Abstract

Social media influencers (SMI) have been shown to influence the purchase decision-making of their followers. In this respect, it is necessary to explore the interactive relationship between them, i.e., relationship quality. Researchers will not know the extent to which social media influencers affect their followers and their persistence of persuasion until they understand the SMI-follower relationship quality.

This study focused on whether the SMI-follower relationship quality enables followers to transfer their trust in SMIs and affects their attitude toward the advertised or recommended product and brand. Furthermore, it explored whether followers’ skeptical attitude toward advertising moderates the relationship between the SMI-follower relationship quality and trust transference, and whether followers’ self-monitoring moderates the relationship between their advertising skepticism and trust transference.

This study distributed survey questionnaires online, and obtained a total of 235 valid copies. The data were used to conduct path analysis through the software PROCESS. The empirical data showed that the higher the SMI-follower relationship quality, the more likely are the followers to transfer their trust in SMIs to the advertised or recommended product or brand. In addition, it was found that trust transference positively mediates the impact of relationship quality on brand attitude. Further, the results indicated that the followers’ high level of advertising skepticism negatively moderates the impact of SMI-follower relationship quality on trust transference, and that a high level of self-monitoring inhibits the negative moderating effect of advertising skepticism on the relationship between SMI-follower relationship quality and trust transference to a larger extent.

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