Effect Of Product Involvement As A Moderator On The Impact Of Social Media Influencers’ On Consumers

Social media influencers and their impact on consumer behavior

Discuss  about the Effect Of Product Involvement As a Moderator on the Impact of Social Media Influencers’ On Consumers .

The concept of consumer choice has completely evolved with the growth of technology and its application in marketing. Consumers nowadays tend to look at the internet for directions when it comes to making purchasing decisions. Businesses on the other hand, have embraced various online platforms such as social media as their key communication tool to reach their clients. They also use online platforms as a major source of feedback and rightly so. The reason or this is due to the efficiency of these platforms, to relay feedback from customers, regarding their satisfaction, as compared to other conventional communication methods (Chaffey et al., 2017). Because of the wide reach of online market, businesses have to consider with due importance how they handle communications with their clients on the internet. One wrong move can prove fatal to a particular brand or even the whole business.

The power of online community is quite tremendous, with more and more people joining online platforms every day. This has given rise to personalities, who have capitalized on the numbers of online public, to influence the perception, thoughts or even leanings of their reachable masses. These personalities can either be celebrities or non celebrities (Shen, Kuo and Minh Ly, 2017). Due to the power of influence these personalities have over their followers, and the social media public at large, their presence has started being recognized, and such individuals are known as social media influencers (SMIs) (Khamis, Ang and Welling, 2016).

There are two well known methods that social media influencers use to alter the perception of their publics; the first being electronic word of mouth (eWOM) as highlighted by Hai and Park, (2015), or through disclosed sponsorship as explained by Armstrong et al., (2015). eWOM is a powerful tool in marketing communication which can shape the buying decisions of customers (Lis, 2013). There are several papers which have indicated the growing number of clients being swayed by comments or views aired by third parties, rather than the organization through its marketing strategies (Tang, 2017). This can have either positive or negative implications, to both the clients and the organization.  For example, through SMIs, the power that eWOM has, can sway customers not to buy a good product thereby affecting the sales of that product. Likewise, customers can be swayed to buy lesser superior product over more superior ones because of eWOM endorsement by social media influencers. The authenticity of the eWOM as an influencing factor will be targeted by this research as an area of interest.

Two methods used by SMIs to alter consumer perception

Disclosed sponsorship on the other hand can be considered to be a tool used mainly by SMIs to endorse a certain product. Normally in vlogs (this is one of the forums widely used) a social media personality may be seen to use a product and by so doing, influence the customers to start using the product. The thorny part as explained by Boerman, van Reijmersdal and Neijens, (2012) is when SMIs upraise a product without disclosing that they have been paid by an organization.

Since many organizations have recognized the potential implication of social media influencers on their brands, some have decided to start working with SMIs, to further promote how customers perceive their brand, and in turn improve their sales. When customers see an influential figure in a vlog for example, using a particular product, they may be under the impression that the product is authentic in quality, and that the personality normally uses it on a day to day basis. That might actually not be the case. Organizations are currently paying the SMIs to be seen with their products in the platforms they have a substantial reach in order to shape the image they want to the intended customers. United Kingdom has been seen to be against SMIs promoting brands without disclosing that they are paid to do so. They see this as being against consumer protection laws. This research will therefore try to dig deeper whether customers consider either consciously or unconsciously the impact of disclosed/undisclosed sponsorship of products on their buying choices 

It is important for marketers to understand consumers with regards to product involvement. Product involvement according to Ferreira and Coelho, (2015), is the level of interest emanating from consumers before making a purchase of a certain product. Product involvement can also depict how customers are devoted in purchasing a specific brand. The main reason for carrying out this research will be hinged on whether product involvement can mediate the effects of the two avenues used by SMIs on the purchase intentions of the consumers.

The research will evaluate the various theoretical reviews which act as a basis of the study and the results thereafter will be used to determine the relevance in so far as managerial and theoretical implications are concerned.  

Main objective:

To evaluate the effect of Product involvement as a moderator on the impact of social media influencers’ on consumers  

The importance of product involvement in marketing

Specific objectives:

To find out how Product involvement as a moderator affects the impact of Sponsorship disclosure on purchase intention

To find out how Product involvement as a moderator affects the role of eWOM on purchase intention

A marketer worth his salt will acknowledge the value of customer perception in making purchasing decision (Sudhamani and Kalyanaraman, 2011). Customer perception towards a specific product will influence whether they buy or don’t. This is just but one of the attributes considered by consumers when making purchasing decisions. Another attribute is customers’ knowledge on a particular product. When a customer has sufficient knowledge on a particular product he is less likely to be swayed. Previous research have shown that, one of the essence of carrying out promotional activities, is to sway the perception of the target customers, in order to have a favorable image towards a particular product or brand (Kotler and Armstrong, 2010, Öztopcu and Karaa?ao?lu, 2016). The activity of shaping the customers perception takes a fair amount of time especially when done by the organization itself.

Research has also indicated that, there are a substantial number of customers who actually don’t trust a message emanating from organizations (Obermiller, 2018). Many consumers are of the mindset that organizations are always meant to make profits first than their satisfaction can be considered later. With this perception in mind, it becomes increasingly difficult for organizations to penetrate in a particular market, without first washing away such scrutiny. With the negative perception and mistrust that consumers have towards most organizations, they tend to have secondary opinion mainly from third parties in order to make decisions.

With the heightened competition within the market, organizations have to go an extra mile to ensure that the perception of their target market is more favorable than that of their competitors. Conventional marketing alone seems to not be enough. That’s why the adoption of e-marketing as a platform is nowadays considered as a strategic tool to businesses.

To fill the gap shown by both the consumer (by wanting a third party opinion) and the business by wanting to paint the consumer perception in a certain manner, personalities with large social media following arise and use their influence to cause market shifts either in favor of or against a particular organization depending on the opinion they share (Chaffey, Ellis-Chadwick, Isaac, Mercanti-Gue?rin & Volle, 2017).

Organizations more so marketers have recognized the influence that social media platforms have on consumers. Social media platform can be termed as one of the few marketing avenues that are able to reach, all the segments of a target market (Qin, 2017). It is a platform where, people of different demographic, behavioral or any characteristic otherwise are able to interact with a particular product, and make a decision based on the information they have (Duffett, 2017).

Study objectives

The growing numbers of social media users have given the platform tremendous power to shape the opinions of consumers on various products and brands. Customers base their decision making on the information available to them. Most of them, especially first time buyers who want to make a quick buy, might be inclined to consider the first information they access on social media as the “absolute truth” without doing any further research. This can have detrimental effect to the ultimate satisfaction of the customer if they will later feel let down by the performance of the product they have purchased (Erkan & Evans, 2016).

Influence marketing as describe by Sammis, Lincoln and Pomponi (2016) is the process of social media personalities with a substantial clout to promote brand messages to their audience mostly through sponsored content. Social media influencers as described earlier are meant to shape the attitude and perception of the customer to conform to a certain line of buying behavior. Organizations nowadays use such personalities to promote their brands and products with the expectation that they are going to acquire a substantial number of customers.

Research has shown that the reach of such influencers can at times be more as compared to conventional marketing channels (Zhang, Li and Wang, 2013). Organizations e.g. mobile phone organizations have a tendency of giving out prototype products to SMIs for reviews sometimes before they even roll out the actual product. They do so, so as to ascertain the reaction of their consumers, and anticipate how they are going to approach the market after the product launch (Nugroho, Rostiani and Gitosudarmo, 2014). This is just one of the examples that eWOM of a sponsored content has the power to shape the marketing strategy and in turn sales of a given product.

Celebrity and micro celebrity endorsements are a major source of social media influence with regards to product branding (Keel & Nataraajan, 2012). A lot of organizations nowadays use well known celebrities with huge global online following to act as their brand ambassadors. Earlier, this research also highlighted various research papers that indicated the use of online reviews as part of a larger campaign by organizations to evaluate the consumer behaviors. It is identified that online consumers can at times be easily swayed by actions of SMIs either knowingly or unknowingly. 

With the rise in skepticism of traditional approaches of advertising, new ways of communicating a brand to consumers are being sought hence the use of SMIs to try and relay the message across. Many at times, consumers are persuaded subconsciously through what they view in social media. At times they might not be fully aware that a certain brand is being communicated to them indirectly which may later have an impact on their buying decision (Boerman, van Reijmersdal & Neijens, 2012).

There is a growing call for organizations and SMIs alike to disclose their sponsored products. Sponsored content according to Boerman, van Reijmersdal & Neijens, (2012) can be defined as a combination of brands and persuasive messages in context that are not commercial. Without disclosing whether a product is sponsored or not can elicit different reactions from the public.  There has been an outcry by various consumer protection bodies, on failure by SMIs to disclose their sponsored brands thereby having a misleading effect of sorts on consumers. It is argued that organizations can pay, or provide an incentive to SMIs, to display a brand in an exaggerated positive manner which might not depict the true picture (Yoon & Choo, 2015).

Word of mouth in marketing communication can be considered to be a very powerful tool for spreading information. Consumers are said to trust a word of mouth more than any other source of information when evaluating a product for purchasing (Meuter, McCabe & Curran, 2013). They trust WOM more than even the messages sent through advertisements. It is normally assumed that a previous user will normally have firsthand, trustworthy knowledge about usability or the performance of a particular product. It is for this reason that customers tend to look for reviews for a particular product, to evaluate the response of those who have used the product before actually purchasing it. Organizations alike use word of mouth (WOM) as a major source of feedback and an avenue to lure customers in the instance that the product has good reviews. It is through WOM that a business will increase the number of customers more so through referrals.

The influence of traditional WOM is constrained within a given market strata. On the other hand, electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has an even wider reach than the traditional approach. This means that, the implications of either a negative word or a positive word are more pronounced in as far as purchasing intentions are concerned (Erkan & Evans, 2016). Normally eWOM can be depicted through recommendations, reviews or feedback from users of a product.

The importance of source and message credibility of eWOM is a major issue that has severe implications on brand image. We have heard of reports where, SMIs use eWOM to discredit brands due to malicious intent completely unfounded on the performance of a product brand. Consumers tend to view the credibility of eWOM based on how trustworthy they deem the source to be, or the attitude they have towards the source and the known expertise of the source (Weiber & Wolf, 2013).  On countable instances, a number of consumers will try to evaluate the trustworthiness of the message itself. Taking a sponsored post for example, there can be an issue of bias on the message aired, which might not be reflective of the true product dimension.

When talking about purchase intention, one can directly link it to prior action before purchase. Purchase intention can be termed as the willingness of a consumer to buy a particular product or brand (Latif, 2016). Consumer decision making process is a complex one emanating straight from the intention to purchase. The said intentions are brought about by various consumer aspects i.e.; need for a product, perception and of the product through various marketing communication channels, the attitude that the customer has towards a brand, just to mention a few (Bhakar, Bhakar and Dubey, 2015).

Purchasing intention can also be influenced by perceived aspiration value of the product, the expected outcome or performance when using the product and also it can emanate from an external stimulant. From this it can be concluded that customer behavior is a major factor that affects purchase intention  

The information that a consumer has can have a major impact on the purchasing intention. If the information about a particular product is negative, then it is less likely that the consumer will be intent on purchasing. The influence of third parties in shaping the purchasing decisions of consumers is quite tremendous as earlier elaborated (Chen, Wei, Shih & Chen, 2010). Therefore, marketers have to be very careful on the message propagated by third parties, more so SMIs on their products or brand. The intention to purchase can therefore be said to have a positive relationship with eWOM propagated by third parties, and the perception from disclosed or undisclosed sponsored content by SMIs 

Product involvement can be termed as the extent to which a consumer associates with a particular product or brand (Ferreira and Coelho, 2015). Product involvement can be displayed by how committed a consumer is in making a purchase of an identified product. Normally, product involvement will entail a thorough research on a product before a purchase is done. What this does is that, it equips the customers with adequate information necessary to make an informed purchasing decision.

There are various methods where product involvement can be seen. One of the ways is through interest. When a customer elicits a high amount of interest on a particular product he will be able to clearly understand the true dimensions of the product and from that interest, they will be highly unlikely to be influenced by third party opinions which are not factual (Sethna & Blythe, 2016).

An existing consumer need can also elicit manifestation of product involvement. When a consumer wants to purchase a product of extreme importance, they normally collect sufficient information before making the correct decision. Consumer knowledge is also an aspect that portrays customer involvement.

Several written papers have indicated that increased product involvement will reduce overreliance of SMIs in as far as purchasing intentions is concerned (Nugroho, Rostiani and Gitosudarmo, 2014, Ferreira and Coelho, 2015), hence the adoption of product involvement as the moderating variable in linking SMIs and purchasing intentions.

The consumer attitudes towards products appraised by SMIs can have a major impact on their purchase intention.  We have elaborated from the literature that social media influencers play a major role in shaping the purchasing intentions of consumers either through disclosed or undisclosed sponsorship or through eWOM (negative or positive) (Weiber & Wolf, 2013)

Through social media and other online platforms, social media influencers communicate messages which consciously or subconsciously affect the purchasing intentions of consumers. They can either model the message to create a negative or positive perception depending on their intention (Latif, 2016).

It was however shown that product involvement by consumers can act as a mediator on the powers held by SMIs in shaping the views of consumers. Product involvement equips the consumer with sufficient information to make independent purchasing decisions free from third party influence. 

Main hypothesis

H0 – Social media influencers don’t have an impact on consumers

H1. – Social media influencers have an impact on consumers

With moderating effect

H0 – The impact of social media influencers on consumers is unaffected by product involvement

H1. – The impact of social media influencers on consumers is affected by product involvement

Sub hypothesis

Hypothesis 1 H0 – Sponsored content does not have an effect on purchase intention

H1. – Sponsored content does has an effect on purchase intention

With moderating effect

H0 – The effect of Sponsored content on purchase intention is unaffected by product involvement

H1. – The effect of Sponsored content on purchase intention is affected by product involvement

Hypothesis 2 H0 – Electronic word of mouth does not have an effect on purchase intention

H1. – Electronic word of mouth has an effect on purchase intention

With moderating effect

H0 – The effect of Electronic word of mouth on purchase intention is unaffected by product involvement

H1. – The effect of Electronic word of mouth on purchase intention is affected by product involvemen
Anticipated managerial and theoretical implications of the proposed research

There are several theoretical implications arising from this proposed research; the major issue of message credibility in marketing is supposed to be highlighted more. Since it has been identified that SMIs have a large internet following, this is more reason for managers to emphasize on message credibility lest they mislead consumers on purchasing decisions. The credibility of the message communicated by SMIs has also come into question with various consumer protection bodies raising the red flag since shaping consumer perception and attitude using misleading information can be considered to be unethical. So we can identify an existing implication of the proposed research on marketing ethics.  

There is also an implication on the approach of modern marketing communication by organizations. Organizations need to refocus their ways of reaching their target market. We have established that SMIs have a substantial clout in shaping the brand image of organizations. For those organizations who have not adopted this strategy, they have an opportunity of analyzing the potential implications of SMIs on their product brand. They need to evaluate and put in place measures to either adopt or control SMIs influence because social media platform is there to stay.  

The issue of product involvement as a mediating factor on SMIs and purchasing intention will help researchers look more into the issue. Product involvement entails empowering the consumer with relevant information necessary to make informed decisions. Is it a good thing for organizations to encourage product involvement or not? This can be a good starting point for further research 

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