Research On The Influence Of Advertising Disclosure On Users’ Purchase Intention In KOL Marketing

KOL marketing,as one of the important marketing methods combining social media and marketing communication,has received more and more attention from advertisers in recent years.However,the hidden and native nature of the content presented by KOL is in conflict with the requirement of advertising identifiability,which not only violates the audience’s privacy but also has the suspicion of deceiving consumers.The challenge is how to balance the requirements of advertising disclosure and the effectiveness of KOL marketing advertising.Based on this,this study conducted an experiment by reviewing the literature and summarizing the research results,focusing on social media users aged 18-35(N=242),and observed the main effect and interaction effect of different marketing subjects(KOL/KOC)and whether to make advertising disclosure(yes/no)on consumers’ purchase intention through 2×2 experimental methods.In this paper,psychological resistance was also included within the research model as a mediating variable.The main and interaction effects were found to be significant,and psychological resistance played a partially mediating role between KOL type,ad disclosure and purchase intention.The experimental results show that,other things being equal: users have higher purchase intention for disclosed ads relative to undisclosed ads,and higher purchase intention for KOL ads relative to KOC ads.This provides new strong evidence that ad disclosure can positively affect users’ purchase intention.Meanwhile,the results of data analysis in this study show that the direct effect between ad disclosure and purchase intention is opposite in sign to the indirect effect,and there is a suppressing effect.The results of this study provide new insights into the mitigation of the conflict between KOL marketing and advertising disclosure,as well as new directions for future research in the field of KOL marketing and advertising disclosure.