The Role of Message Credibility in Building Influencer Loyalty and Increasing Purchase Intentions

Purpose Companies employ influencer marketing by collaborating with key social media figures whose content reaches potential consumers (Jiménez-Castillo and Sánchez-Fernández, 2019). Influencers with values aligned to the brands they represent help companies identify and attract target audiences (More and Lingam, 2017). By creating and sharing brand-related content, they can shape followers’ attitudes and behaviors, as well as influence broader audiences (Liu et al. , 2015; Grafström et al. , 2018). However, the effectiveness of such influence also depends on how individuals perceive the message credibility, which can shape their attitudes (Appelman and Sundar, 2016). This attitude change depends on attention, comprehension, and willingness to accept information (Hovland et al. , 1953) and is influenced by factors related to source, message, receiver, and channel (Hovland et al. , 1953; Petty and Cacioppo, 1981). According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model, message credibility is central to persuasion when individuals engage in high cognitive effort through the central route (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). Message credibility dimensions such as clarity, argument strength, emotional appeals, and presentation style affect both credibility perceptions and attitude change (Slater and Rouner, 1996). While different authors highlight different dimensions, message credibility is generally linked to content features such as quality, consistency, and trustworthiness (Wathen and Burkell, 2002). Related studies identify dimensions such as source, content, format, timeliness, accuracy, and delivery (