ISSN: 2222-6990
Open access
Social media influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving product placement and endorsements from influencers. Influencers successfully shape consumers’ perceptions towards products or services by posting videos, content, or pictures on their social media channels. However. We proposed this study to investigate the impact of social media influencers’ personality, content, and trustworthiness on consumers’ purchase intention and eWOM towards different brands in Saudi Arabia. We applied a quantitative research method to carry this study. Therefore, an online questionnaire was developed to gather data from 510 respondents using non-probability. To obtain the study objectives, we analyzed the primary data using structural equation modeling via SmartPLS software. The results reveal that social media influencers’ personality, content, and trustworthiness significantly impact consumers’ purchase intention and eWOM. This study results help brands, advertisers, and marketers to understand how social media influencers’ marketing techniques can influence consumers’ purchase intention and eWOM towards different brands. Thus, it will also support them to know the key factors that could significantly explain consumers' intention and eWOM towards social media influencers. Further, this study purpose of investigating the influence of social media influencers on the consumers’ purchase intention in different sectors and context.
Abbas, J., Mahmood, S., Ali, H., Raza, A. M., Ali, G., Aman, J., & Nurunnabi, M. (2019). The effects of corporate social responsibility practices and environmental factors through a moderating role of social media marketing on sustainable performance of business firms. Sustainability, 11(12), 3434.
Ahmad, S. A., & Bruno, D. E. (2021). Social Media Influencers and The Dietary Choices Among University Students. Malaysian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (MJSSH), 6(10), 543-557.
Ahmed, M., Khan, S., & Alzughaibi, D. (2021). The Impact Of Snapchat Makeup Influencers On The Consumption Behavior Of Female Students In Saudi Arabia: The Case Of Sephora. Palarch's Journal Of Archaeology Of Egypt/Egyptology, 18(16), 406-414.
Al-Nasser, A., & Mahomed, A. S. B. (2020). Effect Of Social Media Influencers On Purchase Intentions Of Saudi Arabia Consumers: Instagram As An Evaluation Tool. International Journal of Management (IJM), 11(7).
Almalki, S., Alghamdi, R., Sami, G., & Alhakami, W. (2021). Social Media Security and Attacks. International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security, 21(1), 174-183.
Anuar, N. I. M., Mohamad, S. R., Zulkiffli, W. F. W., Hashim, N. A. A. N., Abdullah, A. R., Rasdi, A. L. M., ... & Abdullah, S. S. (2020). Impact Of Social Media Influencer On Instagram User Purchase Intention Towards The Fashion Products: The Perspectives Of Students. European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine, 7(8), 2589-2598.
Arriagada, A., & Ibáñez, F. (2020). “You need at least one picture daily, if not, you’re dead”: Content creators and platform evolution in the social media ecology. Social Media+ Society, 6(3), 2056305120944624.
Bhattacharyya, K., & Debata, B. R. (2021). Measuring the Effectiveness of Social Media in a B2B Scenario in India. Transnational Marketing Journal, 9(2), 285-300.
Bilal, M., Jianqiu, Z., Dukhaykh, S., Fan, M., & Trunk, A. (2021). Understanding the Effects of eWOM Antecedents on Online Purchase Intention in China. Information, 12(5), 192.
Bonnevie, E., Rosenberg, S. D., Kummeth, C., Goldbarg, J., Wartella, E., & Smyser, J. (2020). Using social media influencers to increase knowledge and positive attitudes toward the flu vaccine. Plos one, 15(10), e0240828.
Carr, C. T., & Hayes, R. A. (2015). Social media: Defining, developing, and divining. Atlantic journal of communication, 23(1), 46-65.
Chatterjee, S., & Kar, A. K. (2020). Why do small and medium enterprises use social media marketing and what is the impact: Empirical insights from India. International Journal of Information Management, 53, 102103.
Chekima, B., Chekima, F. Z., & Adis, A. A. A. (2020). Social Media Influencer in Advertising: The Role of Attractiveness, Expertise and Trustworthiness. Journal of Economics and Business, 3(4).
Chetna kudeshia Amresh Kumar. (2017)," Social eWOM: Does it affect the brand attitude and purchase intention of brands? ", Management Research Review, Vol. 40 Iss 3 pp. -
Chu, S. C., & Chen, H. T. (2019). Impact of consumers' corporate social responsibility?related activities in social media on brand attitude, electronic word?of?mouth intention, and purchase intention: A study of Chinese consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 18(6), 453-462.
Cole III, W. W., Perez-Chaumont, A., Miskimin, C., & Mulcahey, M. K. (2021). Social Media and Its Use in Orthopaedic Surgery Resident Education and Training. JBJS reviews, 9(11), e21.
Confente, I., & Vigolo, V. (2018). Online travel behaviour across cohorts: The impact of social influences and attitude on hotel booking intention. International Journal of Tourism Research, 20(5), 660-670.
Dhanesh, G. S., & Duthler, G. (2019). Relationship management through social media influencers: Effects of followers’ awareness of paid endorsement. Public Relations Review, 45(3), 101765.
Global Media Insight. (2021). Saudi Arabia Social Media Statistics 2021. Retrived from: https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/saudi-arabia-social-media-statistics/
Glucksman, M. (2017). The rise of social media influencer marketing on lifestyle branding: A case study of Lucie Fink. Elon Journal of undergraduate research in communications, 8(2), 77-87.
Gunnarsson, L., Folkestad, A., & Postnikova, A. (2018). Maybe Influencers Are Not Worth The Hype: An explanatory study on influencers’ characteristics with perceived quality and brand loyalty.
Guping, C., Cherian, J., Sial, M. S., Mentel, G., Wan, P., Álvarez-Otero, S., & Saleem, U. (2021). The relationship between csr communication on social media, purchase intention, and e-wom in the banking sector of an emerging economy. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, 16(4), 1025-1041.
Hale, J. L., Householder, B. J., & Greene, K. L. (2002). The theory of reasoned action. The persuasion handbook: Developments in theory and practice, 14(2002), 259-286.
Ham, C. D., Lee, J., & Lee, H. S. (2014). Understanding consumers’ creating behaviour in social media: an application of uses and gratifications and the theory of reasoned action. International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 8(4), 241-263.
Hu, H., Zhang, D., & Wang, C. (2019). Impact of social media influencers' endorsement on application adoption: A trust transfer perspective. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 47(11), 1-12.
Huhmann, B. A., & Limbu, Y. B. (2016). Content and compliance of pharmaceutical social media marketing. Marketing Intelligence & Planning.
Hurley, Z. (2019). Imagined affordances of Instagram and the fantastical authenticity of female Gulf-Arab social media influencers. Social Media+ Society, 5(1), 2056305118819241.
Iankova, S., Davies, I., Archer-Brown, C., Marder, B., & Yau, A. (2019). A comparison of social media marketing between B2B, B2C and mixed business models. Industrial Marketing Management, 81, 169-179.
Jiménez-Castillo, D., & Sánchez-Fernández, R. (2019). The role of digital influencers in brand recommendation: Examining their impact on engagement, expected value and purchase intention. International Journal of Information Management, 49, 366-376.
Jones, A. H. G. (2020). Using the theory of reasoned action to examine faculty intentions to use social networking in distance learning courses (Doctoral dissertation, University of Alabama Libraries).
Kala, D., & Chaubey, D. S. (2018). The effect of eWOM communication on brand image and purchase intention towards lifestyle products in India. International Journal of Services, Economics and Management, 9(2), 143-157.
Kay, S., Mulcahy, R., & Parkinson, J. (2020). When less is more: the impact of macro and micro social media influencers’ disclosure. Journal of Marketing Management, 36(3-4), 248-278.
Kim, J., Namkoong, K., & Chen, J. (2020). Predictors of online news-sharing intention in the US and South Korea: An application of the theory of reasoned action. Communication Studies, 71(2), 315-331.
Kim, S., Jiang, J. Y., Nakada, M., Han, J., & Wang, W. (2020, April). Multimodal post attentive profiling for influencer marketing. In Proceedings of The Web Conference 2020 (pp. 2878-2884).
Lee, J., Ham, C. D., & Kim, M. (2013). Why people pass along online video advertising: From the perspectives of the interpersonal communication motives scale and the theory of reasoned action. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 13(1), 1-13.
Licoppe, C., & Smoreda, Z. (2005). Are social networks technologically embedded?: How networks are changing today with changes in communication technology. Social networks, 27(4), 317-335.
Lou, C., & Yuan, S. (2019). Influencer marketing: how message value and credibility affect consumer trust of branded content on social media. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 19(1), 58-73.
Madden, T. J., Ellen, P. S., & Ajzen, I. (1992). A comparison of the theory of planned behavior and the theory of reasoned action. Personality and social psychology Bulletin, 18(1), 3-9.
Muda, M., & Hamzah, M. I. (2021). Should I suggest this YouTube clip? The impact of UGC source credibility on eWOM and purchase intention. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.
Nafees, L., Cook, C. M., & Stoddard, J. E. (2020). The Impact of the Social Media Influencer Power on Consumer Attitudes toward the Brand: The Mediating/Moderating Role of Social Media Influencer Source Credibility. Atlantic Marketing Journal, 9(1), 3.
Nisa, E. F. (2018). Creative and lucrative Da?wa: the visual culture of Instagram amongst female Muslim youth in Indonesia. Asiascape: Digital Asia, 5(1-2), 68-99.
Ozgen, P., & Mahmoudian, A. B. (2021). Examining the Effects of Blogger Type (Influencers vs. Celebrities) and Post Format in Instagram Marketing. In Handbook of Research on New Media Applications in Public Relations and Advertising (pp. 121-132). IGI Global.
Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/MRR-07-2015-0161.
Pescaroli, G., Velazquez, O., Alcántara-Ayala, I., Galasso, C., Kostkova, P., & Alexander, D. (2020). A likert scale-based model for benchmarking operational capacity, organizational resilience, and disaster risk reduction. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, 11, 404-409.
Plidtookpai, N., & Yoopetch, C. (2021). The electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) trustworthiness, brand image and other determinants of purchase intention of the middle class to luxury hotel services. Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences, 42(1), 61-68.
Pookulangara, S., Hawley, J., & Xiao, G. (2011). Explaining multi?channel consumer's channel?migration intention using theory of reasoned action. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management.
Pornsrimate, K., & Khamwon, A. (2020). Building Brand Evangelism through Social Media Micro-Influencers: A Case Study of Cosmetic Industry in Thailand. International Journal of Social Science Research, 2(3), 84-99.
Pratt, M., Sarmiento, O. L., Montes, F., Ogilvie, D., Marcus, B. H., Perez, L. G., ... & Lancet Physical Activity Series Working Group. (2012). The implications of megatrends in information and communication technology and transportation for changes in global physical activity. The Lancet, 380(9838), 282-293.
Prayogo, R. R., Ketaren, F. L. S., & Hati, R. M. (2016, November). Electronic word of mouth, destination image, and satisfaction toward visit intention: An empirical study in Malioboro Street, Yogyakarta. In 1st International Conference on Social and Political Development (ICOSOP 2016). Atlantis Press.
Ramayah, T., Cheah, J., Chuah, F., Ting, H., & Memon, M. A. (2018). Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using smartPLS 3.0.
Ramayah, T., Yeap, J. A., Ahmad, N. H., Halim, H. A., & Rahman, S. A. (2017). Testing a confirmatory model of Facebook usage in SmartPLS using consistent PLS. International Journal of Business and Innovation, 3(2), 1-14.
Reagan, R., Filice, S., Santarossa, S., & Woodruff, S. J. (2020). # ad on Instagram: Investigating the Promotion of Food and Beverage Products. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 9(2), 1-28.
Ringle, C. M., Sarstedt, M., Mitchell, R., & Gudergan, S. P. (2020). Partial least squares structural equation modeling in HRM research. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 31(12), 1617-1643.
Rishika, R., Kumar, A., Janakiraman, R., & Bezawada, R. (2013). The effect of customers' social media participation on customer visit frequency and profitability: an empirical investigation. Information systems research, 24(1), 108-127.
Rosara, N. A., & Luthfia, A. (2020). Factors Influencing Consumer's Purchase Intention on Beauty Products in Youtube. The Journal of Distribution Science, 18(6), 37-46.
Rothe, H., & Wicke, S. (2018). Content-Influencer-Fit: Improving Reach and Impact of Content for Influencers in eWOM. In Proceedings of Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik.
Saima, & Khan, M. A. (2020). Effect of social media influencer marketing on consumers’ purchase intention and the mediating role of credibility. Journal of Promotion Management, 27(4), 503-523.
Saleem, M., Kamarudin, S., Shoaib, H. M., & Nasar, A. (2021). Retail Consumers’ Behavioral Intention to Use Augmented Reality Mobile Apps in Pakistan. Journal of Internet Commerce, 1-29.
Sarstedt, M., & Cheah, J. H. (2019). Partial least squares structural equation modeling using SmartPLS: a software review.
Sarver, V. T. (1983). Ajzen and Fishbein's" theory of reasoned action": A critical assessment.
Shan, Y., Chen, K. J., & Lin, J. S. (2020). When social media influencers endorse brands: The effects of self-influencer congruence, parasocial identification, and perceived endorser motive. International Journal of Advertising, 39(5), 590-610.
Sheppard, B. H., Hartwick, J., & Warshaw, P. R. (1988). The theory of reasoned action: A meta-analysis of past research with recommendations for modifications and future research. Journal of consumer research, 15(3), 325-343.
Shimp, T. A., & Kavas, A. (1984). The theory of reasoned action applied to coupon usage. Journal of consumer research, 11(3), 795-809.
Singh, J., Crisafulli, B., & Xue, M. T. (2020). ‘To trust or not to trust’: the impact of social media influencers on the reputation of corporate brands in crisis. Journal of Business Research, 119, 464-480.
Slamet, R. F. (2019). Celebrity entrepreneurs vs social media influencers: an analysis of the interplay of endorser type and e-WOM valence on consumers’ purchase intention (Master's thesis, University of Twente).
Stubb, C., & Colliander, J. (2019). “This is not sponsored content”–The effects of impartiality disclosure and e-commerce landing pages on consumer responses to social media influencer posts. Computers in Human Behavior, 98, 210-222.
Sulthana, A. N., & Vasantha, S. (2019). Influence of electronic word of mouth eWOM on purchase intention. International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research, 8(10), 1-5.
Tien, D. H., Rivas, A. A. A., & Liao, Y. K. (2019). Examining the influence of customer-to-customer electronic word-of-mouth on purchase intention in social networking sites. Asia Pacific Management Review, 24(3), 238-249.
Vallerand, R. J., Deshaies, P., Cuerrier, J. P., Pelletier, L. G., & Mongeau, C. (1992). Ajzen and Fishbein's theory of reasoned action as applied to moral behavior: A confirmatory analysis. Journal of personality and social psychology, 62(1), 98.
Weaver, B., Lindsay, B., & Gitelman, B. (2012). Communication technology and social media: Opportunities and implications for healthcare systems. Online J Issues Nurs, 17(3).
Weismueller, J., Harrigan, P., Wang, S., & Soutar, G. N. (2020). Influencer endorsements: How advertising disclosure and source credibility affect consumer purchase intention on social media. Australasian marketing journal, 28(4), 160-170.
Wiedmann, K.-P., & Von Mettenheim, W. (2021), "Attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise – social influencers’ winning formula?", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 707-725. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-06-2019-2442
Yoo, W., Yang, J., & Cho, E. (2016). How social media influence college students’ smoking attitudes and intentions. Computers in Human Behavior, 64, 173-182.
Yusuf, A. S., & Busalim, A. H. (2018). Influence of e-WOM engagement on consumer purchase intention in social commerce. Journal of Services Marketing.
Zeng, C. F., & Seock, Y. K. (2019). Chinese consumers’ perceptions toward social media platform for shopping and eWOM intention: a study of WeChat. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education.
Zhou, S., Barnes, L., McCormick, H., & Cano, M. B. (2021). Social media influencers’ narrative strategies to create eWOM: a theoretical contribution. International Journal of Information Management, 59, 102293.
Zuhdi, S., Daud, A., Hanif, R., Nguyen, P. T., & Shankar, K. (2019). Role of Social Media Marketing in the Successful Implementation of Business Management. International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering, 8.
In-Text Citation: (Aggad & Ahmad, 2021)
To Cite this Article: Aggad, K. K., & Ahmad, F. S. (2021). Investigates the Impact of Social Media Influencers’ Personality, Content, and Trustworthiness on Consumers’ Purchase Intention and eWOM. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 11(12), 2368–2384.
Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s)
Published by Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non0-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
2025 © Copyright HRMARS. All rights Reserved.