The Effect of Influencer Marketing

Abstract

Purpose: This research investigates the effect or influence of source credibility and parasocial relationship on purchase intention within influencer marketing. The motivation behind this research was the increase in usage of social media, not only in Denmark but throughout most of the world. Furthermore, with an increase in social media usage, marketers have to use new ways of reaching potential consumers. One of the ways is by using social media influencers, which is a growing business. To further investigate these three constructs of source credibility, parasocial relationship and purchase intention a comprehensive search and analysis of prior studies were conducted. Moreover, social influence theory was chosen as an overall theory for the research. Through the prior literature hypotheses and a conceptualization were made. Method: This is an explanatory research, working within critical realism and it is using a quantitative mono-method. The primary data was collected through an online questionnaire. This questionnaire was distributed through Facebook and Aalborg University. The questionnaire yielded 250 complete responses and of those 137 useful responses for this particular research. Furthermore, for analyzing the questionnaire Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was conducted, including Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). To do this IBM SPSS AMOS was used as an analysing tool. The purpose of using SEM was to try and confirm the hypotheses made in the conceptualization to reveal the relationships between the three constructs. Findings: By conducting structural equation modelling in IBM SPSS AMOS, it was found that source credibility has a positive significant effect on purchase intention. Additionally, source credibility was found to have a positive significant effect on the parasocial relationship between the follower and the social media influencer as well. These two findings were similar to the results found in previous studies. Meanwhile, homophily was not found to be significant in affecting the parasocial relationship, despite prior studies suggesting otherwise. Lastly, parasocial relationship was found to have a positive significant effect on purchase intention, which is the main contribution of this study.