Bloggers’ Interactive Practices and Their followers’ Purchase Intentions: The Mediating Roles of Perceived Credibility and followers’ Para-Social Interactions

Abstract

Although there are several recent studies regarding the role that online social networks (SNs) bloggers can play in the success or failure of today’s businesses, the ways by which they can actively influence their follower’s purchase behavior still needs further investigation. Thus, this study aims to examine how bloggers’ interactive practices (BIPs) have a positive effect on their followers’ intentions to purchase the products promoted by them by the mediating roles of bloggers’ credibility and followers’ para-social interactions. This study drew on three well-formulated theories (i.e. social cognitive theory, theory of reasoned action, and social learning theory) to design its conceptual framework. To this end, this study surveyed 548 female followers of 12 female bloggers on Instagram, operating in Iran. This research has used the PLS-based structural equations modeling to evaluate the validity of its measurement and structural models. The results of this research show that BIPs improve followers’ attitudes toward bloggers’ credibility in two dimensions of “expertise” and “reliability”. Followers’ attitudes toward bloggers’ credibility play an important role in reinforcing their para-social interactions with bloggers. Followers’ para-social interactions play a role in fortifying their intentions to purchase the products promoted by bloggers. The most significant empirical contribution of this study is that it explains the interactive practices taken by bloggers into account strengthen the purchase demands of their followers. Therefore, bloggers due to their ability to influence people’s purchase intentions are a challenge for today’s businesses, which must be transformed from a potential threat to an actual opportunity.