Because Someone Told me so: An Investigation into the Effects of Online and Offline Social Influences on Decision Making and Attitudes
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2023
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The current dissertation project set out to investigate social influences on consumer decision making and attitudes in order to better understand factors that could increase and decrease the effectiveness of three different types of endorsers. To achieve this, three essays have investigated the effects of endorsement source on word-of-mouth effectiveness, consumer purchasing intentions and product attractiveness, and the effect of disclosed contract duration on influencer endorsement effectiveness and influencer evaluations.
The first essay aimed to explore the true impact of strong social tie word-of-mouth effectiveness and discover the conditions under which weak tie word-of-mouth may be more effective. A meta-analysis of 176 effect sizes established that, overall, strong tie word-of-mouth is more effective; however, the study revealed that there are numerous circumstances in which weak social tie word-of-mouth is more effective than strong tie word-of-mouth. When products are utilitarian or when the perceived risk during the communication is higher, weak tie word-of-mouth is more effective. Strong tie word-of-mouth also loses effectiveness when there are marketing motives involved in the communication.
The second essay investigated the source of social media endorsements, examining whether such endorsements received from a friend or those received from a celebrity were more effective at changing consumers’ purchasing intentions and product attitudes. Our findings suggested that endorsements received over social media from friends were more effective than those from celebrities. The study also found that endorsements from friends were more effective for hedonic products as well as experiences. Celebrities were also found to trigger higher recognition of manipulative intent compared to friends. This lowered the overall effectiveness of their endorsements to the point that the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements was less than that of endorsements from distant acquaintances.
Lastly, the third study explored the relationship between influencer sponsorship disclosure duration and consumers’ opinions of the influencers and the brand being endorsed. Our findings suggested that at a higher order level consumers prefer the idea of long-term influencer sponsorships, but that this changed when consumers encountered sponsorship disclosure in influencers’ posts, with short-term influencer sponsorships assessed as more authentic, trustworthy, honest, and believable. In comparison, long-term influencer sponsorships were viewed more professional, although consumers also believed that the influencer would be more biased towards the products being endorsed. However, affiliated links had a negative impact on short-term influencer sponsorship endorsements, while they had a positive effect on long-term influencer sponsorship endorsements.
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