SNS 소비자 행동에 미치는 코어팔로워 지각의 직접 및 간접효과

Abstract

This study aimed at validating the influence by the perception of core followers in the process of SNS influencer marketing, borrowing the perspective of a multi-step flow model. The core followers, which we originally named here, are those who publicly express affection and engage in passionate activities for an influencer on the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral levels on the influencer account of Instagram. We hypothesized the perception of core followers influences both the influencer’s image on the cognitive level and the conformity of other followers on the affective level. And the cognitive and affective influence through influencer’s image and conformity have further influence on the attitude toward and the intention to purchase. In addition to indirect effects of the perception of core follower though conformity and of influencer images, the direct effect on the attitude toward and the intention to purchase were also hypothesized to survive the statistical tests. Research results show that core follower perception affects all sub-variables of conformity and influencer images. Among the images of influencer, integrity and professionalism influenced purchasing attitudes, and all sub-variables of conformity were also found to affect purchasing attitudes, so the effect of influencer images and of conformity on the perception of core followers were significant. Among influencer images, integrity was shown to have a positive(+) effect, appearance attraction had a negative(-) effect. All sub-categories of conformity were found to have positive effect on the intention to purchase. This study meaningfully identified a conceptual importance of core followers and their indirect effect among followers of SNS influencer marketing, leaving a suspicion regarding the direct effect of the perception of core followers on the purchase attitude and intention whether the influence is negative as was found in this study or to the contrary is positive as is hypothesized at first.