Empirical Analysis of Social Media Influencers’ Effect on Consumer Purchase Intentions and Behavior

Social media influencers (SMIs) have become essential stakeholders in digital marketing in recent years. In this study, we investigate the effect of influencer marketing on consumer purchase intentions, actual purchasing behavior, and the role of trust. We draw on the constructs of the theory of planned behavior to develop and validate a research model using Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) based on survey data from a sample of 232 social media users. We found a significant positive effect of SMIs on purchase intentions. However, purchase intentions only weakly translate into actual purchases. Furthermore, trust in SMIs leads to a greater purchase intention but not actual purchases. We discuss the contributions and implications of the findings and offer future research directions.