Influencer marketing in China: The roles of parasocial identification, consumer engagement, and inferences of manipulative intent

Abstract

Considering trends in influencer marketing, this research explores the mechanism by which Chinese consumers develop responses to branded content on social media, especially the key psychological factors that may positively or negatively affect that process. To substantiate the proposed conceptual frameworks, we used data from a nationwide online survey (N = 511) conducted in China. The results revealed that consumers' parasocial identification with social media influencers contributed to their engagement with, trust in, and attitude toward branded content associated with the influencers. Their engagement with branded content also mediated the relationships between parasocial identification and trust in as well as attitude toward such content. Beyond that, inferences of manipulative intent played a significant role in moderating those indirect effects. The findings are interpreted in terms of theoretical and managerial implications.

Understanding How Product Reviews on YouTube Affect Consumers’ Purchase Behaviors in Indonesia: An Exploration Using the Stimulus-Organism-Response Paradigm

“…This is due to the YouTuber's concern for the audience's welfare when providing the reviews. This result was consistent with previous studies, which found that parasocial interaction significantly impacts trust [110]. Furthermore, we looked at the relationship between parasocial interaction and information usefulness, and the findings showed that parasocial interaction has no significant effect on information usefulness (H9).…”

How influencers’ social media posts have an influence on audience engagement among young consumers

“…Thomala's study (2021) found that most Chinese people, around 80%, follow at least one online influencer. In China, some scholars perceive online influencers as a new type of celebrity (Chen et al, 2021a(Chen et al, , 2021bFan, 2021;Hung, 2020). They develop their online personal images and charisma by updating social media feeds about their daily life, expertise and individual thoughts (Hung, 2020).…”

“…Online influencers are mostly self-made opinion leaders with strong popularity among social media users (Gra ¨ve, 2017;Schouten et al, 2020). In the literature of influencer studies, scholars currently use the following terms to name online influencers: social media influencers (Coates et al, 2019;Shan et al, 2020;Sundermann and Raabe, 2019), key opinion leaders (Zhu and Wang, 2020), bloggers (Balabanis and Chatzopoulou, 2019;Gannon and Prothero, 2018), vloggers (Ladhari et al, 2020;Lee and Watkins, 2016), internet celebrities (Chen et al, 2021a(Chen et al, , 2021bRoberts, 2010) micro-celebrities (Khamis et al, 2016;Martı ´nez and Olsson, 2019) and wang hong, which means popular internet figure in the Chinese context (Cheng, 2018;Xu and Zhao, 2019).…”

“…An experimental study found that consumers perceive a high level of similarity to and trust in online influencers, and this perceived similarity and trust later add value to the effectiveness of online influencer endorsement (Schouten et al, 2020). One online survey conducted with 500 YouTube users in Taiwan found that the expertise of online influencers indirectly affects consumers' impulse purchase behaviors for advertised products (Chen et al, 2021a(Chen et al, , 2021b. In addition, congruence between influencers and consumers also influences advertising persuasiveness.…”

Oportunidades del contenido de marca en medios tecnológicos

“…Estos factores afectan a la confianza de sus adeptos en las publicaciones de la marca, algo que posteriormente influye en el conocimiento de la misma y en las intenciones de compra (Lou y Yuan, 2019). La identificación de los consumidores con los influenciadores, contribuye también al compromiso y a la actitud de los primeros hacia los contenidos que difunden los segundos (Chen et al, 2021). Esto puede acercar a una marca a su público objetivo rápidamente, si elige bien a los influenciadores que difundan su contenido.…”