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This research makes an effort to empirically investigate the role of source credibility theory (SCT) in the prevailing modern influencer marketing context by establishing an association between virtual influencers ((VIs) non-human) and the buying behavior of their followers. It further provides insights into the mediating role of virtual engagement on the affiliation between VIs’ credibility and the buying behavior of followers.

The study used structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) to assess data from a survey conducted online of 538 participants (Instagram followers of virtual influencers).

The results reveal that source credibility dimensions significantly affect followers’ buying behavior in the context of VIs except the trustworthiness dimension. However, mediation analysis has shown that virtual engagement substantially mediates between source credibility dimensions including trustworthiness.

The study highlights the value of the credibility of VI and its alignment with the followers’ buying behavior. The study provides valuable inputs for the brand managers as the credibility of the VI can be effectively leveraged in implementing strategies to encourage their followers/consumers on social media platforms to purchase the goods/services they endorse.

The study overcomes the shortcomings of recent studies by empirically investigating the affiliation between VIs’ credibility and followers’ buying behavior through Instagram. The study uniquely extends the potential of SCT in the context of non-human VIs.

Young consumers are increasingly using online reviews and celebrity influence to make purchase decisions. The purpose of this study is to ascertain the influence of online customer reviews, celebrity influencer’s attractiveness, celebrity influencer’s credibility on female millennials’ purchase intention of beauty products.

To validate the research questions and hypotheses, data were obtained from young female consumers using an electronic self-administered survey questionnaire that was close ended. A total of 203 valid responses were obtained from which data were analysed by making use of structural equation modelling Mplus and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 28.

The obtained results showed that the seven hypotheses of the study were positive. However, two hypotheses were negative, namely, celebrity influencer attractiveness did not have a significant influence on the attitude of consumers; and brand loyalty was not significantly correlating with young female consumers’ purchase intention of beauty products.

Given that millennials are known to be active users of social media and often consult online peer product reviews, marketers and practitioners of beauty industry should improve the effectiveness and usability of beauty influencers and online reviews to attract female millennial consumers.

This research contributes to understanding young female consumers’ attitudes towards purchasing beauty products, especially the combined influence of group influence (online reviews) and media influence (celebrity beauty influencers) on such attitudes.

Source factors have long been a key construct in studies of word-of-mouth influence, but particularly for the digital context of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), source trustworthiness and parasocial relationships are worth a considerable focus. This study pays close attention to not only the effects source trustworthiness and parasocial relationships exert on eWOM influence but also the antecedents driving them. This study additionally considers the moderating role of brand credibility in the relationships between the two key constructs and eWOM influence. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to assess the reliability and validity of the constructs.

A quantitative survey was sent to university students in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to collect 766 responses, which were then analyzed using an SEM approach. The sampling strategy was based on convenience and snowball sampling techniques to ensure a diverse representation of the student population. Respondents were asked to rate their perceptions of source trustworthiness, parasocial relationships, brand credibility, and eWOM influence regarding social media influencers they follow. The collected data were then analyzed using an SEM approach, utilizing software such as AMOS to validate the measurement model and test the proposed structural relationships.

The results confirm the strong impact of source trustworthiness and parasocial relationships on eWOM influence and recognize source authenticity to be the most powerful driver behind the two. Additionally, the findings suggest that brand credibility can positively moderate how source trustworthiness affects eWOM influence, with interaction effects examined through multi-group analysis.

Relevant implications for researchers and marketing practitioners are discussed, emphasizing the strategic selection of eWOM sources and the cultivation of brand credibility to enhance consumer engagement.

This research delved into the intricate dynamics between celebrity endorsements and consumer behavior focusing on eco-friendly wine product. This study aims to understand the relationship between attitudes toward the celebrity endorser (CATT), perception of wine as eco-friendly (PECO), overall positive attitude toward the product (PATT) and the intention to purchase (PINT).

The present study relies on a large sample of 478 US citizens. Mediation moderation analysis is adopted for data analysis.

The findings revealed a full mediation effect where the influence of CATT on PINT is primarily through PECO and PATT. This suggests that the celebrity's endorsement indirectly affects purchase intention by first influencing perceptions of the product's eco-friendliness and the overall product attitude. Notably, perceiving wine as eco-friendly leads to a favorable product attitude, subsequently enhancing purchase intentions. While CATT significantly impacts both PECO and PATT, its effect is more potent on PATT, emphasizing that the celebrity's overall image might align more closely with the general product attitude than specific attributes like eco-friendliness.

Recognizing the complex landscape of the wine market, the research emphasizes the necessity for comprehensive marketing strategies that consider both the direct and mediated impacts of celebrity endorsements. The findings offer a foundational framework for understanding the nuanced interplay of celebrity endorsement, product perception and purchase intention in the context of the wine market.

This research examines the underlying psychological process of customers' impulsive buying on social media through the lens of customer inspiration. Drawing on the customer inspiration theory, it identifies the factors influencing customer inspiration on social media from three perspectives: source characteristics, platform characteristics and personal characteristics, which subsequently lead to impulsive buying. Since the conceptualization of source credibility includes three mostly reported components: attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness, it further contrasts the effects of three dimensions of source credibility on customer inspiration.

A structural equation model of customers' impulsive buying on social media was developed through the lens of customer inspiration. An online survey with 625 participants was conducted to test the hypotheses, and the partial least squares (PLS3) method was used.

This research found that source credibility, social presence and customer innovativeness are antecedents of customer inspiration on social media, which positively influence the inspired-by state of the customers, which impacts the inspired-to state and further leads to impulsive buying. By comparing the three dimensions of source credibility, the authors found that attractiveness and expertise positively affect the inspired-by state, while trustworthiness has no significant effect.

This research establishes the link between impulsive buying and customer inspiration, which provides a new psychological perspective to understand impulsive buying. In addition, it investigates the source characteristics of customer inspiration by comparing the effect of three dimensions of source credibility on customer inspiration, which provides the first evidence for connecting customer inspiration and source credibility.

The aim of this paper, which analyses the use of sports celebrities in advertising discourse, is to understand the strategic use to which brands put them in their commercial and corporate communication on Instagram.

To this end, a content analysis was performed on the Instagram posts of the brands Santander, Movistar, Red Bull and Iberdrola during the period 2021-2022.

The results indicate that, strategically speaking, these brands use the celebrity endorsement strategy to pursue emotional objectives and to adopt a position depending on the type of user. Likewise, these findings show that they single out uniqueness as the principal celebrity characteristic, while also mainly leveraging sports values, especially competence. These values represented by sports celebrities are markedly social in nature, which implies that they enjoy a degree of public recognition that is transferred to the brand to which they lend their image.

The conclusions connect celebrity endorsers with strategic branding issues and aspects of sports.

An empirical approach is followed here to study the representation of sports celebrities in the advertising of well-known brands linked to the sports world.

The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) on vlog marketing. The focus was to analyse the major themes in this field and provide insights for future research directions.

The authors reviewed a total of 49 peer-reviewed publications that include the search terms “vlog” or “video blog” in their titles, keywords and abstracts, retrieved from digital databases Scopus and Web of Science, up to the end of July 2023. Thematic analysis was used to examine and synthesise the articles.

The authors found 19 sub-themes and identified four major themes that emerged from the literature: (1) endorsement outcomes, (2) vlogger characteristics, (3) consumer credibility and (4) vlog content crafting.

There are many unanswered questions in the literature, suggesting that vlog marketing research is still in its infancy, and that in-depth further studies are required for a more comprehensive understanding of the field. This study has identified potential avenues for future research that may contribute to the existing body of knowledge and valuable insights on vlog marketing.

This study draws on social influence and social comparison theories to investigate the effect of social media influencers on intention to visit with the mediating role of upward social comparison. It studies the reasons underlying people's intention to visit a destination from an emotional perspective.

PLS-SEM models were applied to a total of 527 responses.

This study provides empirical evidence supporting the Source Credibility Model's elements within the context of influencer marketing and travel intentions. Furthermore, it expands the current knowledge of upward social comparison emotions by reporting that upward contrastive emotions would partially mediate the relationship between expertise and intention to visit, and that upward assimilative emotions would fully mediate the relationship between attractiveness and intention to visit while partially mediating the relationship between trustworthiness and expertise and intention to visit.

The article adds new insights to tourism marketing as well as helps both destination marketers and travel influencers. For marketers, it is advised to collaborate with credible influencers known for expertise and trustworthiness, leveraging their perspectives to rebuild travel confidence and reassure tourists about safety measures. Travel influencers are recommended to convey their intrinsic passion and enthusiasm through their posts to create an inspiring connection with the audiences.

This paper is the first to address the relationship between travel influencers and intention to visit with the mediation role of both positive and negative emotions.

Although situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) is centered on rationality and cognitive information processing, it ignores that people are also driven by irrationality and non-cognitive information processing. The purpose of this study aims to fill this gap by examining how gender stereotypes, based on perceived spokesperson sex influence the public’s perceptions of crisis response messages.

A 2 (industry type: automotive vs daycare industry) × 2 (spokesperson’s sex: male vs female) × 2 (crisis response appeal: rational vs emotional) between-subject online experiment was conducted to examine the effect of gender stereotype in crisis communication.

Results showed that either matching spokesperson sex with sex differed industry or matching sex differed industry with appropriate crisis response appeal can generate a more positive evaluation of the spokesperson and the organization. The results also revealed under which circumstances, the attractiveness of different sex of the spokesperson can either promote or mitigate people’s perceptions of the organization. Furthermore, when people are aware of a spokesperson’s sex, in a female-associated industry, a mismatching effect of a positive violation of a male-related stereotype overrides a matching effect of a female-related stereotype in crisis communication.

This study is among the first to identify how the gender of a spokesperson and industry type affect publics’ crisis response.

The purpose of this study is to use the grounded theory to summarize the types of celebrity persona and to construct a theoretical model for celebrity persona on consumer purchase intention. Based on the study results, it provides better suggestions for merchants and live streamers and is an expansion of previous research on live-streaming e-commerce.

The grounded theory is recognized as the most scientific qualitative research method and is the ideal explorative method for generating theory. First, the participants were interviewed, and interview data were collected. Then the interview data were organized and analyzed. Finally, this paper summarizes the types of celebrity persona and constructes a theoretical model framework of celebrity persona on consumers' purchase intention.

The results show that the celebrity live streamer persona can be divided into two types: personalized persona and professional persona. Through emotional attachment, the celebrity's persona affects the consumer's purchase intentions. As well as, product type plays a moderating role between celebrity persona and consumer purchase intentions.

The contribution of this research is to start from the celebrity persona, link the celebrity persona with the consumer purchase intentions and expand the research scope of the celebrity persona. It opens the “black box” of the heterogeneity of celebrity live streamers' characteristics on consumer purchase intentions.