The influence of the popularity of an unboxing video on the perceived credibility of the source, the perceived usefulness of the information and the purchase intention

We live in an era, in which social media platforms, such as YouTube, provide their users with new ways to communicate with each other and share information. If we take a closer look at the various YouTube channels, we will see that online reviews and unboxing videos are quite popular, especially the videos that present technological goods, such as mobile devices, because these products are essential in our lives. The aim of this study is to investigate if a popular unboxing video affects more positively the perceived credibility of the source, the usefulness of the information in the video and the purchase intention compared to an unboxing video, which is not regarded as popular. Unboxing videos seem particularly interesting for this research, since they purport to present the product “as-is” and emulate the effective elements of purchasing – and opening – a new product. Therefore, the question of popularity, in this case, goes beyond the reviewer’s expertise and the reason for focusing specifically on YouTube is because it has not been examined extensively in previous research on the effect of the popularity of the source on the purchase intention. In order to explore our research questions, we conducted an online experiment, accompanied by a survey. In this experiment, we divided randomly the participants into three groups and we provided them with the same video, but with different numbers of views, subscribers and likes. Our results showed that a popular video review on YouTube affects positively all the dependent variables that we examined with our methodology. Users take into consideration other users’ interactions and they evaluate the YouTubers accordingly. In addition, users are influenced not only by the product related information, but also by the popularity of the source. Therefore, corporations and individuals who are using YouTube for marketing and advertising purposes should take into consideration all these parameters if they are looking for efficient ways in order to promote effectively their products or services.