Are influencers more credible advertisers of luxury brands?

Are influencers more credible advertisers

of luxury brands?

The extent to which social media marketing impacts consumer‘s purchase intentions and the effect of

brand type and source credibility

Master's Thesis defense

January 28th_{, 2020}

Introduction

› Brands shift towards own social media marketing channels and towards using online influencers (Tutaj & Van Reijmersdal, 2012)

› Luxury brands were last adopters, due to concerns of losing brand integrity (Pentina et al., 2018)

› However, consumers perceive influencer

This study aims to …

› analyze the effects of social media marketing on consumers‘ purchase intentions

› shed light on the differences between using an influencer‘s or a brand's profile when endorsing a luxury or a non-luxury brand

› check whether influencers are a more credible source as compared to company profiles

How?

› brand type as a moderator

Theoretical background

DV: Purchase intentions

› Positively impacted by e-WOM (e.g. influencer marketing), as customers can read reviews right at the point-of-purchase (Lim et al., 2017).

IV: Social media marketing

› Consumers have higher trust levels towards e-WOM, that leads to higher purchase intentions (Shuqair et al., 2016)

Theoretical background

Moderator: Brand type

› Luxury goods are clearly differentiated from non-luxury products, as the single-use or display brings self-esteem to the owner (Vigneron & Johnson, 2004)

› Store brands are not associated with luxury goods (Truong et al., 2008)

Mediator: Source credibility

Conceptual model

Methodology (1)

› Sample: 206 respondents between 19 and 66 years old (M=30,8), after cleaning 170.

› 2x2 between-subjects design

Methodology (2)

› Good internal consistency of all scales (Cronbach‘s alpha >0.6)

› No cross-loadings were found.

› Manipulations (brand type and social media marketing) checked with Independent T-test, worked as intended (both pre-test and test)

› Every respondent was exposed to one of the conditions and then directed to the Qualtrics questionnaire with items based on the validated scales.

Hypothesis testing (1)

› H1: For influencer profiles, the effect of social media marketing on the purchase intention is larger than for company profiles -> rejected

› H2: For influencer profiles, the effect of social media marketing on source credibility is larger than for company profiles -> rejected

Hypothesis testing (2)

Hypothesis testing (3)

› H5: For luxury brands, the effect of influencer profiles on source credibility,

Hypothesis testing (4)

Conclusions

› There is no difference between using a brand's profile or an influencer‘s profile on the effect of social media marketing on purchase intentions and neither source credibility

› Source credibility has a positive impact on purchase intentions

References

› Djafarova, E., & Trofimenko, O. (2019). ‘Instafamous’–credibility and self-presentation of micro-celebrities on social media. Information, Communication & Society, 22(10), 1432-1446.

› Lim, X. J., Radzol, A. M., Cheah, J., & Wong, M. W. (2017). The impact of social media influencers on purchase intention and the mediation effect of customer attitude. Asian Journal of Business Research, 7(2), 19-36.

› Pentina, I., Guilloux, V., & Micu, A. C. (2018). Exploring social media engagement behaviors in the context of luxury brands. Journal of Advertising, 47(1), 55-69.

› Shuqair, S., Cragg, P., Zaidan, A., & Mitchell, T. (2016). The Influence of Users Generated Content on Attitude Towards Brand And Purchase Intentions–Case of Bahrain. International Journal of Business Marketing and Management, 1(5), 9-20.

› Tutaj, K., & Van Reijmersdal, E. A. (2012). Effects of online advertising format and persuasion knowledge on audience reactions. Journal of Marketing Communications, 18(1), 5–18.

› Truong, Y., Simmons, G., McColl, R., & Kitchen, P. J. (2008). Status and conspicuousness–are they related? Strategic marketing implications for luxury brands. Journal of strategic marketing, 16(3), 189-203.