Investigating Gamer’s Attitude towards the Branded Video on Bilibili and YouTube: the Role of Source-related and Psychological-related Factors

Absztrakt (kivonat)

As influencer marketing becomes viral and presents itself as an indispensable component in the social media advertising strategy (Audrezet, de Kerviler, & Guidry Moulard, 2020), the recent studies are focusing on the effectiveness and outcomes of sponsorship disclosure. This paper aims to widen the insight on the world of influencer marketing by conducting a cross-cultural and cross-platform study on the factors affecting the game influencers’ persuasiveness under the condition of sponsorship disclosure. This Thesis is built upon Balance theory, Cognitive Dissonance theory and Congruity theory in order to display the interaction between beliefs, attitudes and behaviors in the rebalanced cognitive state after exposing to the new stimulus (sponsorship disclosure). It aims to understand whether the source-related and psychological-related factors serving as beliefs could have an impact in changing the attitude towards the game influencer and correspondingly shaping the intentions of behavior after recognizing the branded content. Consequently, the source-related factors are classified as three dimensions – perceived credibility, trustworthiness and likeability and three dimensions of psychological-related factors, such as emotional attachment, wishful identification and para-social relationship. Also, platform stickiness is assumed as independent variable that is able to influence the psychological-related factors and the attitude. The questionnaire was spread to Hungarian and Chinese online gaming communities, yielding 422 valid samples. The data was conducted by SPSS and AMOS to analyze the correlations between the independent and dependent variables as well as to test the Hypotheses. According to the data analysis, the descriptive variables illustrated significant differences in the structural variables, including nationality, age, the consumed platform, the years of being a user, the time spent playing the video games and the time spent watching influencers play. It is worth mentioning that no one is immune to the effects of para-social relationships. Also, people are able to avoid the influence from para-social relationship and platform stickiness, only if they do not use these websites and follow influencers’ posts. Based on the SEM results, it can be inferred that the audience’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviors could be rebalanced and shaped through source-related and psychological-related factors. For example, the para-social relationship and trustworthiness could positively shape the viewers’ attitudes. Purchase intention is significantly influenced by emotional attachment, para-social relationship and perceived credibility. However, the brand recall would be strongly influenced by the cumulative effect of emotional attachment, wishful identification and trustworthiness. These findings consistent with the assertation of Wang and Scheinbaum (2018), stating that trustworthiness is more valuable than the other factors of source credibility that could improve the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement. Meanwhile, the deeply shaped consumer attitudes can lead to a comparative stronger purchase intention. Moreover, platform stickiness is able to significantly influence the viewers’ psychological and emotional connections with the influencer, but contains a slight impact on the viewers’ attitude.