Influencer is the New Recommender: insights for Theorising Social Recommender Systems

Designing theory-driven social recommender systems (SRSs) has been a significant research challenge for over a decade. This study aims to identify behavioural factors that could improve the persuasiveness and quality of recommendations made by SRSs. Given both research streams’ striking similarity, it uses the recent yet rich research on social media influencers (SMI) to inform SRS research. Drawing on 72 publications, we classified 52 independent variables into 12 categories regrouped into three broad categories that characterise the relationships between the consumer and the (i) recommender system, (ii) product or brand, and (iii) and advert. The metanalysis results determined the relative importance of each category in predicting purchase intentions, placing recommender credibility and attitude towards the recommended product or brand at the top of the charts. Our findings are expected to facilitate more refined theory-building efforts and theory-driven designs in SRS research and practice.