Can Vloggers Characteristics Change Online-Shopping Intentions? The Role of Word of Mouth Effect as a Communication Tool

Abstract

Purpose - Vlogging enables individuals to share experiences, knowledge and diaries with the online community. Recently many studies have shown that vloggers’ main characteristics and blog types have a direct influence on users as an effective medium. As vlogs have become an important tool for interactive communication, the purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between vloggers’characteristics, trust, word of mouth and intention of online shopping. This study implies that the vblog can be a meaningful learning platform and the vlogging can be a significant medium in having/sharing the informal knowledge for online shopping. Design/Methodology/Approach- Based on various theories, the structural equation modelling approach was proposed in this study. A survey with convenience sampling involving 357 vlog users as participants was analyzed in the empirical study to investigate whether the usefulness of vbloggers’ recommendations and trusting beliefs towards vblogger has influence on consumers’ behavioral intentions towards word of mouth and online shopping. Findings-The results showed that vloggers’ characteristics had significant influential effect on vlog users’ attitude towards and intention to shop online. Moreover, the findings indicated that engagement characteristics of vloggers elicited trust more than authoritative knowledged characteristics of vloggers. As a result of the path analysis it is discovered that the intention to shop online is triggered through trust and word of mouth communication. Engagement knowledge has more power on the relationship between word of mouth communication and the intention to purchase. As much as users trust that the content of the vlog is based on true information and not for advertising strategy, the more likely they want to share the information virally. That would have a direct impact to the increasing intention to buy. Originality/Value- The originality of this paper is to study vlogging, which is a new working field in the scholarly literature, and its correlation to users’ intention to buy. This study especially analyzes the vlog characteristics and their increasingly leading factors to users/readers’ attractiveness intention to buy. The value of this study concentrated on the trust issue and its positive relation to amateur vloggers instead of authorative knowledged based ones.