The Impact of Parasocial Interaction on Brand Relationship Quality: The Mediating Effect of Brand Loyalty and Willingness to Share Personal Information

Abstract

This study explores how the attractiveness of digital influencers effects a customer’s relationship with the influencers and the brands they endorse on Instagram. The structural model analyzes the impact of social attractiveness, physical attractiveness and attitude homophily on parasocial interaction; and parasocial interaction’s effect in establishing brand engagement in self-concept, brand loyalty and brand relationship quality, while simultaneously examining the level of privacy concern consumers have in sharing personal information. Survey research was conducted whereby online questionnaires were distributed to followers of fashion influencers on Instagram. To analyze the results, a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was adopted using Smart PLS 3.0 in order to test the proposed structural model. The results showed that the model was highly reliable with strong validity. All constructs were statistically significant with full mediation, however the moderator, tested through multi-group analysis, proved to be insignificant.