The effects of influencer marketing on purchase intention: exploring the roles of materialism, envy and wishful identification

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to examine how materialism values of followers affect their purchase intention toward travel and leisure experiences promoted by social media influencers. Three studies were conducted using undergraduate students and Amazon MTurk samples (n = 416). The results demonstrate that benign envy and wishful identification mediate the relationship between followers’ materialism and their purchase intention, and malicious envy moderates the mediating effect of wishful identification. As the first research that empirically tested the effects of followers’ benign envy, wishful identification, and malicious envy toward influencers, this paper provides a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms behind the intricate relationship between materialism and purchase intention in the context of influencer marketing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).