Social Media Influencers and Purchase Intention: A Review and Research Agenda

Recent advancements in social media influencer marketing and growing attention from practitioners have propelled academic investigation. Owing to its enormous potential as a research domain, the influence of social media influencers on consumer purchase intention has gained increasing importance. Motivated by the diverse knowledge of this emerging stream of research, we consolidated the existing body of literature through a systematic literature review (SLR) employing SPAR-4-SLR. By integrating 76 articles published in international peer-reviewed journals between January 2011 and December 2023, our review highlights the key areas of existing research in social media influencers and purchase intention. It provides an organizing framework to assist future research. We attempted to combine the stock of knowledge through the TCCM framework to identify several theories, contexts, characteristics, and methods used in this domain. Our review highlights significant research gaps and directs future research addressing key aspects such as theories, contexts, characteristics, and methodologies. Our findings suggest that future researchers can investigate psychological theories such as social identity, social learning, and social influence theory, among others, in the context of virtual influencers, mom influencers, travel, or food influencers. Additionally, research can examine the negative effect of social media influencers on consumer purchase intention. Further researchers can use eye-tracking and facial recognition methods to gain deeper insights into social media influencers' effectiveness. Researchers from varied disciplines, such as consumer behavior, psychology, and marketing, can gain insights from this review and conduct research in the future. At the same time, practitioners can implement social media influencer marketing in their businesses.