Are digital influencers ruining your business?: the effects of negative word-of-mouth endorsed by digital influencers on purchase intention

• Autor(a) principal: Paula, Ana Beatriz Ferreira
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/17929
• topic: Word-of-mouth; Digital influencer; Purchase intention; Consumer marketing; Marketing digital; Rede social; Blogue; Lideres de opinião

Companies are being faced with the rise of influencer marketing, which has been proved to deliver companies’ messages to a wider audience in an effective manner. Being a new phenomenon, there is still little knowledge about the implications of the electronic word-of-mouth that digital influencers engage in with their followers. Negative word-of-mouth is common on the blogger atmosphere, as bloggers are telling their harsh opinions on brands or products they dislike. The purpose of this study is to analyze the extent to which this negative word-of-mouth affects consumers’ purchase intention. Self-brand connection, bloggers’ perceived credibility and pre-word-of-mouth purchase probability levels were also analyzed with the purpose of understanding whether they affect purchase intention in this context. 150 female respondents answered a questionnaire in the form of an experiment. They were divided in two groups, where one was faced with positive word-of-mouth inputs and the other was faced with negative word-of-mouth inputs. The results showed that negative word-of-mouth endorsed by digital influencers doesn’t have a significant effect neither on consumers’ purchase nor recommendation intention. Despite this, high self-brand connection levels turned out to be relevant in diminishing the effects of the negative endorsement, as well as pre-word-of-mouth purchase probability levels. High perceived credibility of the digital influencer levels did not turn out to be relevant in diminishing such effects. Hence, companies might not need to worry as much with negative word-of-mouth communications on social media, and should instead focus on fostering positive wordof-mouth communications. Likewise, companies should pay close attention to what digital influencers are saying about their products or brands.