Examining The Impact Of Different Types Of Social Media Influencers On Attitudes, Trust & Purchase Intent: Travel User Generated Content

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the effects of Instagram nano, micro, and macro influencers on consumer’s brand and influencer attitudes, trust and purchase intent toward travel-related content. Using the Persuasion Knowledge Model as a theoretical framework, this study analyzes how the presence or absence of sponsorship disclosures within Instagram posts might mediate and affect consumer’s attitudes and behaviors. The purpose of the study is to add to influencer marketing literature by exploring how consumer attitudes and behaviors may vary across types of influencers on the presence or absence of sponsorship disclosure. The study employs a 3 (influencer type: macro-influencer vs. micro-influencer vs. nano-influencers) x 2 (sponsorship disclosure: present vs. not present) between-subjects design experiment. Through a experiment, University of Oklahoma students were randomly assigned to 1 out of 6 possible groups. Participants were shown a fictitious Instagram influencer post promoting a beach resort. After exposure to the Instagram post, trust, attitudes, and purchase intent effects were analyzed. The presence of statistically non-significant results may indicate an intricate relationship between influencers and individuals. This potential complex relationship might benefit from further research incorporation the role of parasocial relationships. Understanding real life relationships between influencers and followers might result in more accurate results. Despite this, the study found that there is an interaction effect between influencer type and sponsorship disclosure on participant attitudes toward influencers. A two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed that non-sponsored posts from micro-influencers received significantly more positive attitudes toward the influencers than sponsored posts from the same influencer type. Additionally, attitudes toward nano-influencers in sponsored and non-sponsored posts were similar. Also, sponsored posts coming from macro influencers showed more positive attitudes toward the influencer in comparison to non-sponsored posts. Furthermore, the study found that individuals who were exposed to sponsored Instagram posts had low levels of purchase intent. An independent sample T-test was conducted to compare the mean levels of purchase intent between participants exposed to sponsored and non-sponsored Instagram posts. Results showed that participants exhibited both low purchase intent levels toward sponsored posts and lower purchase intent levels in comparison to non-sponsored posts. Finally, an independent sample T-test was conducted to compare the mean levels of influencer attitudes toward sponsored and non-sponsored posts. Results did not only show that participants exhibited negative attitudes toward influencers in sponsored posts, but also that influencer attitude levels were more positive in non-sponsored posts