Impact of Social Media Influencers on Customer Engagement and Purchase Intention: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

This research aims at providing a meta-analysis of empirical findings of the literature on the characteristics of social media influencers on customer engagement and purchase intention. For this purpose, researchers derived eight social media influencers’ characteristics, i.e., homophily, expertise, trustworthiness, credibility, congruence with the product, entertainment value, informative value, and attractiveness. The current study synthesizes 176 effect sizes derived from 62 individual studies, and 22,554 individuals act as an aggregate sample. Results revealed that these characteristics have a moderate to high correlation with customer engagement and purchase intention. The entertainment value of social media influencers has the strongest association with customer engagement among all the attributes studied in this analysis. It also concluded that the credibility of influencers impacts purchase intention more than any other attribute. This work provides a novel approach to reducing the heterogeneity in influencer marketing research by empirically specifying the directions of relationships and the extent of the effect of these relationships.