The effects of the visual presentation of an Influencer's Extroversion on perceived credibility and purchase intentions-moderated by personality matching with the audience

Influencers are ordinary individuals who have amassed large followings by demonstrating expertise in various niches on social media sites. We aim to propose (1) the visual presentation of an Influencer's extroversion as an antecedent to source credibility and purchase intentions and (2) personality matching in terms of extroversion between an Influencer and their audience as a moderator of such relationships. We chose the source credibility model and the similarity-attraction model as our theoretical frameworks. In our controlled online experiment (n = 165), the profile of a brand ambassador of a fashion brand was curated to create two levels of extroversion (i.e. low vs. high extroversion). Participants' self-reported extroversion levels were counterbalanced in these two conditions to create a personality match with the Influencer, entitled extroversion congruence. Our results suggest that the visual presentation of an Influencer's extroversion increases the perceived credibility of the Influencer and subsequent purchase intentions. Additionally, our findings show that these relationships were asymmetrically moderated by extroversion congruence: the positive effects of extroversion increase in the case of high extroversion among both the Influencer and their audience but decrease in the case of low extroversion.

Automated summary

The study investigates the impact of Influencer extroversion on source credibility and purchase intentions, as well as the role of extroversion matching in this relationship. Results suggest that visual presentation of Influencer extroversion enhances perceived credibility and purchase intentions, with extroversion congruence asymmetrically moderating these effects.