Abstract
Social media influencers are widely employed as a marketing strategy as they successfully attain trust from followers. Applying the social exchange theory and its principle of reciprocity, this study investigated whether the source characteristics of an influencer (i.e., expertise, authenticity, physical attractiveness, homophily) can function as relational resources in the formation of follower trust. Whether followers’ trust in the influencer leads to their loyalty to the influencer and desirable marketing outcomes (i.e., product attitude, purchase intention) was also examined. Results revealed that trust mediated the impacts of expertise, authenticity, and homophily on loyalty and marketing outcomes. However, physical attractiveness was not significant in building relational trust. Also, the moderating role of relationship strength was confirmed in authenticity-trust and trust-loyalty linkages. The findings suggest implications for the strategic use of influencer marketing and provide a better understanding of persuasion mechanisms manifested in influencer-follower relationships.
1. Introduction
The past decade has witnessed a major change in social media marketing characterized by a shift toward influencer marketing (Phua et al., 2017). The size of the influencer marketing industry reached $9.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $15 billion by 2022 (Statistica, 2021). With a market of only half a million dollars in 2015, the industry has grown rapidly by more than 50% a year (Statistica, 2021). The growth of influencer marketing accelerated with the outbreak of COVID19, during which people increasingly turned to social media for entertainment and virtual social experiences (Etzkorn, 2021). Consequently, influencer marketing has become an essential part of digital marketing strategy as a touchpoint for reaching a target audience.
7. Limitations and suggestions
for future research Since our study is cross-sectional in nature, study outcomes were limited to a defined point in time. Therefore, a longitudinal approach could be applied in future research to explore the influencer-follower relationships over time. Specifically, this study identifies the moderating role of relationship strength. Future studies can explore other potential moderators that could affect the direction of marketing strategies. For instance, consumer age, influencer topic, and the type of social media platform (e.g., YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tiktok) can be tested in the communication process. Moreover, our study was conducted in the context of U.S. social media users, and thus the results may not be generalizable to other cultures or nations. Therefore, comparative cross-national and cross-cultural studies could provide an interesting avenue for future research. Finally, this study concentrated on the role of trust in leveraging the social exchange process between influencers and followers. By extending the social exchange mechanism to persuading followers, other relationship traits can be examined in future research.
