The effect of consumers' attitudes toward social media influencers' product endorsements on their buying intentions

Today, as social media continues to grow rapidly in importance, influencers become crucial. To use their power to affect, marketers, brands cooperate with influencers and promote their products and services through them. The objective of this study is to analyze the impact of social media influencers' promotions on consumer attitudes and buying decesions. In this study, it has been tried to the characteristics of social media influencers and their posts, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control on potential costumers' attitudes and purchasing intention. For this purpose, an quantitative research methods have been applied and 408 valid data were collected by online survey. Validity, reliability, Anova, T test and regression analyzes were applied to the gathered data. In conclusion, it has been found out that consumers' perceptions about the characteristics of influencer and their posts have a positive effect on consumers' attitudes towards the contents of the influencers' post. Additionaly, it has been shown that socio-demographic variables have major impact on other variables. It has been also concluded that consumers' perceptions about the posts of the phenomena have a positive effect on the consumer's decision- making process to purchase the products promoted by the influencers. Keywords: Social Media, Influencer, Influencer Marketing, Consumer Attitude, The Theory of Planned Behavior, Purchase Intention, Generations