HOW SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS AFFECT CONSUMERS PURCHASE HABIT?

Longitudinal studies that measure the effect of bloggers on consumer purchase are essential to improve our understanding in how social media bloggers become role models in people lives. As the number of blog posts and bloggers are increasing rapidly, this rapid rise is causing changes in people’s (consumer’s) purchase habits. There are some conceptual studies conducted about the revolution of Web 2.0 technology and social media and some of them specifically studied the different type of blogs. But no study has focused on the factors causing the influence, specifically factors such as social attractiveness, credibility, experience and sponsorship. To fill this gap, this paper suggests and test a model that explains the factors that influence consumers intentions to adopt recommendations. A total of 202 questionnaires were returned in the survey to identify which factors have influence on blog readers” intentions to adopt recommendations”. Initially, data identified the demographic distribution of the respondents. Next, explanatory factor analysis was conducted to measure the validity and consistency of factors. Nine hypotheses were measured by conducting linear regression. Lastly, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was performed. The results from a sample of 202 show that the factors: trust, credibility, prior experience, perceived usefulness, sponsorship, social attractiveness, subjective norms, are influencing the intentions of consumers to adopt blogger’s recommendations. In addition, the results highlight that social attractiveness has a mediating affect between attitude and intentions. The implications of these findings for bloggers and consumers are discussed in detail