Endorser Credibility and Psychological Ownership in the Social Media-Based Influencer Marketing Context: An Abstract

Abstract

Social media, especially social media-based influencer marketing, has become an important factor in consumer decision making. Studies have recently begun investigating the effects of influencers on consumer behavior. Owing to these people’s origins, they often appear more credible than celebrity testimonials (Djafarova and Rushworth 2017); consequently, they are deemed to have a greater influence than conventional advertising activities. Results by Dost et al. (2019) indicate that seeding campaigns, like social media-based influencer marketing, can increase the total sales of fast-moving consumer goods by between 3% and 18%. Despite the increasing interest, studies examining influencers’ tangible impact on consumer behavior are scarce. Researchers have only recently started investigating the effects of influencers empirically. Studies have shown that celebrities are less credible than influencers, although both impact consumers’ purchase behavior (Djafarova and Rushworth 2017). Furthermore, Lim et al. (2017) find that influencers’ source attractiveness positively effects consumers’ attitudes and purchase intention. An online study (n = 222) undertook new research to gain further understanding. Specifically, the study examines the following: first, the impact of consumers’ perceived influencer credibility, using the source credibility model by Ohanian (1990) in respect of attitude toward advertising, product liking, and purchase intention; second, the impact of the organizational behavior concept ‘psychological ownership’ based on Pierce et al. (2001) on consumer behavior by showing that the concept had significant positive effects on the product evaluation and on consumers’ willingness to buy like in prior research; third, the congruence and relationship between the influencer and the consumer in order to understand the relations. Results show that perceived influencer credibility serves as a significant criterion, determining the product and purchase’s persuasiveness, while contributing an instrument for transferring convincing messages to increase the perceived psychological ownership feeling for a product and, thus, influence consumer behavior positively. Theories on celebrity endorsement, their credibility, and their connection to the psychological ownership concept allowed a framework to be developed to assess the importance of influencer’s credibility and its influence on consumers’ perception of the products they advertise, to better understand the interactions in the influencer marketing context. Consequently, credible influencers can act as the tool to transfer their persuasive message, which increases customers’ psychological ownership feelings and influences consumers’ consumption behavior positively. This suggests that it is essential for companies to consider that kind of people who perceived as attractive, competent, and trustworthy for a specific target group to be most effective.