Research On The Impact Of Weibo Opinion Leaders On Users' Purchasing Intention

The modes of communication between individuals are quietly changing with the development of social media.The rapid development of Internet and mobile technologies has made communication between enterprises and customers no longer be limited by the number of users and market size.Moreover,the popularity of smartphones and wireless networks has increased the depth and breadth of information dissemination for social media,and enterprises are gradually using mobile-end social media for marketing and can launch marketing activities for customers anytime and anywhere.At present,Weibo is one of large mobile social media platforms in China.Thanks to its celebrity strategy,it has a large number of opinion leaders with leading voices,and as Weibo opinion leaders have positive and promoting effects on purchase decisions,word-of-mouth communication,and branding,they have been favored by more and more enterprises,becoming one of the battlefields that business marketing cannot ignore.Although enterprises have realized the importance of Weibo opinion leaders and have launched such marketing,enterprises have not been able to achieve the desired marketing effect by using traditional methods in selecting opinion leaders due to the explosive development of Weibo.What's more,enterprises have neither clear thinking on selecting opinion leaders,nor effective ways to stimulate the public's purchase intention,so the marketing effect is being challenged by the market.Therefore,to clearly define the relevant concepts in the research on Weibo opinion leaders and users' purchase intention,systematically extract the influential factors of Weibo opinion leaders on users' purchase intentions,deeply analyze the role and the interaction of influential factors,and conduct questionnaire surveys of the users following Weibo opinion leaders and via data analysis to obtain the characteristics of those leaders that can influence users' purchase intention will help enterprises effectively carry out online marketing by taking advantage of online Weibo opinion leaders to enhance the promotion of products and services,improve publicity,and achieve the growth of enterprise value.Based on this background,the paper reviews,analyzes and summarizes the related theories and research literatures on opinion leaders,the Stimulus-Organism-Response(SOR)model,the Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance(PAD)Emotion Model,the Flow Theory,etc.Applying the research method of the SOR model and starting with the characteristics of Weibo opinion leaders and their information features,the authoress extracted the influential factors of those leaders on users' purchase intention.Based on the research perspective of the PAD Emotion Model and the Flow Theory,the authoress used arousal and flow as intervening variables to build the model of Weibo opinion leaders' influence on users' purchase intention.Meanwhile,the authoress conducted a survey of Weibo users,and carried out data analysis and model checking using SPSS22.0 and AMOS21.0.The empirical results show that interaction,professionalism,activeness,visual cues and entertainment of Weibo opinion leaders have a positive impact on users' purchase intention through affecting users' emotional arousal.And Weibo opinion leaders' interaction,visual cues,and entertainment also have a positive impact on users' purchase intention by affecting their Flow State.In addition,arousal as the same intervening variable has a significant positive effect on flow.This paper opens up a new perspective in theory,and the conclusion of the paper also can guide companies in selecting Weibo opinion leaders for marketing.