Journal
COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Volume 87, Issue -, Pages 155-173Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2018.05.029
Keywords
Digital celebrity's SNS advertising; Parasocial relationships between digital celebrities and their followers; Empathy; Persuasion knowledge; Purchase intention; Electronic word-of-mouth intention
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Marketers recognize digital celebrities' advertising power and effectiveness, making them influential models of social media advertising. The concept of parasocial relationships may elucidate relationships between digital celebrities and their followers and explain the former's persuasion power over the latter. This study explores how parasocial relationships affect followers' purchase and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) intentions and investigates the effect of empathy, loneliness, and low social self-esteem on parasocial relationships within Uses and Gratification Theory. Additionally, it examines whether followers' parasocial relationships can reduce their persuasion knowledge. A survey was administered three hundred eighty-nine Chinese SNS users following digital celebrities; valid data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Empathy and low self-esteem positively influenced parasocial relationships; however, loneliness did not. Parasocial relationships positively affected followers' purchase and eWOM intentions. The second model investigated the negative effects of persuasion knowledge on followers' purchase and eWOM intentions. The results indicate that parasocial relationship moderates the paths between followers' persuasion knowledge and purchase intentions and between followers' persuasion knowledge and eWOM intentions. This study sheds light on how digital celebrities have an advertising influence on their SNS followers with the concept of parasocial relationships and is notable given the dearth of empirical studies on digital celebrities' SNS advertising.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available