The effects of consumer beliefs towards social media advertisements on attitude and purchase intention in the scope of influencer marketing

The widespread use of social media has caused brands to reach consumers through social media and at the same time, it has brought a different dimension to the concept of celebrity. The social media influencers also known as social media celebrities have been used by businesses in advertisements. Therefore, the content produced by the social media influencers is presented to social media users with the advertisements of the brands. Significant budgets are spent for social media advertisements that offer low-cost advantages. For this reason, it is a very important to evaluate the influencers to be selected in terms of the content they produce. The object of this study is to determine the effects of social media advertisements made by social media influencers on consumer beliefs, consumer attitude and purchasing intention within the scope of influence marketing. Another object is to determine whether the consumer belief, attitude and purchase intention towards social media advertisements made by the influencers differ according to demographic characteristics. T-test and ANOVA analysis were applied to determine whether belief, attitude and purchase intention differ according to gender, age and daily social media usage time. As a result of these analysis, it was determined that there was no difference in terms of variables. Then, regression analysis was applied to determine the effects of personal dimensions of consumer beliefs such as providing information, providing entertainment and being reliable on attitude. As a result of the regression analysis, it was determined that providing information had no effect on attitude, while providing entertainment and being reliable were found to be effective on attitude. Finally, regression analysis was applied to determine whether attitude has a mediating effect on the relationship between consumer beliefs and purchasing intention. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that attitude plays a partial mediating role on the relationship between consumer beliefs and purchasing intention.