Personality factors and flow affecting opinion leadership in social media

Hashtags: Motivational drivers, their use, and differences between influencers and followers

“…Researchers have also shown that self-monitoring, that is, the regulation of self-presentation for the sake of desired public appearances (Gangestad & Snyder, 2000), affects opinion leadership positively (Rose & Kim, 2011), and that Instagram specifically plays a role in increasing people's self-monitoring behavior (Kim, Seely, & Jung, 2017). Lastly, Song et al (2017) demonstrated that openness, exhibitionism and competence in interpersonal relationships increased online opinion leadership.…”

“…Instagram has not only experienced rapid growth of its user base in recent years, but it has also significantly contributed to the rise of so-called "influencers" or "micro-influencers", sometimes termed microcelebrities (Marwick, 2015;Senft, 2008Senft, , 2013, who have reached "Instafame". Described as opinion leaders (Song, Cho, & Kim, 2017) and a "new type of third-party endorsers" (Freberg, Graham, McGaughey, & Freberg, 2011, p. 90), typical social media influencers usually start out as "ordinary" consumers who are able to grab the "megaphone" (McQuarrie, Miller, & Phillips, 2013) to build their "fame from the Internet up" (O'Connor, 2017). Further, influencers have been found to engage in self-branding strategies (Erz & Heeris Christensen, 2018) by reaching out to followers, often disclosing personal information, which in turn, improves their online status (Marwick, 2015).…”

“…These influencers are therefore an important user group on Instagram and can influence both pre-and post-purchase decisions of consumers (e.g., in the travel industry, cf. Song et al, 2017). These types of influencers are active in different areas, such as fashion, travel, food, technology, or parenting, and their reach and professionalization may vary.…”

The mechanism by which social media influencers persuade consumers: The role of consumers’ desire to mimic

“…Although few researchers have examined SMIs’ taste leadership role, several have explored their opinion leadership role (Alves, Fernandes, & Raposo, ; Casaló et al, ; Lahuerta‐Otero & Cordero‐Gutiérrez, ; Song et al, ). According to Lyons and Henderson (), opinion leadership is an SMI's ability to influence the attitudes or behaviors of her/his audience via WOM communication.…”

“…Few have examined principal traits—what aspects or qualities of SMIs’ social media contents enable them to amass a large number of followers. Second, although SMIs’ contents consist of a constant stream of visual and verbal descriptions of their personal daily lives (Abidin, ), scholars have focused predominantly on one aspect of the attitudinal effect of SMIs’ influence attempts—the verbal effect of opinion leadership (Casaló, Flavián, & Ibáñez‐Sánchez, ; Song, Cho, & Kim, ; Uzunoğlu & Kip, ); accordingly, less is understood about the visual effect of taste leadership, defined as an SMI's ability to exhibit and define what is esthetically appealing through her/his social media content (McQuarrie, Miller, & Phillips, ). To provide a more holistic understanding of this phenomenon, we assign equal importance to both opinion and taste leadership in this study.…”