Does Social Media Influencer Credibility Affect Attitudes and Engagement Behaviour? - Empirical Evidence

Abstract

Influencer marketing through social media platforms recently sparked vast interest between researchers and industry players to enhance their marketing strategy. In addition, advertising through social media influencers has become a trend in Malaysian social media product and service marketing. Previous conventional studies concentrating on celebrities as product endorsers have now switched to social media influencers for better benefits such as cost advantage and deeper reach in the community. Despite various social media studies, only a few highlighted influencer marketing credibility. Furthermore, the perceived credibility of social media influencers is still yet to be defined as the extension of the celebrity endorser credibility study. Hence, this paper examines social media influencer marketing credibility's effect on consumer attitudes and engagement behaviour. The study was conducted on Malaysian millennials residing in Klang Valley to obtain their opinion on a social media video related to a national car, Proton X70. The study reveals that all credibility dimensions have a positive effect on attitudes towards influencer (ATI) and video content (ATV), but only brand credibility (BC) has a positive effect on attitudes towards the X70 brand model (ATB). However, all credibility dimensions indirectly affect ATB via ATV. All attitude dimensions also positively affect social media engagement intentional behaviour (SCB). The result of the study is predicted to expand the scope of social media influencer marketing credibility, consumer attitudes, and social media engagement intentional behaviour. The study is also expected to benefit future automotive advertising strategies concerning social media influencers.

Keywords: Automotive marketing, consumer attitude, social media ınfluencer, socia media engagement

Introduction

Social plays a vital role in the modern marketing communication strategy, and its’ platform varies from microblogs such as Facebook and Twitter to video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. Focusing on a social video-sharing platform, Kemp (2019) highlighted that Malaysian spend an average of 7.2 hours a week watching online videos, where YouTube is Malaysia's most active social media platform. In addition, most social media influencers share activities via YouTube as their primary social media platform compared to other platforms. On the other hand, a study by Edelman (2019) stressed that influencer marketing is crucial for brand growth, whereby around 63% of customers trust what the influencers say about a brand more than the brand says about itself. Bailis (2020) also claimed that nearly 90% of marketers find that the return on investment (ROI) from influencer marketing is either equally good or better than other marketing channels. In further research, Adetunji et al. (2018) elaborated that videos posted on Facebook and YouTube are an essential marketing effort to enhance car brand equity. Thus, it motivates a study on a YouTube video of social media influencers reviewing Malaysian national cars, referring to C-segment SUVs, namely Proton X70.

Social Media Influencer Marketing Credibility

Social media influencer marketing credibility is a concept of credibility sources adapted from previous literature. The credibility pairing includes three essential areas: influencer credibility, video content credibility, and brand credibility. The concept was adapted from Muda (2012) for the credibility sources pairing of celebrity endorser credibility, advertisement credibility, and company credibility for the celebrity entrepreneur endorser credibility study.

Influencer Credibility

In contrast, influencer credibility is a new study adapted from the existing celebrity endorser study. Although an influencer is not a celebrity, most researchers believe that influencers have more advantages in endorsing products and services than real celebrities. Nouri (2018) highlighted that social media influencers have better audience engagement, relatability with followers, and authenticity than celebrities. As such, Schouten et al. (2020) unveiled that most consumers identify themselves as similar to social media influencers and trust them more than celebrities. Ohanian (1990) proposed the original celebrity credibility using a tri-component model with the elements of expertise, attractiveness and trustworthiness. This model is widely used in empirical research, such as Muda et al. (2010) in determining attitudes towards celebrity credibility, Spry et al. (2011) examining celebrity and brand credibility, and many more. Later, Muda (2012) expanded the tri-component celebrity credibility model with an additional element of ‘decorum’, which is adopted in this study.

Video Content Credibility

Video content credibility, which refers explicitly to video advertisement, is also measured using similar elements, such as Greer (2003), Jordaan et al. (2022), and Hasanah and Wahid (2019). Video content credibility in this study is adapted from the original advertisement credibility study, which elaborates on the consumer perception of commercial integrity through elements of trustfulness (honesty) and believability (Goldberg & Hartwick, 1990; Muda, 2012; Muda et al., 2014). In another study, Hansen et al. (2014) claim that consumer-generated YouTube videos significantly enhance advertising attitudes and consumer interactivity behaviour. This motivates the study on the effect of video content credibility on consumer attitudes, which is explained further in the research question chapter.

Brand Credibility

Brand credibility principally refers to the believability of a brand's product or service position information (Erdem & Swait, 2004). On the other hand, brand credibility also significantly enhances word-of-mouth and reduces customer switching behaviours (Sweeney & Swait, 2008). Furthermore, Hur et al. (2014) elaborated that corporate brand credibility refers to the credibility of a company’s brand as a signal, which is the extent to which consumers believe in the company’s trustworthiness and expertise. In another study by Muda (2012), the author examines the elements of company credibility in terms of trustworthiness, expertise, and responsibility, which are also similar elements measured by An et al. (2019). E. Kemp and Bui (2011) highlighted that a commitment to the brand could be developed when consumers believe that a brand is credible. Limited literature examines the relationship between brand credibility and consumer attitudes. Muda (2012) validated that company credibility positively affects consumer attitudes toward the advertisement. Since the company reflects the brand itself, this study could, therefore, relate to brand credibility.

Consumer Attitudes

Consumer attitudes towards advertisement are a predisposition to respond favourably or unfavourably to a particular advertising stimulus during a specific exposure occasion (MacKenzie et al., 1986). In a recent study by Goodrich et al. (2015), in measuring consumer attitudes towards online video advertisements, the author found that informative and humorous video advertisements, which are perceived as less intrusive, could positively affect consumer attitudes. In the same voice, Primanto and Dharmmesta (2019) support that humorous advertisement influences the audience's attitude research finding. Other than that, Park and Lin (2020), in their research of live online shopper streaming in China, elaborated that product content fit affects utilitarian and hedonic attitudes towards the content, which the hedonic attitude would increase the customer buying intention. Several studies also have measured the consumer attitude towards brands in detail. For example, Chen et al. (2016) claim that online brand-related information positively influences consumer attitudes towards the brand and purchase intention. Esmaeilpour and Aram (2016) further elaborated that the message source's appeal and credibility impacted the consumer attitudes towards the brand. Nevertheless, only limited research focuses on consumer attitudes towards endorsers; therefore, this study would expand the framework for measuring consumer attitudes towards influencers.

Social Media Engagement Intentional Behaviour

Social media engagement intentional behaviour is measured as the dependent variable measured in this study. The origin of the customer engagement study was introduced by Brodie et al. (2011) by defining customer engagement as a psychological state that occurs by virtue of interactive, co-creative customer experiences with a focal agent/object, such as a brand in focal service relationships. Focusing deeper on social media, Carlson et al. (2018) described social media engagement intentional behaviour as the consumer’s intention to feedback and collaborate, which brings benefits to the company/brand. Later, the social media engagement intentional behaviour was extended by Cao et al. (2021) by defining the element into three categories: intention to consume, intention to contribute, and intention to create. Therefore, these elements are proposed to be adopted for this study's measurement of social media intentional behaviour.

Cognitive-Attitude-Behaviour Theory (The CAB Model)

The underpinning theory of this study proposed the CAB model. This model explains the relationship of cognition, affect, and behaviour for a high-involvement effect of attitudes based on cognitive information processing ‘think, feel, and do’ (Solomon et al., 2017). The CAB model has been widely used in many works of literature to assess attitude and behavioural intention; for example, Ariffin et al. (2018) in the study of personal belief, attitude, and purchase intention for online advertising and Parwati et al. (2021) in analysing self-congruity, celebrity endorsement, consumer attitude and loyalty intention. Based on the literature references, the CAB model was observed as fit for the study of social media influencer marketing credibility and, therefore, adopted as the underpinning theory for the study.

Problem Statement

Proton X70 has already been available in the Malaysian market since 2018, where most Malaysian today have great familiarity with the product brand. According to the Malaysian Automotive Association (2022), the Proton brand held only 16.6% of the total Malaysian passenger cars market share in 2019, and thus, new ideas in marketing strategy are still needed to increase their market share to stay competitive in the industry. Proton's previous advertising strategy from 2016 to 2017 is seen to be more concentrated on celebrity endorsers introducing their products to the community. Conversely, in 2020, Proton has slowly added a new marketing strategy by using social media influencers as product endorsers and ambassadors. Nevertheless, the influencer involvement with Proton Brand is still seen as minimal. Therefore, this study suggests several ideas in the area of social media influencer marketing credibility as a part of Proton’s future marketing strategy.

Furthermore, many pieces of literature on celebrities as endorsers have been widely studied by previous researchers. The work of Ohanian (1990) elaborated the tri-component model of celebrity endorser credibility, trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness. Hence, it is further heightened by Lafferty and Goldsmith (1999), who studied celebrity endorser credibility alongside corporate credibility with the effect on the advertisement and brand attitude. Later, Muda (2012) expanded the framework of credibility sources by measuring celebrity credibility, corporate credibility, and advertisement credibility. Up to this day, there are very few studies on social media influencer credibility and video content credibility. Therefore, this paper aims to extend Muda's (2012) study to measure the social media influencer marketing credibility dimension in the context of influencer credibility, video content credibility, and brand credibility.

Research Questions

The author prepared the research questions parallel to the hypothesis of the study. There are, in total, 5 main research questions and hypotheses for the study. In line with the previous study of celebrity endorsers, this paper replicates the credibility sources for social media influencers in particular. Lim et al. (2017) highlighted that the endorser’s attractiveness could enhance consumer attitudes towards endorsers. In addition, Wang et al. (2017) further confirm the significant positive relationship between endorser credibility and brand attitudes. Hence, therefore the results reflect the influencer credibility hypothesis H1 and research question R1 below:

H1: Influencer credibility will have a positive effect on consumer attitudes.

R1: Does Influencer credibility affect consumer attitudes?

Further, the author adapted the advertisement credibility from previous studies for video content credibility. Kim & Kim (2021) demonstrated that believability significantly influences consumer attitudes toward the advertisement. Similarly, Yang et al. (2017) also stressed that the advertisement value sub-element, advertisement credibility, significantly affects consumer attitude. With the previous literature support from Hansen et al. (2014) on YouTube video effect on consumer attitudes, therefore hypothesis H2 and research question R2 are declared as follows:

H2: Video content credibility will have a positive effect on consumer attitudes.

R2: Does video content credibility affect consumer attitudes?

Overall, the effect of existing brand credibility on consumer attitudes is rarely examined. Hence, in this thesis, the relationship is essential to be measured. Here, the author adapted company credibility from Muda (2012) for the brand credibility for this study. Therefore, hypothesis H3 and research question R3 are as stated below:

H3: Proton brand credibility will have a positive effect on consumer attitudes.

R3: Does Proton brand credibility affect consumer attitudes?

Moreover, Hovland et al. (1953) have suggested that source credibility has its maximum effects on acceptance when the source and the content are such that there would be a considerable discrepancy between the attitudinal responses to each of them alone. Since the study is scrutinised not only by measuring consumer attitudes in general but also separately measuring consumer attitudes towards influencers, video content, and brand model each, therefore the hypotheses are detailed as follows:

H1a: Influencer credibility will positively affect consumer attitudes toward the influencer.

H1b: Influencer credibility will positively affect consumer attitudes toward the video content.

H1c: Influencer credibility will positively affect consumer attitudes toward the X70 brand model.

H2a: Video content credibility will positively affect consumer attitudes toward the influencer.

H2b: Video content credibility will positively affect consumer attitudes toward the video content.

H2c: Video content credibility will positively affect consumer attitudes toward the X70 brand model.

H3a: Brand credibility will positively affect consumer attitudes toward the influencer.

H3b: Brand credibility will positively affect consumer attitudes toward the video content.

H3c: Brand credibility will positively affect consumer attitudes toward the X70 brand model.

Additionally, the detailed research questions are as follows:

R1a: Does influencer credibility affect consumer attitudes toward the influencer?

R1b: Does influencer credibility affect consumer attitudes toward the video content?

R1c: Does influencer credibility affect consumer attitudes toward the X70 brand model?

R2a: Does video content credibility affect consumer attitudes toward the influencer?

R2b: Does video content credibility affect consumer attitudes toward the video content?

R2c: Does video content credibility affect consumer attitudes toward the X70 brand model?

R3a: Does brand credibility affect consumer attitudes toward the influencer?

R3b: Does brand credibility affect consumer attitudes toward the video content?

R3c: Does brand credibility affect consumer attitudes toward the X70 brand model?

On top of that, Muda (2012) predicted that consumer attitudes toward advertisements would positively affect consumer attitudes toward the brand. A similar finding was unveiled by Lee et al. (2017) for a mobile ad, Schmuck et al. (2018) for green product advertisements and Hameed et al. (2020) for convenience and shopping product advertisements. Therefore, the following hypothesis H4 is proposed parallel with research question R4:

H4: Consumer attitudes toward the video content will positively affect consumer attitudes toward the X70 brand model.

R4: Do consumer attitudes toward the video content affect consumer attitudes toward the X70 brand model?

Other than that, Lu et al. (2014) studied Taiwanese blogs and found highly positive attitudes toward sponsored recommendation posts, which improves purchase intention. In the other work by Moldovan and Ciornea (2019), consumer attitude towards vloggers and products is significantly related to actions on YouTube to recommend the product. On that account, this study proposed to scrutinise the social media engagement intentional behaviour measurement into more detailed segments as in Cao et al. (2021). The link of attitudes towards social media engagement intentional behaviour is proposed as below hypothesis H5 and research question R5:

H5: Consumer attitudes will positively affect social media engagement intentional behaviour.

R5: Do consumer attitudes affect social media engagement intentional behaviour?

With detailed hypotheses and research question elements as follows:

H5a: Consumer attitudes toward the Influencer will positively affect social media engagement intentional behaviour.

H5b: Consumer attitudes toward the video content will positively affect social media engagement intentional behaviour.

H5c: Consumer attitudes toward the X70 brand model will positively affect social media engagement and intentional behaviour.

R5a: Do consumer attitudes toward the Influencer affect social media engagement intentional behaviour?

R5b: Do consumer attitudes toward the video content affect social media engagement intentional behaviour?

R5c: Do consumer attitudes toward the X70 brand model affect social media engagement and intentional behaviour?

Purpose of the Study

Overall, the result of the study is expected to contribute to the marketing strategy framework for future research references. This analysis would also suggest specific approaches for millennials to gain positive social media intentional behaviour of potential customers. The study findings would benefit all marketing practices for the automobile industry and other target market sectors. In detail, this study would also provide a clear strategy for industry players to improve their marketing strategy through social media influencer credibility, video content (advertisement), and brand credibility. Other scholars' literature suggests that social media influencer marketing investment is either better or comparable to other marketing channels (Bailis, 2020). The influencer marketing strategy is also seen as a cost-effective strategy to gain consumer purchases. Also, Malaysia's social media users have reached a high penetration rate of at least 81% of the population (Kemp, 2020). Therefore, the influencer marketing strategy is only suitable for countries with high social media penetration rates.

In addition, this study also shows how important it is for Proton to strategise its influencer marketing strategy based on the suggested pairing of credibility sources. These comprise influencer credibility, video content credibility, and Proton brand credibility. All these credibility sources were proven to indirectly affect the attitudes toward the X70 brand model. However, marketers need to be extra careful with selecting the influencers and the video content about to be published by the influencer. Here, marketers need to choose influencers who portray good credibility, similar to celebrity endorsers who are perceived as attractive and trustworthy, have expertise in the area, and have proper decorum (Muda, 2012). At the same time, the video content could be user-generated but needs to be advised by the marketers to have the element of honesty and believability to maintain the content’s credibility (Hasanah & Wahid, 2019).

Research Methods

This study used quantitative methods within a set of online self-administered questionnaires as measurement tools. The respondent refers to urban millennials born from 1981 until 1996 (Saidon et al., 2017) and residing in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The millennials in this study include two main groups, which are (i) young urban millennials and (ii) mature urban millennials, based on Musa et al. (2017). Young urban millennials (YUM) are the younger generation of millennials who are new to the workforce, and most of them are at the beginning stage of building their career. On the other hand, urban millennials (MUM) are seen to have a more stable income, an established career, and are more mature in their buying behaviour. For the data collecting method, the respondents were first asked to watch a YouTube video (around 2 minutes duration) embedded in the online questionnaire. The footage shows three social media influencers talking about the Proton X70 SUV in general. Then, the respondents were asked to answer a set of questionnaires related to this study comprised of 7 constructs with a total of 68 items adapted from previous academic publications. Refer to the Table 1 below.

Table 1 - Measurement of Study Variables
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The study started with a pilot test to test the completeness of the measurement method. Viechtbauer et al. (2015) elaborated that a pilot study goal is to identify unforeseen problems, such as ambiguous inclusion or exclusion criteria or misinterpretations of questionnaire items. The pilot test will use 30 samples parallel to the previous researchers’ suggestions, such as in Hertzog (2008) and Johanson and Brooks (2010). Final data collection targeted to receive a total of 400 samples: 200 samples from Young Urban Millennials and another 200 sets from Matured Urban Millennials. Based on G*Power measurement (Hair et al., 2010), it is suggested the minimum sample desirable for medium-size effect related to the study framework is 119 samples. Therefore, 200 samples for each millennial category are considered adequate before the data screening and cleaning.

The study is examined under both the measurement model and structural model. For the measurement model, the study measured the data's internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity (Ramayah et al., 2018). As for the structural model, Zweig and Webster (2003) suggested that SEM is suitable for addressing the research question with multiple relationships between the dependent and independent variables. Thus, the data analysis for the structural model of the study will use the structural equations modelling (SEM) method, Smart PLS3, to find the significance of the variable relationships and the effects based on the hypotheses.

Findings

A total of 426 respondents participated in this study. In this study, 32.4% of the participants were males, and the remaining were females. These statistics were comparable with the ethnic composition of the urban population of Klang Valley by Suruhanjaya Pilihan Raya Malaysia (2018), as follows: 46.5% Malay, 43.2% Chinese, 7.3% Indians, and 3.1% others. The millennial group of the participants was YUM (69.7%) and MUM (30.3%). Whilst the car brand ownership of the participants was Perodua (25.1%), Proton (13.4%), Honda (10.6%), Toyota (8.7%), Nissan (2.8%), Mazda (2.1%), Mitsubishi (0.2%), other brands (8.9%), and no car ownership (28.2%).

Measurement Model

This paper tabulates the summary findings on measurement model results based on Ramayah et al. (2018) results, including (i) the internal data consistency via composite reliability (CR), (ii) convergent validity via factor loadings and average variance extracted (AVE), and (iii) discriminant validity via Fornell & Larcker criterion and Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) ratio of correlation. The result of the internal consistency and convergent validity assessment is shown in the Table 2 below.

Table 2 - Internal Consistency and Convergent Validity Assessment
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The composite reliability results show all values exceeded 0.7 minimum criteria and below 0.95 for the maximum criteria set up by Hair et al. (2017) for the indicator of adequate convergence. The convergence validity assessment shows most factor loadings met the minimum threshold value of 0.708, which is the requirement by Hair et al. (2017). However, the loadings for the element’s ‘expertise’ and ‘attractiveness’ fall below the minimum threshold value. Thus, we follow the prerequisite suggested by Ramayah et al. (2018) to allow the loadings to be kept below the 0.708 threshold as long as the AVE value exceeds 0.5. For discriminant validity assessment, the data assessed met the requirement of the Fornell & Larcker criterion. The results exhibit sufficient discriminant validity where the square root of AVE is larger than the other correlations for all reflective constructs (Ab Hamid et al., 2017; Ramayah et al., 2018). See the Table 3 below.

Table 3 - Fornell & Larcker Criterion Result
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Another assessment for discriminant validity on the Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) Ratio of Correlation was also conducted for the study. The result in the table 4 shows that the highest HTMT value is 0.813, proving that all HTMT values do not exceed 0.85, which meets the requirements set up by Kline (2011) for a stringent criterion and does not exceed 0.90 as well as per criteria recommended by Gold et al. (2001) for a conservative criterion. Also, the 90% bootstrap confidence interval for all structural paths does not contain the value of 1 as solid evidence of discriminant validity for the data (Henseler et al., 2015).

Table 4 - Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) Ratio of Correlation Result
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Structural Model

Further, this paper also analyses the structural model via the lateral collinearity assessment and the hypothesis testing result (assessment on the significance and relevance of the structural model relationships, the level of R2, the size effect f2, and the predictive relevance Q2. The lateral collinearity results for the data show that all the VIF values range from 1.413 to 3.645, which does not exceed the maximum allowed threshold of 5.0 based on Hair et al. (2017). The detailed structural model result is exhibited in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Structural Model result of the study
Structural Model result of the study
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The result exhibited that all credibility dimensions Influencer Credibility (IC), Video Content Credibility (VC), and Brand Credibility (BC) have a positive effect on attitudes toward Influencer (ATI) and video content (ATV), supporting the hypotheses H1a, H1b, H2a, H2b, H3a, and H3b. The study also explicated that only brand credibility (BC) was found to have a positive effect on attitudes toward the X70 brand model (β=0.482, t=8.675, p<0.01) and supported the hypotheses H3c. Thus, the hypotheses H1c (β=-0.083, t=0.061, n.s.) and H2c (β=-0.005, t=0.075, n.s.) are not supported for this study.

Further analysis, however, shows that influencer credibility (IC) and video content credibility (VC) have an indirect positive effect on attitudes toward the X70 brand model (ATB) via attitudes towards video content. The positive effect of ATV on ATB supports hypothesis H4 (β=0.387, t=5.996, p<0.01). In addition, all consumer attitudes dimensions (ATI, ATV, and ATB) positively affect social media engagement intentional behaviour (SCB), supporting hypotheses H5a, H5b, and H5c. The full result of accepted hypotheses is also tabulated in Table 5 as follows:

Table 5 - Hypothesis Testing Result
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Conclusion

Recently, researchers have extensively conducted the study of social media as a marketing medium, including the study of social media influencers as endorsers of products or services. This paper examined the extension of the social media influencer marketing credibility model, which integrates consumer attitudes and social media engagement intentional behaviour. The study finding explains that consumer attitudes (ATI, ATV, and ATB) affected social media engagement intentional behaviour (SCB). On the other hand, Cao et al. (2021) explain intentional engagement is a critical factor in determining consumer engagement activities such as contributing, consuming, or creating to gain the most effective social media marketing strategy. To achieve this, social media marketers need to secure positive effects from all aspects of consumer attitudes, namely ATI, ATV, and ATB.

Furthermore, the study also highlights the importance of attitudes toward video content (ATV), which positively affects attitudes toward the X70 brand model (ATB), as exhibited in H4. The result shows all credibility elements would affect attitudes towards the X70 brand model (ATB) via attitudes toward video content (ATV). This positive effect of ATV on ATB is also supported by previous literature, such as Laksmidewi and Soelasih (2019) and Lee et al. (2017), for a similar positive effect of attitude towards advertisement on attitudes toward the brand. The result suggested an excellent strategy to improve customer attitude towards the brand, especially for Proton brand models, in the future. After all, to induce good consumer attitudes toward video content (ATV). This study also reveals that all of the positive effects from credibility dimensions (IC, VC, and BC) or, namely, ‘social media engagement marketing credibility’, are equally important for marketing strategy. The findings highlighted that the credibility dimensions positively affect attitudes toward the video content (ATV), as exhibited in H1b, H2b and H3b.

In conclusion, the study has successfully examined the effect of social media engagement marketing credibility on consumer attitudes and social media engagement intentional behaviour empirically parallel to the CAB model theory. This paper also emphasises the importance of social media engagement marketing credibility, encompasses influencer credibility (IC), video content credibility (VC), and brand credibility (BC) as essential dimensions to gain positive consumer attitudes and consumer engagement intentional behaviour. In detail, the marketers are advised to choose an influencer who portrays good credibility. The influencer should be perceived as attractive, trustworthy, an expert in the area, and having proper decorum. At the same time, the video content could be user-generated but needs to be advised by the marketers to have the element of honesty and believability to maintain the content’s credibility. Another focal point is that the study explains the importance of attitudes toward video content (ATV) for the indirect effect of all credibility dimensions on attitudes towards the X70 brand model (ATB). This finding gave marketers insight into the fact that product advertising via influencer videos is very effective in improving consumer attitudes toward brands among the millennial generation cohort.

Several limitations were also highlighted for the study, where the location of the study only concentrated on the Klang Valley area, the most populous area in Malaysia and may not represent the whole country for the result. Also, the study only refers to the millennials, albeit other generations. Although Gen X seems to have high purchase power, their interaction with social media influencers is still unclear. Therefore, it will be interesting for future research to test the validity of the results in other generation cohorts and geographical locations. Barger et al. (2016) highlighted that customer satisfaction is always reported as being mitigated by customer engagement strategy, alongside different positive outcomes such as increasing customer lifetime value, share-of-wallet, customer loyalty, and brand profitability. This idea is also supported by Claffey and Brady (2014), by stressing that consumer engagement may lead to positive valences such as satisfaction and loyalty. It will also be fruitful to extend the framework by integrating influencer and brand attachment for future research.

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Abu Bakar, N. A. S., Musa, R., & Muda, M. (2024). Does Social Media Influencer Credibility Affect Attitudes and Engagement Behaviour? - Empirical Evidence. In A. K. Othman, M. K. B. A. Rahman, S. Noranee, N. A. R. Demong, & A. Mat (Eds.), Industry-Academia Linkages for Business Sustainability, vol 133. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 755-770). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2024.05.61