Nowadays, social media is an indispensable part of people’s daily life. Along with its popularity, social media influencers are gaining increasing attention on social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. Accordingly, brands have started to incorporate influencer marketing strategies - working with social media influencers who have an impact over their target audience, to boost sale and build brand image. However, in the academic field, not enough attention has been paid to social media influencers, especially how powerful they are in shaping purchase behavior and personality traits of consumers. To explore the impact of social media influencers on purchase intention, this study proposes a model explaining how exposure to beauty and fashion influencers social media (LittleRedBook) influences purchase intention, directly or indirectly through two personality traits: selfcontrol and materialism. This study is quantitative, and it was conducted in a form of a survey with 309 Chinese adult female LittleRedBook users. LittleRedBook is a popular Chinese social media and e-commence platform that focuses on product discovery and reviews and has been included in many brands’ influencer marketing strategy. Data was collected using Qualtrics and then analyzed with IBM SPSS 25. The main findings for this study showed that for Chinese female consumers, their exposure to beauty and fashion influencers on LittleRedBook as measured by frequency of viewing had a significant impact on their purchase intention. This association was mediated by self-control. However, consumers exposure to beauty and fashion influencers based on the amount of time of viewing is only partially mediated by self-control. Moreover, materialism did not mediate the relationship. Materialism was not impacted by exposure (neither frequency and amount of time viewing), and materialism also did not impact consumers’ purchase intention of recommended products on LittleRedBook. The findings of this research contribute in that it integrates digital marketing and psychology to understand how mere exposure to beauty and fashion influencers impact purchase intention, through shaping the audience’s personality traits such as self-control.

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C. Billedo
hdl.handle.net/2105/50077
Media & Business
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication

F. Yi. (2019, June 24). The impact of exposure to beauty and fashion influencers’ LittleRedBook on purchase intention A quantitative research examining the mediating effects of materialism and self-control. Media & Business. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2105/50077