CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviewed relevant literature as relates to deployment social media influencers

marketing on consumers’ intention to purchase brand. The review is presented extensively for an

in-depth understanding of social media marketing, concept of intention to purchase, social media

influencers, social media marketing, the theoretical foundation of the study, summary of the

literature review with evidence of gaps in literature.

2.1 Social Media Marketing

Social media is phenomenon that has over the years transformed beyond the two-way personal

interactive platform, to the business densely populated new media platform. According to report

published by data reporter (2022), there are about 4.70 billion social media users across the

world as at July, 2022, equating 59.0 percent of the total global population. It further shows that

Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, We Chat, TikTok, Don Yin and twitter as favorites social

media platform among users of the digital media. GWI (2022) corroborated the above report in

their consumer market study of social media, which shows 7.4 different social media was

frequently visited over a month amongst users, and an average of 21/2 hours per day using social

media. This notwithstanding does not take into consideration the age censored social media

platform (Stasi, 2019).

According to Felix, Rauschnabel and Hunsch (2016) social media marketing is an

interdisciplinary and cross functional concept that adopts social media in combination with other

communication medium in achieving organizational goals of increasing market shares by

creating values for the stakeholders. Social media marketing is an act of firm marketer making
use of advertising tools on social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and

Twitter. Jara, Parra and Scarmeta (2014), in their study discussed social media marketing as a

new internet conversational marketing tool encouraging higher attention and participation from

the consumers through the use of social networks. These tools are pay as you use and it usually

allow the marketer to select a specific audience based on age, gender, hobbies, location and so

on, and ensure that only the selected demographics get to see the marketing or advertising

messages (Jarrar, Awobamise and Aderibigbe, 2020).

No doubt the influence of social media marketing grows across all sphere social and business

community. Thus, contemporary companies have learnt to utilize the medium of internet media

strategically to maximize the contributory impact of social media and its tools (Vanmeter,

Syrdal, Powell, Grisaffe and Nesson, 2018). Hence, understanding the use of social media

marketing, it was imperative to discuss platforms in which online marketing is carried out.

Hence, the study described the different social media platforms through social media networking

sites.

2.1.1 Social Networking Sites

Rohani and Hock (2009) defined SNS as a platform which offer friends and families a space

where they can maintain their relationships, chat with each other and share information. The

contemporary web base environment is in disagreement with the definition, as SNS has gone

beyond mere friends/family meet and interacts. In consideration to social media marketing, SNS

cannot be micro limited to community or individual base interaction because it is more of global

networking which includes business world. Thus, social networking sites as an online
community allow companies to communicate directly with customers, get feedback and also

facilitate professional collaborative projects (Pareek and Pinch, 2014).

Barysevich (2020) identified the following social networking sites as the most popular across

the world; Facebook which remains the biggest social media platform in the world with

almost 1.7 billion users, Instagram which gives you so many opportunities to show off your

product: photos, videos, Stories, galleries, filters, and more. TikTok is a relatively new platform

introduced in 2019, TikTok now has 800 million active users worldwide, and 41 percent of these

users are aged between 16 and 24. Twitter according to Hub spot, is a source of product

discoveries for many people. Sprout Social (2022) shows that 53% of consumers recommend

businesses or products in tweets while a further 48% follow through to purchase those products

or services. YouTube is one of the most popular platforms out there. 80% of people who said

that they watched a YouTube video related to a product they want to buy said that they did so at

the beginning of their buying process.

In addition, there is snapchat an American multimedia instant messaging app and service

developed by Snap Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages

are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients.

Tracing the earlier users of social networking sites and its usefulness might be far reaching, thus,

Edosomwan, Praksamn, Kouame and Watson (2011) highlighted that many social media social

networking sites were created in the 1990s. This study in identifying importance of the web

platform and its core usefulness are vital in the concept of social media influencer marketing.

Therefore, companies use SNS platforms for marketing by identifying leaders on the digital
platform (Social media Influencer) which provides a far reaching effective communication to

products advertised and targeted consumers (Akpinar and Berger, 2017).

2.1.2 Social Media Influencer Marketing

Social medial influencer is a new entrepreneurial concept adopted by the early users of social

media platform through followership to make earnings. The social media influencer as pointed

by Abidin (2016) can be seen in the framework of micro celebrity, or as seen in the case of many

top social media influencer in Nigeria which strategically and successfully gathered followership

through the platform with a view of attaining celebrity status. In attaining celebrity status,

influencers adopt impression management and deliberate acts of self-branding (Duffy, 2020).

Social media Influencer marketing, on the other hand, refers to marketing strategy that involves

leveraging on the popularity of social media influence of an individual to market products or

services or advance a cause. This is involves contacting a social media personality or a page that

advertisers think is relevant to their products or services and negotiate a term that allows

influencers to promote products or services to their thousands or millions of followers

(Bolarinwa, 2015).

Depicted below is the pictorial social media marketing strategy

Source: Lee (2014, p.61) cited in Kavisekara & Abeysekara (2016)

The picture above depicts the advancing process of how a company’s products exposed through

online social media content created awareness which dives customer engagement. According to

Tafesse and Wien (2018) active presence in social media influenced the brand exposure and

customer engagement by driving incremental reach of customer base. Consumer engagement is

as a result of brand exposure which makes it easier for consumers to be able to identify products.

Lee (2014) as cited in Kavisekara & Abeysekara (2016) proves that customer engagement

creates brand loyalty. Online presence of companies and frequent customer engagement with

customer satisfaction drives brand loyalty of influencer followers. Lastly, creating an influence

on potential customers is as a result of relented and online brand community presence.

Social media influencer online presence is determined by the number of followers on the SNS.

Therefore, social media influencer can be categorized for easy identification of their presence

and the level of their influence.

2.1.4 Types of Social Media Influencer

Influencer marketing hub (2022) puts the different types of social media influencer as follows;
 a. Nano influencers have a small number of followers with the highest engagement rates as

they are closely related to their followers and are capable to form more authentic relations

to promote different products and services (De Veirman, Hudders and Nelson, 2019)

b. Micro influencers have 500 – 10,000 followers and use their online communities to

endorse brand and promote services

c. Macro-influencers have a number of followers between 10,000 -1,000,000 people and show a

high influence specific to their topic, for example fitness or fashion

d. Mega-influencers are typically celebrities like actors and artists, sportsmen or social media stars

that show a following above 1 million subscribers.

Social media influencers as categorized above, can be said to be a result effects of each social

media influencer attributes. Those attributes displayed by an influencer would evidently

determine the category under which such will fit into.

2.1.5 Attributes of Social Media Influencer

CREDIBILITY: Source credibility is a renowned construct developed by Ohanian (1990) to

measure the effectiveness of the endorser. The more credible the endorser, the more effective the

source will be. On the social media platform evidently endorsers with high perceived credibility

are more likely to draw positive attitudes towards the advertisement messages (Djafarova, 2017),

and therefore, are more desirable for marketing communication (Breves, Liebers & Kunze,

2019). The more social media influencer is perceived to be credible, the more acceptable his/her

content or message is (Lou & Yuan, 2019).

ATTRACTIVENESS: Physical attractiveness of social media influencers is perceived to have a

high tendency in driving the acceptance rate of advertising. Consumers tend to prefer
information that is familiar and likeable to them. Attractiveness is the extent to which a person's

facial features are pleasant to observe, defined in (Patzer, 1983). Physical attractiveness

examines the influence of the physical attributes of the influencers’ personalities (Lim, Radzol,

Chea and Wong, 2017). An endorser with appealing physical features is more likely to grab the

audience’s attention (Lim, et al., 2017; Lou & Yuan, 2019).

In the show entertainment world which is not different to social media influencer marketing,

good look, good styles are observably added advantage to marketing strategy on social media. As

posited, products that include the characteristics of physical attractiveness was considered more

affected when endorsed and advertised by an attractive source than less attractive endorsers

(Joseph, 1982; Kamins, 1990; Silvera & Austad, 2004)

TRUST: Analyzing social marketing, Wiedmann & Mettenheim (2020) referred to trust as the

perceived honesty of the endorsed source. It explains that whether the endorser is expressing his

or her own belief or is influenced by a third party (Wiedmann & Mettenheim, 2020), for

instance, maybe because of monetary rewards (Djafarova, 2017; Govindan & Alotaibi, 2021).

Hence, influencers in their bid to promote originality of brand still exhibit the rewarding

independent third party status so as to build trust with followers.

EXPERTISE: A survey conducted by Žák & Hasprová (2020) explored that around 64% percent

of consumers believed that the credibility of social media influencers is based on their

knowledge about his/her field. For the present study, the expertise of social media influencers

refers to the degree to which these influencers are perceived as experts, knowledgeable,

experienced, qualified, and skilled by their social media followers (Chetioui, et al., 2020).
LIFESTYLE: The passion of the influencer should be represented in the lifestyle and the

accomplishments or skills as seen with Obi-Uchendu Ebuka Big Brother Naija host. Influencers

practice to be professional, spend hours creating the best content that would engage with their

audiences, influencer lifestyle should be compatible with brand.

The role of influencer marketing has been on the rise and will reach 15billion dollars by 2022

(Schomer, 2019). In the past decade, brands have recognized the superior attributes of social

media influencer to traditional marketing as the new opportunity towards reaching target market

and induced consumers purchase intention towards a brand (Hasuda, Han and Lee, 2022).

2.1.6 Purchase Intention

The term purchase intention represents the final ends user consensual plan to buy a particular

product or services. “Intention” is a futuristic and retainable concept in marketing which

connotes that buyer is buying in a later date or the buyer is making a purchase of same product

again. Therefore, purchase intention simply means the possible behavior of a consumer towards

buying a product in the future when the need arises. According to Lee, Lee, Moon and Sung

(2015) purchase intention is an indicator of an actual purchase, which is also used to measure

consumer’s post behavioral actions. Arriving at purchase decision consumers gathered

information on the product, and in most cases with product such as cosmetics, they relied much

on peers’ suggestion and social media credible personae advertisement.

The main goal of any profitable organization is to increase market shares and make profit.

Marketers objective is to help organization achieve such goal through the drive sales of

customer’s patronages in the product offered by the company. Purchase intention was identified

as the most researched aspect of the marketing concept by Mortwitz (2012). This demonstrates
why marketers pay close attention to what motivates buyers' purchase intentions and post-

purchase behavior. Purchase intent is the total of cognitive, affective, and idea use (Sumesh,

Arshad, Harris, Brown et al., 2020).

2.1.7 Nexus between Social Media Influencers Attributes and Purchase Intention

In the context of social media marketing, to become a primary source of information entails

fringe process of cultivating the unknown to known through the various attributes expected of a

digital marketer leader. social media influencers use their attractiveness, perceived

trustworthiness, and perceived expertise as a marketing tool to promote endorsed brands and

increase the effectiveness of endorsement persuasiveness (Aw & Chuah, 2021).

Previous literature reveals that the perceived credibility of the endorsers is an important factor to

impact the purchase intention and attitude towards the brand. For instance, Djafarova &

Rushworth (2017) examined the impact of the perceived credibility of social media influencers

on the purchase intention of young female users, the results revealed that credibility dimensions

are influential in developing the purchase intentions of the users. In the context of social media

influencer marketing, recent studies adopted the three-dimensional concept of source credibility,

that is, attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise to investigate the effectiveness of celebrity

endorsements and their influence on the purchasing intentions of the customers (AlFarraj,

Alawan, Obeidat & Baabdullah 2021; Wiedmann & Mettenheim, 2020; Chetioui, et al, 2019).

The concept of attractiveness to the purchase intention was researched by AlFarraj, et al., (2021),
which found a non-significant relationship between the perceived attractiveness and purchase

intention.

Although as related to this study, physical attractiveness especially enhances the followers’

intention to purchase beauty-related products such as cosmetics. The idea is further buttressed by

Apaolaza-Ib añez, et al., (2011), in which the authors concluded that the sexual attractiveness of

the endorsers increases the women's satisfaction in the brand and draw positive intention to

purchase the product in the cosmetic market. However, contradict to the above-mentioned

findings, Wiedmann and Mettenheim (2020) found a very low relationship between the

perceived expertise of social media influencers and attitude towards the brand and the purchase

intention of followers. Similarly, Bhatt, et al., (2013) also revealed that the perceived expertise of

social media influencers is less important than perceived trustworthiness. Therefore, to further

contribute to the literature the present study intends to investigate which of the mentioned

influencer attributes has the most significant influence on purchase intention of cosmetic users.

2.1.8 The Role Social Media Networking Sites in the Influence of Purchase Intention

In order to attract attention of public and gain website traffic in business or organization, social

media marketing has become an integral part of advertising. It makes conversation and

connection to exceed finding of friends, families, and to finding product reviews or information.

Without and doubt, social media networking sites are platform used to assemble online networks

where consumers can easily access and associate with one another (Aydin, 2020; LI, Cheng &

Teng, 2020). The relevance of social media networking sites became much visible in 2020

during the lockdown. Many consumers search for products using the social media during this

period and such trend has continued in the past year. According to global web index, 54% of
social media users use social media to research products and 71% are more likely to purchase

decision and 29% more likely to make purchase on the same day of using social media (Marcin,

2017). Therefore, the importance in the consideration of social media sites used in advertising is

of utmost concern to advertisers.

In understanding the role of SNS in purchase intention, study carried out by Flórez, Escobar,

Restrespo et al., (2017) tries to understand the factors that motivate the use of social networks in

the purchase decision of young university students. Research results concluded with a proper

approach to the factors that can affect university students who intend to use social networks to

buy, therefore, generating a larger impact on the purchase decisions of clients. Research carried

out by Toor, Husnain and Hussain (2017) examined the impact of social network marketing on

consumer purchase intention and how it is affected by the mediating role of consumer

engagement. Results of this study indicated that social network marketing is significantly related

to consumer purchase intention. It further demonstrated that consumer engagement acts as a

partial mediator in how social network marketing impact on consumer purchase intention. Past

literatures have shown that directly by social interactions among consumers, and indirectly by

supporting product involvement, consumer socialization happens through SNSs. The social

relationships of consumers created through social media significantly impact the purchase

intention of consumers.

In defining the underpinning contextual framework to this study, the researcher proposed the

tripartite influence model to create a link between social networking sites, influencer and

purchase intention.
Source: conceptual framework

The framework was created by the researcher to further illustrate the variables involved in this

study.

2.2 Theoretical Framework

For the purpose of this study relevant theory is discussed.

2.2 Theory of Planned Behavior

Theory of planned behavior explains and predicts the outcome of what influences the decision

making, why people do what they do and why they act the way they act. The independent
factors: attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control determine the intention

which then leads to performing the behavior (Ajzen, 1991).

Figure 1: Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991)

Attitudes are the opinions and beliefs of a person’s outcome towards performing the behavior.

A person can have a negative or a positive evaluation of a behavior. If the person has a positive

attitude towards a behavior, it is more likely the person will perform the behavior (Ajzen, 1991).

Attitudes are created through beliefs, norms and opinions which is what a person thinks

(George, 2004). Subjective norms can be explained as the perceived social pressure a person

has from its surroundings to perform or not perform the behavior (Ajzen, 1991). Perceived

behavioral control is what a person think they can do and if they have the ability and resources

to handle and perform the behavior or not (Ajzen, 1991). Intention is the influence and

motivation towards a behavior. The motivation is how much someone is willing to perform the

behavior. If the motivation is strong enough it can cause the person performing the behavior

(Ajzen, 1991). Intentions are influenced and created by: attitude, subjective norms and

perceived behavioral control (George, 2004). The actual behavior occurs when someone acts
upon their intentions. However, intentions do not always lead to actual behaviors since there is

sometimes a gap between these two factors. The gap depends on what kind of behavior it is and

to what degree the person's attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control matters

in that specific situation and if the outcome of these three factors is negative or positive (Ajzen,

1991).

2.2.1 Conceptualizing the Theory of Planned Behavior

The theory of planned behavior is a fundamental theory often used when conducting research on

purchase intentions and buying behaviors. The theory explains how attitudes, subjective norms

and perceived behavioral control affects purchase intentions and buying behaviors. It is also a

general theory which means the model does not specify some specific beliefs related to a

behavior. Therefore, it is up to the researcher to determine those beliefs (George, 2004).

According to George (2004), the theory has been used in many studies to understand consumers'

intentions and behaviors. Studies such as understanding how negative word-of-mouth affect

communication intentions (Cheng et al., 2006) and other studies such as understanding young

consumers' intention towards buying green products in a developing nation (Yadav and Pathak,

2016). These two studies are only a few examples of all the research that has been made based

on this theory connected to buying behaviors. The reason why this theory has been used

frequently, is because the theory is useful in the sense of predicting certain intentions which can

lead to behaviors moreover to identify why humans change their behaviors (George, 2004).

Therefore, the theory of planned behavior will be the only theory used in this paper.
Conceptualized Version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

Since the research question of this paper involves social media reviews' effect on purchase

intention and actual buying behavior, new factors were replaced in the model. Therefore, attitude

are attitudes towards beauty products. Subjective norms became the influence of social media

reviews, family, friends and social environment. However, family, friends and the individual's

social environment are not the main focus of this paper due to the research question, but instead

used as a comparison to understand to what extent individuals rely on social media reviews

versus family and friends. The capacity, availability, and financial resources of an individual to

purchase cosmetics constitute perceived behavioral control. In addition, the purchase intentions

and actual purchasing behaviors have replaced the previous intention and behavior components.