The effects of different information sources on consumer decisions: A comparative study on company and youtuber generated contents

An increasing number of people are spending more than two hours daily on social media. The ability of people to share and discuss about their thoughts and ideas, to share photos and videos with other users, has put a spotlight on social media. The appearance of electronic social media has altered customer experience as it has increased the speed of word of mouth, as well as that of business to customer interactions. Increased usage of social media and its new structure has led to change in people's attitudes and behavior. The current research examines the effects of various online information sources (YouTuber vs company) on consumer decisions. 80% of consumers prefer watching video instead of reading. By some estimates, one minute of video content is the equivalent of 1.8 million words. As a consequence, video sharing platforms have become important platforms to manage consumer attitudes and their decisions. This research concentrates on the most popular video sharing platform, YouTube. As part of the research effort, four characteristics of the video advertising have been identified (whether consumers assess the video being Memorable, Informative, Convincing and Trustworthy). Each of these characteristics can potentially affect intentions of consumers. For this study, an online randomized experiment was conducted. Research design revolved around four mostly unknown products and implied subjects seeing four out of eight carefully selected videos. The total of 120 usable responses were collected to measure of four abovementioned characteristics, as well as the consumer's intentions (likelihood) to purchase the product, to try the product, to get more information about the product and their willingness to pay. Findings show that consumers find both YouTuber and Company generated videos are memorable, informative, convincing and trustworthy. Video sources generated by different sources has no significant influence on consumers' intentions while it has a significant effect on consumers' willingness to pay.