The Effect Of The Depth Of Social Media Influencers’ Self-disclosure On The Costumers’ Purchase Intentions

As a trendsetter in social media,the influence of social media influencers on ordinary consumers is increasingly prominent,and how to better achieve their marketing purposes has become an important research topic in related fields.The study investigated the influence of intimate self-disclosure of social media influencers on consumers’ product purchase intentions at two levels: deep and shallow,as well as the influence’s psychological mechanisms and marginal conditions.Three rounds of online behavioral experiments were conducted,and a total of 342 participants were recruited.Experiments 1 and 2 were one-factor between-subject designs,which explored the direct effect of self-disclosure depth on purchase intention and the indirect effect with source credibility as the mediating variable,respectively.Experiment 3 was a 2×2 between-subject design,which explored the direct and indirect effects of self-disclosure depth under different product types,and attempted to construct a moderated mediating effect model.Experiment 1 analyzed the differences in consumers’ product purchase intentions under different levels of intimate self-disclosure of social media influencers,and the impact was significant.In experiment 2,the source credibility was added as the mediation variable,and it was found that the mediating effect of source credibility was not significant,but after extracting the subdimension of source credibility:Trustworthiness,the effect was significant.In experiment 3,product types(utilitarian product and hedonic product)were added as the moderating variable,and product type significantly moderated social media influencers’ intimate self-disclosure’s effect on the purchase intentions,and after taking the trustworthiness as the mediating variable in the whole model,it was found that the product type played a significant moderating role in the influence of self-disclosure level on the trustworthiness.The above results show that intimate self-disclosure of social media influencers helps them market their own products.The psychological mechanism of this effect is to increase consumers’ perception of the trustworthiness of the influencer.There is a marginal condition for this effect,that is,when the marketing product is a hedonic product,the effect is significant,and when the marketing product is a practical product,the effect is not significant.This conclusion provides new empirical data for the literature on self-disclosure of social media influencers,and enriches the extension of self-disclosure of social media influencers by incorporating product types(utilitarian and hedonic product)as the moderating variable into the model,and provides practical guidance for influencer marketing.