Are we friends? Influencers marketing and parasocial relationships with followers

Abstract

[eng] Nowadays influencer marketing is a powerful tool widely used by companies to promote their products and services on social networks. This is given, in large part, by the parasocial relationships that are established between the follower and the influencer. This type of relationship directly affects the follower's intention to buy and to do eWOM on social networks. However, the techniques used by this type of marketing can activate the persuasion knowledge of potential customers. In order to know how these two concepts affect potential consumers, a sample of 3685 university students was analyzed, who were submitted to a questionnaire and their answers were analyzed with the Dyane Version 4 program. From this analysis, the conclusion was drawn, on the one hand, that high degree parasocial relationships positively affect the intention to purchase and the intention to do eWOM. On the other hand, knowledge of being persuaded to purchase is negatively related to the aforementioned intentions.