| dc.description.abstract | While influencer marketing has been on the rise in the past few years, a research gap remains in understanding celebrity endorsements (Purohit & Arora, 2022, p. 1258). Similarly, social influences in the context of purchase intentions and brand/product choice (Chetioui et al., 2020, p. 362; Fernandes & Panda, 2019, p. 136-137) in fashion stores is not fully understood either. Therefore, this study aims to fill these gaps by examining how social influences affect consumer’s purchase intentions of influencer collections from fashion stores.
Our literature review consisted of going through previous research of social influences to understand its history and development over the years, all the way from the 1950’s until the digital age we live in today. This included a review of the earlier works of Kelman (1958), Deutsch & Gerard (1955), Park & Lessig (1977), Burnkrant & Cousineau (1975) and Cialdini (2001) amongst others. Then we moved on to reviewing literature on social influences conducted in later years, including opinion leadership and influencer endorsements.
Based on the theory, we presented our baseline research model which is based on the Theory of Planned Behavior model (Ajzen, 1985). We proceeded with presenting six hypotheses, where three are treated as moderators, hence an extended version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Our hypotheses were tested through a self-completion questionnaire which generated data from 157 respondents. The data was then analyzed in SPSS through factor analyses and regression analyses.
Our study found that both informational and normative social influences play an important role in explaining consumers’ purchase intentions for influencer collections in fashion stores. We also found that the personality traits self-referencing and fear of missing out have significant moderating effects on attitude. Our paper provides valuable insight into the developing field of influencer marketing by the underlining of the importance social influences play in consumers’ purchase intentions. Our results could therefore help marketers create better informed marketing strategies. | |