Volume 7 Issue 30 (December 2022) PP. 162-181
DOI 10.35631/IJLGC.730013
Copyright © GLOBAL ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE (M) SDN BHD - All rights reserved
162
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LAW,
GOVERNMENT AND COMMUNICATION
(IJLGC)
www.ijlgc.com
ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH (eWOM):
HOW SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS AFFECT CONSUMERS’
PURCHASE INTENTION
Nurul Hidayah Mohammad Zurin
1
, Nursafwah Tugiman
2*
1
Department of Leadership & Competency Solutions, PETRONAS New Leadership Centre, Malaysia
Email: nurulhidayah.mohammadzurin@gmail.com
2
School of Multimedia Technology & Communication, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia
Email: safwah@uum.edu.my
*
Corresponding Author
Article Info: Abstract:
Article history:
Received date: 16.10.2022
Revised date: 07.11.2022
Accepted date: 22.12.2022
Published date: 29.12.2022
To cite this document:
Zurin, N. H. M., & Tugiman, N.
(2022). Electronic Word-of-Mouth
(eWOM): How Social Media
Influencers Affect Consumers’
Purchase Intention. International
Journal of Law, Government and
Communication, 7 (30), 162-181.
DOI: 10.35631/IJLGC.730013.
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
With the growth of social media nowadays, a new type of celebrity known as
social media influencers has arisen. Social media influencers are more
prominent than typical celebrities in that they developed their online character
and renown through the creation of content on social networking platforms.
Through their credibility, trustworthiness, and attractiveness, social media
influencers could influence their audience to purchase products or services they
recommended through eWOM virality. However, some social media
influencers promote criminal scams among their followers, have fake
followers/fake likes, low saturation rate, and non-disclosure of sponsorships
which have caused the concerns. Therefore, this study intended to measure the
effect of social media influencers (credibility, trustworthiness, attractiveness)
on consumers' purchase Intention with eWOM virality as moderator. The
researcher developed an online questionnaire through Google Form to collect
the data from 200 respondents of young adults between 18 to 30 years old with
convenience sampling. By using SPSS, the researcher performed descriptive
analysis, regression analysis (linear regression and multiple regression), and T-
Test on the collected data. Consequently, the result findings demonstrate that
all the variables were statistically significant towards this research objective,
and hypothesis, and successfully answered this research question. These
findings may be used as a reference for business and marketing specialists to
properly manage and execute their communication strategy.
Keywords:
Consumer, eWOM, Purchase Intention, Social Media Influencer