The Effect of Influencer Persona on Consumer Decision-Making Towards Short-Form Video Ads—From the Angle of Narrative Persuasion

The growth of Internet and social media have substantially changed how customers engage, interact, and communicate with brands and marketers. Individuals with strong personal appeal and influence play a key role in facilitating greater brand outreach and better performance of online ads. Influencers convey similar or distinct persona to match different atmosphere of social media platforms and types of products and services that they intend to promote. Simultaneously, influencers constantly produce textual and visual narrations of their lives and experiences to enhance consumer trusts and foster consumer responses. However, little is known about the role of influencer personal image establishment on driving online consumer engagement. Besides, there are lack of researches that consider the consolidated effect of influencer persona and narratives during the persuasion process. Instagram, Facebook, Sina Weibo and Twitter have been the most examined social media platforms. However, short video-based social media platforms such as TikTok that embed distinct product and content structures still lack academic attention. In light of the significant role of influencers on consumer attitudes and behaviors, and as this research domain is still developing, a research from a new research perspective is needed. This study derives practical implications across various domains, such as social media marketing, digital advertising, and video advertisement in which identification of key factors of information propagators is essential. Taken together, the findings highlight the critical interplay of influencer persona, expressions of the posts and consumer psychological factors in driving consumer engagement and purchase intention, especially for short-form video-based ads.