are the main influencing factors of consumers’ para-social interaction engagement. According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model（ELM）, para-social interaction can stimulate consumers’ cognition of media personae’s self-disclosure and their perceived social presence through the central route and the peripheral route respectively, so as to improve the authenticity and accessibility of media personae perceived by consumers, and ultimately affect the para-social relationship between consumers and media personae. According to Skinner’s theory of reinforcement and previous studies, this paper also demonstrates that para-social interaction and para-social relationship will be continuously strengthened each other in a circular way, where para-social interaction drives the formation of para-social relationships, which will in turn motivate more para-social interaction. With each cycle of reinforcement between PSI and PSR, the para-social relationship between consumers and media personae rises to a higher level, presenting a spiral-upgrading state. Last but not least, when consumers and media personae establish the para-social relationship through para-social interaction, consumers tend to believe in media personas（source credibility）, and further believe in the brands recommended by media personae（brand credibility）, resulting in more marketing effectiveness（purchase intention and positive word-of-mouth）. Meanwhile, the influence of para-social relationships on source credibility may be moderated by the congruence between media personae and brands.In a word, both cyclic reinforcement mechanism and dual processing routes constitute the psychological mechanism of para-social interaction, which ultimately promotes more marketing effectiveness. Finally, this paper puts forward the marketing strategies to enterprises and the directions for future research.This paper makes two main contributions: On the one hand, it makes theoretical contributions through exploring the psychological mechanism of para-social interaction; on the other hand, it provides guidance for enterprises to effectively use social media, select and manage media personae, and promote enterprises to generate economic benefits.