Examining the Role of Perceived Source Credibility on Social Media Influencer’s Ascribed Opinion Leadership

AbstractBuilding on the theoretical framework of the source credibility model, this study aims to investigate how the different dimensions of social media influencer’s (SMI) perceived source credibility, respectively expertise, attractiveness, and trustworthiness impact on influencers’ ascribed opinion leadership, and ultimately affect social media users’ purchase intentions. A cross-cultural analysis focused on the German and Portuguese markets of Instagram users was implemented. Data were collected with an online survey distributed in Germany and Portugal, resulting in a sample of 467 participants, 214 from Germany and 253 from Portugal. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling with partial least squares (PLS-SEM). Findings confirmed that expertise and attractiveness enhance the influencer’s ascribed opinion leadership. On the contrary, trustworthiness does not influence ascribed opinion leadership. The influencer’s ascribed opinion leadership promotes purchase intention. This study advances influencer marketing literature by deepening our understanding on the influence of online opinion leaders on social media user’s behavioral intentions.Keywords: Expertisetrustworthinessattractivenesssocial media influencersascribed opinion leadership Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by National Funds of the FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the project UIDB/04928/2020.