The persuasive power of social media influencers in brand credibility and purchase intention

Social media influencers and persuasion

The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986) is a widely used and popular model in consumer research. It has also found application in social media and influencer marketing after the introduction of these new communication channels (Gong, 2020; Teng et al., 2014; Sokolova and Kefi, 2020). ELM assumes that high-involvement subjects will be motivated to go through central cues and persuaded by message arguments (the central route). In comparison, low-involvement subjects will focus on and are more likely to be persuaded by…