Role of technology attraction and parasocial interaction in social shopping websites

Exploring consumer responses to official endorsement: roles of credibility and attractiveness attributes in live streaming

Introduction

Official endorsement, distinct from celebrity, expertise, and peer endorsement, introduces a new paradigm where local government officials use online platforms, particularly live streaming, to promote local products and brands.

Methods

This study examines the influence of official endorsement on consumer responses using the source credibility and source attractiveness models. We developed a framework that considers official credibility and attractiveness attributes as antecedents, and consumer perceived security and enjoyment as mediators, affecting purchase intention and local brand awareness. The study also incorporates variables such as consumer region and power distance belief.

Results

Data from 594 responses obtained through an online survey were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that official credibility attributes (expertise, trustworthiness, government credibility) enhances consumer perceived security, while official attractiveness attributes (physical attractiveness, interaction friendliness, and similarity with consumers) increases consumer enjoyment. Both perceived security and enjoyment positively influence purchase intention and local brand awareness. These relationships are partially moderated by consumer region and power distance belief.

Discussion

This research pioneers the study of official endorsements, expanding the endorsement literature. It also provides practical insights for marketing professionals and government officials on leveraging official endorsements to enhance the value of local products and brands..

Gift-giving intentions in pan-entertainment live streaming: Based on social exchange theory

Pan-entertainment live streaming combines video with two-way communication and real-time viewer participation, allowing viewers to send virtual gifts to their favorite streamers. Drawing on social exchange theory, this study investigates the factors that influence viewers' gift-giving intentions in live streaming from the perspectives of both viewers and streamers. It also explores the moderating role of streamers' deceptive self-presentation. The theoretical framework is tested using AMOS and PROCESS Macro based on survey responses collected from 331 TikTok users in China. The results suggest that streamers' attractiveness, expertise, parasocial interaction, and the viewers' deceptive self-presentation significantly affect viewers' gift-giving intention, and that streamers' deceptive self-representation moderates the relationship between attractiveness, expertise, parasocial inter-action and the viewer's consumer intention. These findings contribute to social exchange theory by highlighting the importance of streamers' deceptive self-presentation in moderating the effects of attractiveness, expertise, parasocial interaction, and the viewer's deceptive self-presentation on the viewer's gift-giving intention.

The influence of streamers' physical attractiveness on consumer response behavior: based on eye-tracking experiments

Live streaming marketing has become a popular topic of academic research. However, relatively few studies have been conducted in terms of the physical attractiveness of streamers, and even fewer studies have analyzed the changes in cognitive-emotional mechanisms that affect consumer response behavior. Based on SOR theory and cognitive-emotional system theory, this study proposes a theoretical research model and analyzes the internal mechanism of streamers' physical attractiveness affecting consumers' response using a combination of eye-tracking experiments and questionnaires. The results showed that: compared to streamers with lower physical attractiveness, consumers pay longer attention to streamers and products with higher physical attractiveness, and their response behaviors (continued watching intention, continued engagement intention, and purchase intention) are more active; compared to consumers with low involvement, consumers with high involvement pay longer attention to the product and perceive the process for a longer period of time; and quasi-social interaction and the flow experience play the role of a chain mediator between streamers' physical attractiveness and consumers' response behaviors. This study not only has certain theoretical significance for expanding the applicable boundaries of the physical appearance halo effect, but also has important practical significance for live broadcasting e-commerce companies to effectively adopt visual marketing and enhance customer retention.

The Impact of Fitness Influencers on a Social Media Platform on Exercise Intention during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Parasocial Relationships

In the context of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, fitness influencers on social media are greatly involved in people's home fitness processes, but there is limited research examining the role of fitness influencers on social media in exercise intention. This study aimed to explore whether people's perceptions of the personal attributes and content quality of fitness influencers can promote a strong emotional connection between the two, thereby influencing people's exercise intentions. Based on the theory of the parasocial relationship, we investigated the influence of social attractiveness (SA), physical attractiveness (PA), task attractiveness (TA), and content quality (CQ) of fitness influencers on the parasocial relationships (PSRs) between viewers and fitness influencers on social media and whether PSRs positively contribute to viewers' exercise intentions (EI). The results revealed that SA, PA, TA, and CQ have positive influences on PSRs and CQ; PSRs directly contribute to EI; and PSRs have a mediating effect between EI and CQ. This study provides new insights into understanding the relationship between fitness influencers and people's online fitness behaviors.

What factors influence MOOC course completion? An investigation of course completion and workplace benefits from interpersonal attraction theory perspective

MOOCs have attracted millions of learners worldwide by providing the public with convenient access to learning and quality educational resources, but the high dropout rate in MOOCs is still an urgent problem. Drawing upon Situation-Organism-Behavior-Consequence framework and interpersonal attraction theory, this study investigates the relationship between instructor attractiveness and MOOC course completion and further analyzes the impact of MOOC course completion on their career development. The results reveal that knowledge attractiveness and communication attractiveness significantly influence learners' thirst for knowledge. Communication attractiveness and physical attractiveness significantly influence learners' parasocial relationships. The thirst for knowledge and parasocial relationships are important antecedents of course completion for in-service learners and in-service learners' completion of MOOC courses positively affects their workplace benefits. The findings provide new perspectives for the research domain of online education.

Popularity Prediction for Consumers' Product Recommendation Articles

Consumer product recommendation articles posted in Social Shopping Community (SSC) have become an important source of purchase information for other potential consumers. However, less effort has been put into understanding and predicting the popularity of such a distinctive form of consumer-generated content. In this study, we built a rich and comprehensive dataset comprising author-related features, article-related features, and engagement behavior information collected from post.smzdm.com. We constructed machine learning models to predict article popularity, and used the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) approach to visualize and explain feature importance in the prediction. The results show that with all identified features, LGBMClassifier gives best results with most evaluation metrics, and that the author-related feature set has better predictive capability than the article-related one. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study to investigate the popularity of consumers’ product recommendation articles in SSCs.

The study on the impact of short video tourism Vloggers at social media platform on online sharing intention

COVID-19 has caused significant damage globally, including tourism. This study adopts the quantitative research method, selects 588 samples from tourists watching short videos to investigate the antecedents and effects of parasocial interaction between tourists and short video tourism Vloggers, and analyses them with partial least squares. Based on parasocial relationship theory, this study investigates the antecedents of parasocial relationships between tourists and short video tourism Vloggers and their willingness to share short video tourism. Results show that the consistency of values, entertainment motivation, and emotional engagement positively impact the parasocial relationships between tourists and short video tourism Vloggers and affect the online sharing intention through the parasocial relationship. The consistency of values can directly affect sharing intention. As an intermediary variable, parasocial relationship positively impacts value congruence, entertainment motivation, emotional engagement, and sharing intention. This study introduces parasocial relationship into the research of tourism short video Vloggers, which enriches the literature. Furthermore, this introduction provides new marketing strategies and suggestions for the sustainable development of tourism.

Effects of Social Media Usage on Consumers' Purchase Intention in Social Commerce: A Cross-Cultural Empirical Analysis

Social commerce has produced enormous economic benefits as well as challenges for organizations, individuals, and industries. However, social media usage does not necessarily generate users' intention to purchase on social commerce websites. How social media usage influences users' purchase intention on social commerce websites still deserves more scholarly attention and this seems particularly important when social commerce transcends borders and countries. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, the current study adopted a survey research method and identified the roles of social media usage in arousing users' purchase intention on social commerce websites in a culturally diversified environment. The data was collected from 2,058 international students coming from 135 countries and was analyzed using MPLUS based structural equation modeling. The research unveils the pathway whereby social media usage serves to generate users' purchase intention on social commerce websites. Importantly, users' cultural intelligence has been found to play a significant role mediating the effects of social media usage on users' intention. Further, cultural distance was found to attenuate the effects of social media usage on cultural intelligence. Based on the research findings, the study suggests that social commerce practitioners should be fully aware of the enabling roles of social media and cultural intelligence as well as the deterring role of cultural distance when arousing customers' purchasing intention in cross-cultural business operations. Any measures facilitated by social media usage to improve international consumers' cultural intelligence and mitigate the negative effects of cultural distance are supposed to be effective to enhance their purchasing intention. Accordingly, the study confirms the mutually melt and integrative relationships between information technology advancement and business prosperity in cross-cultural environment, which eventually contribute to sustainable development of society.

Effect of parasocial relationship on tourist’s destination attitude and visit intention

Background

Along with the rapid development of the Internet, the form of destination marketing is becoming increasingly innovative and diverse. Celebrity endorsement via social media, as an effective marketing strategy, has been widely used by various tourism companies to attract and engage with their customers. Previous studies have investigated the various aspects of such endorsement (e.g. the effect of endorser’s attributes) in different contexts (e.g. Hotel, Restaurant, Airline). However, little research has focused on the influence of the tourists’ parasocial relationship with endorsers on destination marketing. Accordingly, the current study aims to explore the role of parasocial relationships on tourists’ destination attitude and visit intention.

Method

This study adopted quantitative method and conducted Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) for data analysis. 498 valid questionnaires were collected from Weibo (One of China’s most popuar social media platforms).

Results

Results suggested that endorser’s credibility positively influenced follower’s parasocial relationship (p<0.001), which in turn positively influenced destination attitude and visit intention (p<0.001). Additionally, the parasocial relationship significantly mediated the relationship between credibility and destination attitude as well as visit intention (p<0.001).

Conclusion

The emerging trend of celerbity endorsement via live-streaming makes tourism destination marketing more diverse and even effective. Through exploring the underlying mechanism of celebrity endorsement, this study can provide destination marketers with insights about how to build and strengthen the tourist’s attitude and visit intention towards destiantion by developing their parasocial relationships with endorsers. This study also adds to the literature of using Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) in tourism and hospiatlity research.

Modeling of the Impact of the Credibility of the Destination Endorser on the Place Attachment of Potential Tourists

Place attachment has been identified as effective marketing strength to enhance destination competitiveness. However, little research explored the formation mechanism of the place attachment of potential tourists and the role of celebrity endorsers. This study aims to identify the influence mechanism of the credibility of endorsers on place attachment. Various theories from different research fields were introduced to explore the mediating effect of destination attitude, para-social relationships, and destination source credibility between endorser credibility and the place attachment of potential tourists. The famous destination endorser in China, Tenzin, was chosen as the case. A quantitative method was adopted. The research model was examined by a survey sampling size of 367 respondents. The covariance-based structural equation model analysis revealed that the credibility of the endorser exerts a positive influence on the destination attitude of potential tourists, para-social relationship with the endorser, and destination source credibility. These three constructs have a positive effect on their place attachment. The results showed that the credibility of the endorser has a significant indirect influence on place attachment. This study extends the current literature of forming the place attachment of potential tourists from the perspective of the personal characteristics of the destination endorser. The findings shed light on how the credibility of the endorser could form place attachment through enhancing the destination attitude, credibility, and para-social relationships of potential tourists. This study provides several practical implications for destination marketing.

How Instagram Influencers Affect the Value Perception of Thai Millennial Followers and Purchasing Intention of Luxury Fashion for Sustainable Marketing

Social media influencers play a significant role in marketing by introducing products to their followers. We investigate how Instagram influencers impact consumer parasocial interaction (PSI) in the relationship between value perception and purchase intention. Whereas customers influence the attractiveness (social and physical) PSI of social media influencers, studies of the effects of luxury purchasing PSI in Thailand are limited. We examine the relationship between PSI and followers of luxury fashion’s value (social, personal, and conspicuous) on social media. We use structural equation modeling to evaluate hypotheses by conducting an online survey with 400 Thai millennial respondents who had experience following influencers on Instagram. The findings indicate that Thai millennials accept Instagram influencers’ PSIs in terms of value perception and motivation to purchase luxury fashion. The attractiveness of influencers initiates the formation of PSI; followers receive value perception and react to purchasing intention from influencers. The concepts were investigated to prove that influencers’ power can encourage followers to mitigate negative consequences by delivering value perceptions on PSI. These findings provided managerial implications for comprehending consumers in the field of digitalization.