• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.88-98
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• 2024

With the growing preference among Chinese consumers for purchasing beauty products through social media networks (SNS), influencer marketing has recently emerged as a crucial strategy for maximizing word-of-mouth effects. This study aims to ascertain the impact of SNS beauty influencers' characteristics on trustworthiness and consumers' intentions to engage in word-of-mouth promotion. Furthermore, the study seeks to explore the moderating role of consumer involvement in the relationship between SNS beauty influencer characteristics and the trust consumers place in them. As part of an empirical analysis, an online survey was administered to 259 Chinese female consumers who had previously purchased beauty products through influencers on SNS. The data gathered were scrutinized by conducting multiple and hierarchical regression analysis to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings indicated that the attributes of "expertise,"' "intimacy," and "homogeneity" in SNS beauty influencers significantly affect influencer trust, whereas "charm" does not have a significant impact. Moreover, consumer involvement was found to moderate the relationship between SNS beauty influencer characteristics (expertise, intimacy, charm, and homogeneity) and influencer trust. Additionally, influencer trust positively influenced the intention to engage in word-of-mouth activities. These findings signify that leveraging influencers possessing qualities such as expertise, intimacy, and homogeneity can help enhance product exposure, popularity, and sales of the beauty industry. This study contributes valuable insights into the strategic utilization of influencer characteristics in the beauty industry and digital marketing, highlighting their pivotalrole in consumer engagement and the success of marketing strategies.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.574-585
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• 2019

The acceleration of digital transformation (DX) has resulted in SNS influencer marketing trends becoming the mainstream of the new market. SNS influencers act as early adopters in the process of new products being accepted. Chinese consumers are most affected by Hallyu, which increases interest in K-beauty products. This study analyzes how K-beauty SNS influencers are related to Chinese consumers. A survey was conducted among Chinese millennial consumers after watching videos provided by K-beauty SNS influencer; subsequently, 456 responses were used for data analysis. As a result, the analysis based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) distinguishes the central route and the peripheral route in the process of Chinese consumers accepting new SNS products. The study findings suggested that information quality, credibility, accuracy, and usefulness had significant effects on acceptance intention for new products among central route factors, and similarity, trustworthiness, pleasure, expertise, and attractiveness also had significant effects on the acceptance intention of new product among peripheral route factors. It was found that variables of the central route, rather than those of peripheral route, had stronger effects on the acceptance intention for new products. Consequently, the central route of K-beauty SNS influencer is more important to Chinese consumers' acceptance of new products. It is expected that this study will offer beauty influencer marketing-based cosmetics brands efficient consumer management suggestions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.17-32
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• 2019

This study examines the effects of SNS fashion influencer's authenticity on the followers' relationship maintenance intention and product purchase intention through the mediating role of fanship. In addition, influencer's attractiveness is proposed as a moderator affecting the authenticity on fanship; in addition, authenticity is operationalized as honesty and expertise. A written survey is developed for 181 female Instagram users. The analyses of the data yields the following findings. First, honesty has a positive effect on fanship, relationship maintenance intention and purchase intention, while expertise affects fanship and relationship maintenance intention, but does not have a significant effect on purchase intention. Second, honesty and expertise have a positive effect on follower behavior intention through the partial mediation of fanship. Third, social attractiveness and physical attractiveness have a significant effect on fanship. However, all interaction effects between authenticity and attractiveness are not significant. Unlike authenticity, attractiveness has no direct effect on follower behavior intention. This study verifies the critical role of authenticity for an influencer in the context of SNS marketing and commerce, as this factor leads to followers behavioral intention as well as fanship in both direct and mediated paths.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2019

This study explores the effect of hashtag type on consumer response via evaluations of SNS fashion influencer and information in the context of fashion product communication. The moderating effect of perceived fit between hashtag content and fashion product image on information evaluation was also investigated. An online survey was conducted, and responses from 152 Instagram users were collected. The results indicated that hashtag type (informative vs storytelling) affects the evaluations of influencer and information. First, the informative hashtag has a positive effect on influencer's expertise and usefulness of information. Meanwhile, storytelling type has a positive effect on the familiarity of the influencer. This study also verified the mediated paths from hashtag type to consumer response through the evaluations of SNS fashion influencer and information. The influencer's expertise and familiarity mediated the effect of hashtag type on consumer response. In the information evaluation, only the mediating effect of usefulness was significant. Finally, the high condition of the perceived fit between hashtag content and fashion product image was found to highly evaluate the trust of information. This study extends the scope of fashion communication research from various angles by examining the role of the hashtag as a new type of information source.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.184-192
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• 2019

Focusing on the emerging influencer market of SNS (Social Network Service), This study attempts to clarify the priority of Influencer characteristics when the customer decided to purchase products through the promotion of influencers. Since the influencer marketing differs from the Online information source marketing, this study has an academic implication in that integrated the influence of the characteristics of the Online information sources and the characteristics of SNS contents. For this purpose, through the literature research on Information sources and Influencers, the characteristics of influencers were reconstructed and priorities were derived using the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) technique. The upper layer of the AHP structure was set to expertise, trustworthiness, social attractiveness, and content attractiveness, and the lower layer structured the model with 13 subfactors. The results are summarized as follows. First, in the result of combining the importance of the $1^{st}$ and $2^{nd}$ classes, the detailed factors of expertise and trustworthiness, ranked from the top to six, are largely influenced in purchasing decisions in influencer marketing. Second, content attractiveness is the third rank in the $1^{st}$ layer. Influencer marketing shows that content is more important than social attractiveness. Besides, the $7^{th}$ to $9^{th}$ positions of the overall rankings accounted for visual information, storytelling, and external attractiveness, which are the details of content attractiveness, and it is confirmed that it is more effective for influencer marketing to emphasize content attractiveness than social attractiveness. Although the influencer marketing differs from the existing information marketing, this study has an academic implication in that integrated the influence of the characteristics of the source and the characteristics of the contents.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.245-251
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• 2022

This study attempted to examine the effect of virtual influencer, which is highly interested in consumers, and has recently been increasing the frequency of use in corporate marketing activities. In particular, the purpose is to examine the effect of the attributes of virtual influencer on consumers as an information source for a product or brand. To this end, the effect of perceived attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise of virtual influencer on SNS usage intention and imitation intention consumers was examined. As a result of the study, it was found that attractiveness among the attributes of virtual influencer had a positive effect on the usage intention, and attractiveness and trustworthiness had a positive effect on imitation intention. In addition, it was found that imitation intention had a positive effect on usage intention. In other words, the perceived attractiveness of virtual influencer by consumers through SNS is the most important attribute. These findings imply that when virtual influencer is used in marketing, companies must perceive the attractiveness of virtual influencer through content posted on SNS as well as their attributes as information sources. We expect the results of this study to provide major implications for marketing activities such as companies and public institutions that consider using virtual influencer.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.35-51
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• 2021

Purpose: As the digital environment has expanded opportunity for consumers to acquire information from social media and social network services(SNS), With this environment, influencer has not only promoted products, but also participated in distribution and influencing on their followers. Despite the increasing interest in influencers, there has not been enough research on the structure of fashion influencer, relationship of immersion and purchase intention. This study examined the effects of fashion influencers' characteristics to the immersion of relationship with followers and purchase intention. Research design, data and methodology: For data collection, a pilot survey and the final survey were conducted. The pilot survey data was conducted to 50 female SNS users following fashion influencers. Based on the pilot tests, questionnaire was revised and the final survey was conducted online from august 22 to September 1, 2019 to female SNS users who have followed fashion influencer. A total of 408 data were collected, and exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and structural equational modeling techniques were employed for the data analyses using AMOS 26.0 and SPSS 26.0. Results: First, five factors were extracted for the fashion influencers' characteristics: interactivity, similarity, reliability, expertise and attractiveness. Second, fashion influences' reliability, expertise, similarity, interactivity have a positive (+) effects on relationship immersion; however, attractiveness has no effect on relationship immersion with followers and fashion influencer. It was also determined that relationship immersion had positive (+) influences on purchase intention. The relationship immersion has been found to have a partially mediated effect and similarity has complete mediated effects between interactivity, reliability, and expertise of fashion influencers and purchasing intentions. In terms of fashion opinion leadership, it was found to have a significant influence on purchase intention only for low fashion leadership groups. Conclusions: The present study found the structural relationships among the influencer characteristics, relationship immersion and purchase intentions to provide framework for succeeding research. This research revealed academic association of intention of purchasing through use of fashion social media and fashion influencer marketing. The results also showed the practical implications that fashion influencers' expertise and reliability perceived by their followers are key determinants to success in influencer marketing.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.180-196
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• 2021

The goal of this research is to examine the effects of sports star influencer advertising value on brand equity in social networking sites. In particular, this study identifies the moderating role of consumer team identification. A total of 350 university students participated via online survey. To test proposed hypotheses, confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and multi-group analysis were employed. It was found that informativeness, entertainment, and credibility showed significant positive effects on brand equity. Also, significant moderation effects of team identification were found in that consumers with high team identification compared to those with low team identification perceived higher value of entertainment. On the other hand, consumers with low team identification perceived more irritation than those with high team identification. This study contributes to the understanding of sports star influencer advertising in social networking sites. Theoretical and practical implications as well as suggestions for future research in this area are provided.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.31-44
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship among SNS users' interpersonal trust, brand image and purchase intention. A total of 335 questionnaires were collected during 6 days by Embrain online research company. Collected data were analyzed by SPSSWIN and AMOS program and frequency analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, validity test, correlation analysis and structural equation model analysis were performed. The results of verifying the relationship among variables are as follows. First, SNS users' interpersonal trust in influencers had positively influenced by brand image. Second, brand image sold by influencers had positively influenced by purchase intention. Third, SNS users' interpersonal trust in influencers had a significant effect on purchase intention.

• Journal of Wellbeing Management and Applied Psychology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.39-47
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• 2024

This study investigates the impact of mega-influencers and micro-influencers on consumer trust, brand attitude, and purchase intention within the beauty industry. Methods: A survey of 160 adults was conducted in March 2024, analyzing responses to the influence of a beauty mega-influencer ("Isa Bae") and a micro-influencer ("Day Beauty"). Participants were surveyed online over two weeks, and the data were analyzed using statistical tools to compare the influence of both types of influencers. Results: The results indicated that mega-influencers had a more substantial effect on reliability and brand attitude compared to micro-influencers, although both types of influencers significantly influenced purchase intentions. Influencer attractiveness and expertise emerged as critical factors in shaping consumer perceptions and behaviors. Conclusion: This study provides insights into optimizing influencer marketing strategies by leveraging the distinct characteristics and scales of influencers to enhance consumer engagement and brand loyalty. The findings underscore the importance of choosing the appropriate influencer type to maximize marketing effectiveness and consumer trust in the digital marketing landscape.