Online Video Game Influencer's Credibility and Purchase Intention

Abstract

In the last few years, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of everyday activities were shifted online. Therefore, marketing strategies had to adapt to this shift. This led to the development of new forms of marketing, including influencer marketing. Although credibility is often theorised as the reason why the audience prefers to follow influencers over celebrities, empirical evidence is mixed and unrelated to the gaming industry. Therefore, our aim in this study was to test if source credibility (and its three elements: attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise) predicts video games purchase intentions, as well as to check if the model misspecifications caused by ignored links of causality led to inconsistent conclusions in earlier studies. The results based on an international sample of PewDiePie's followers (N = 238) have confirmed both ideas: source credibility predicts purchase intentions and model misspecifications of source credibility could have led to inaccurate estimates in earlier studies.