Are online influencers trustworthy? The virtual audience’s response to online influencers’ endorsement in China

Although ‘go-social’ becomes an important part of the public’s daily life in China, online users suffer from information overload increasingly when they get exposed to different online contents shared through various social media communication channels today. To compete on digital audience’s attention and increase online communication effectiveness, online influencers are commonly employed by communication practitioners. However, questions like how powerful online influencers are and to what extent digital audience can be motivated by online influencers have not be answered appropriately. Hence, a 2x2 online experiment was used in this pilot study to identify how the use of online influencer endorsement with various social powers affected virtual audience’s response toward the message and their decision-making. A total of 86 participants were voluntarily recruited from mainland China. The study indicated that the use of referent power and expert power could positively predict virtual audience’s perception toward the promotional message. However, if online campaign would like to call for action and influence audience’s behavior, the use of online influencers with expert power could be more effective than that with referent power.