Relationship between advertising disclosure, influencer credibility and purchase intention

Sesar, Vesna; Martinčević, Ivana; Boguszewicz-Kreft, Monika Article Relationship between advertising disclosure, influencer credibility and purchase intention Journal of Risk and Financial Management Provided in Cooperation with: MDPI – Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, Basel Suggested Citation: Sesar, Vesna; Martinčević, Ivana; Boguszewicz-Kreft, Monika (2022) : Relationship between advertising disclosure, influencer credibility and purchase intention, Journal of Risk and Financial Management, ISSN 1911-8074, MDPI, Basel, Vol. 15, Iss. 7, pp. 1-21, https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm15070276 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/274798 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Citation: Sesar, Vesna, Ivana Martinˇcevi´c, and Monika Boguszewicz-Kreft. 2022. Relationship between Advertising Disclosure, Influencer Credibility and Purchase Intention. Journal of Risk and Financial Management 15: 276. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm15070276 Academic Editor: Thanasis Stengos Received: 22 May 2022 Accepted: 21 June 2022 Published: 23 June 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Journal of Risk and Financial Management Article Relationship between Advertising Disclosure, Influencer Credibility and Purchase Intention Vesna Sesar 1,* , Ivana Martinˇcevi´c 1and Monika Boguszewicz-Kreft 2 1Department of Technical and Economic Logistics, University Center Koprivnica, University North, 42 000 Varaždin, Croatia; [email protected] 2Business Faculty, WSB University in Gdansk, al. Grunwaldzka 238A, 80-266 Gdansk, Poland; [email protected] *Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: Understanding influencer credibility and online advertising and explaining its implications is the basis for analyzing customer purchase behavior. Novelties in digital marketing are visible in the growth of advertising through digital platforms using micro-influencers, compared to the former trend of using celebrities in creating brand awareness with the purpose to reach many customers and influence their buying decisions. The aim of this study is to examine how advertising disclosure (displayed/not displayed) affects influencer credibility, while analyzing influencer type (celebrity/micro-influencer) as a moderator variable underlying this relationship. Further, this paper investigates whether brand awareness mediates the relationship between influencer credibility and purchase intention. The questionnaire was designed and data were collected from 364 respondents using the convenience sampling method on the student population from one Croatian university. Regression analysis was performed to test the set hypothesis in SPSS using the PROCESS approach and independent sample t-test. The findings show: (1) displayed advertising status increases influencers’ credibility, and (2) this relationship is not moderated by influencer type. Moreover, (3) influencer credibility has a positive and significant relationship with purchase intention, and (4) this relationship is mediated through brand awareness. Research results indicate the importance of advertising disclosure and influencer credibility in influencer marketing, since brand awareness created through influencers’ credibility increased by displayed advertising disclosure significantly affects purchase intention of participants. Keywords: influencer marketing; purchase intention; brand awareness; advertising disclosure; moderation model; mediation model 1. Introduction Digitalization and the rise of social media usage change the way people learn, communicate and make buying decisions nowadays. The size of the global influencer marketing market is growing dynamically. In 2021, the value of this market reached a record value of USD 13.8 billion, more than twice that of the past two years (Statista 2021). For example, the five-year projection from statista.com (2021) of the amount spent on influencer marketing in the U.S.A. is that it will double till 2023; USD 2.42 billion was spent in 2019 on influencer marketing while the projection is that it will rise to USD 4.62 billion. Companies interact with customers daily through social media influencers and the effectiveness of those interactions are the basis for creating an effective marketing strategy (Febriyantoro 2020). Research conducted among 1842 marketers showed that 37.2% of them cooperate with influencers, 68% of them consider this cooperation as effective and very effective and 88% intend to continue this cooperation (Buffer 2019). In a digital world, customers decide for themselves which information they will use or which advertisement is useful for them to make a buying decision (De Veirman and Hudders 2020). Ahmad J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm15070276 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jrfm J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276 2 of 21 (2018) stated that more than 90% of marketers who use advertising through social media influencers find this strategy effective. Thus, in practice brand awareness is created through influencer endorsements and together with influencers’ credibility traits, this may create a strong relationship with a follower in terms of their purchasing behavior. Further, the way of displaying the sponsorship status of a certain brand matched with the influencer’s personality can affect significantly a consumer’s perception of a certain product and influencer credibility. Influencers have become the key factor in creating brand awareness since the activity of influencers creates brand recognition and brand recall which leads to the intention to buy (Aaker 2009). Consequently, credibility of a source has a significant influence on followers’ behavior in creating brand awareness which represents one of the basic pillars of loyalty (Jiménez-Marín et al. 2021). Despite the significant increase in interest in influencer marketing, many of its aspects have not yet been sufficiently researched (Vrontis et al. 2021;Masuda et al. 2022;Schouten et al. 2020). These include influencer marketing success factors (Hughes et al. 2019;Lou and Yuan 2019;Renchen 2020), because, despite the explosion of social influencers, their effectiveness is still low (Hughes et al. 2019). For example, Renchen (2020) points out that the relationship between social media marketing effectiveness and brand awareness is not fully understood. This paper will explore whether disclosed or not disclosed advertising posts from influencers exert a different level of perceived credibility. This study extends past research on advertising disclosures and influencer marketing by examining whether influencer type moderates the underlying relationship among young consumers in Croatia. Past research on the effect of celebrity endorsement has been largely examined (Ladhari et al. 2020); however, there is a need to explore different effects that diverse influencer types may have in terms of consumer behaviors (Vrontis et al. 2021). Nowadays, micro-influencers have more effect on brand awareness and purchase intention than traditional celebrities, therefore we expect that influencer type will play a moderator role between advertising disclosure and influencer credibility. Further, as only a small number of studies investigate brand awareness as a mediator (Ardiansyah and Sarwoko 2020), we will focus on the role of brand awareness as a possible mediator between influencer credibility and purchase intention due to the reason that customers are daily informed about products through social media advertising and brand awareness is created through continuous advertising (Keller 2003). As continuous advertising nowadays is happening through influencers, consequently brand awareness should be the significant mediator in this relationship. It is expected that research results can help marketers to create marketing strategies targeting young consumers in using promotion of their brands through influencers by carefully choosing influencer types, bearing in mind their credibility traits and the way they communicate transparently with their followers. The paper is divided into four major sections. After the introduction, we have synthesized the literature on influencer marketing, advertising disclosure, influencer credibility, brand awareness and purchase intention. The third part presents methodology and research design. In part four, research results are analyzed, and they are discussed in part five. Finally, discussion and concluding remarks with future implications are presented. 2. Theoretical Framework 2.1. Influencer Marketing and Influencer Credibility The rise of influencer marketing has become one of the most prominent fields in digital marketing and its adaptation in marketing campaigns seems to be an effective way to target customers (Jílková2018). Influencer marketing represents electronic word of mouth in a digital era and most companies that engage influencers want to present their products to a large audience by decreasing costs. This is a type of marketing strategy which drives consumer brand awareness and purchase decisions through specific individuals J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276 3 of 21 called influencers (Scott 2015;Lou and Yuan 2019) who post their content on social media networks. It represents a type of online marketing based on the fact that followers on social networks tend to buy products or services recommended by influencers (Influencer Marketing Hub;Lee 2021). According to Ong and Ito (2019, p. 132) influencers are “opinion leaders of the new digital century” who influence followers’ behaviors regarding a certain brand or a product (Freberg et al. 2011;Godey et al. 2016). The power of influencers is due to the attitudes of contemporary consumers, which “favour brands and products that incorporate social identity” (Hassan et al. 2021, p. 3) and this is nowadays encouraged by social media networks. Companies state that their financial performance is increasing thanks to the rise of influencer marketing (Ahmad 2018) and it has become a prevalent marketing strategy (Vrontis et al. 2021). In the field of influencer marketing, five research themes have been identified by Vrontis et al. (2021) that explore the effect of social media influencers on consumer outcomes. Source characteristics and advertising disclosure fall into two categories, among others, how influencers may impact consumers’ purchase behavior. Influencers may be divided into micro and macro-influencers based on the number of followers. A macro-influencer has more than 100,000 followers on one or more social media platforms, whereas a microinfluencer has up to 100,000 followers (Levin 2020). Further, they can be divided into celebrity influencers who are well known to the public via traditional media based on their professional achievements (actors, athletes, politicians) and general non-famous public influencers. The latter are “regular people” who have become “online celebrities” through sharing self-generated content on different topics and gain many followers (such as bloggers) (Lou and Yuan 2019) along the way; Schouten et al. (2020) call these influencerendorsers and classify them as micro-celebrities who interact with the follower through replies (Alperstein 2019). A micro-celebrity represents the individual who is not a wellknown supermodel or sport player (celebrity) but an individual who became “Instafamous” through self-presentation on social media platforms and can reach a mass audience by using digital pictures in creating a connection with followers (Marwick 2015). These follower–influencer relationships lead to purchase intentions, referring to the combination of consumers’ interest (his cognitive behavior) in a brand or a product and the likelihood of purchasing these items (Shah et al. 2012). When a customer has difficulties in differentiating products or services, brand awareness helps them to make a choice (Nurhayati and Hendar 2019). The actual buying behavior is based on information the follower collects (Nunes et al. 2018) about the product or service through different social media platforms. Therefore, it depends significantly on the preference for a particular product and the influence of this preference on the customer. It is closely related to consumer attitudes, and advertising can influence attitudes toward the advertised brand and therefore influence consumers’ purchase intentions (Hoyer et al. 2013). Further, the theory of associative learning speaks of learning as the process of establishing connections between two phenomena. As Till et al. (2008) state, according to the results of the classical conditioning study—one common method of associative learning—using celebrities evoking positive feelings “as unconditioned stimuli in conditioning trials should lead to affectively favourable responses toward brands” (Till et al. 2008, p. 180). The endorsements of credible influencers should therefore evoke the reactions of followers that are desired from a marketing point of view. The results of the research confirmed that the level of influencer credibility positively affects the evaluation of the endorsed brand (Breves et al. 2019). In this online interaction, source credibility represents a critical factor influencing the decision-making process, attitudes and purchasing intentions (Kim et al. 2018). When analyzing the impact of influencer marketing on social media, influencers’ credibility is the key that drives or increases the value of the influencers on social media (Tsen and Cheng 2021) since it impacts followers’ purchase intentions and represents the most essential antecedent to advertising effectiveness (Keller 2005). Influencer credibility may be referred to as the credibility of the influencer in the persuasion process (Lee and Kim 2020) and how well the message has been accepted by followers, and this depends on the trust J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276 4 of 21 and expertise of an influencer (AlFarraj et al. 2021). This theory was developed in the 1990s and describes that influencer traits consist of trustworthiness, attractiveness and expertise (Ohanian 1990). Weismueller et al. (2020) argue that the number of followers can positively affect influencers’ attractiveness, trustworthiness and lead to purchase intention (Weismueller et al. 2020). When a specific influencer becomes more attractive, followers consequently share their posts further (Casalóet al. 2020) and like a snowball effect, this means they reach more followers. For brand managers this is the main goal, to reduce costs of target advertising and reach many new customers. The dimension of influencer expertise represents influencers’ ability to present products or services they advertise on social media networks. They are perceived as people who know what they are talking about so they “know the subject” (McCracken 1989). They have adequate experience and knowledge to give product reviews (Van der Waldt et al. 2009). On the other hand, trustworthiness represents followers’ level of trust in the source regarding the honesty of posted content; that is, whether the follower perceives an influencers’ post as their own (and honest) opinion or an opinion manipulated or influenced by someone else (Wiedmann and von Mettenheim 2021). This is especially significant to managers when companies advertise their products and instruct influencers what to say. So, the trustworthiness of an influencer message may affect followers’ purchase intention regarding whether the content is biased or objective. For example, Casalóet al. (2020) found that influencers who are not paid to post product recommendations and mentions are more credible than those who do not state this relationship clearly because it triggers follower’s skepticism. Attractiveness is the perception of an influencer and relates to social values (Chekima et al. 2020), representing how the follower perceives the similarity, familiarity and likeability (Ohanian 1990) of the influencer. Some authors have analyzed relatability as a credibility trait. As stated in Hassan et al. (2021, p. 5), this trait represents “accessibility, authenticity, believability, imitability, and intimacy”, meaning that followers can identify with the influencer at some level when the source posts private experiences or feelings, which then builds a sympathetic relationship with followers (Hassan et al. 2021). To reach consumers online, brand managers create strategies to impact consumers through content (Martínez-López et al. 2020). The subject of the effectiveness of advertising disclosure and influencer credibility among the student population in Croatia is scarcely documented, as is the effect of influencer type and the role of brand awareness on consumer behavior and influencer advertising actions. 2.2. Previous Research Findings This part of the paper will explain previous research findings regarding the topic, and a summary can be found in Appendix A, Table A1 where empirical research has been presented in terms of analyzing dependent, independent, mediator, and moderator variables. 2.2.1. The Relationship of Advertising Disclosure and Influencer Credibility According to the persuasion theory, followers perceive influencers’ sponsored posts not as classic advertising but more as beneficial recommendations from someone they can relate to (Han et al. 2021). This relationship in the end may have a powerful effect on consumers’ purchase intentions. Consumers react differently and may have positive and negative reactions in terms of straight advertising or unclear advertising posts (not being sure if the post is paid for or not). Sometimes they become sceptical (De Veirman and Hudders 2020) or critical (Van Reijmersdal et al. 2020;Han et al. 2021) when they see that the post is paid for, which may decrease or even increase influencers’ credibility among consumers. Since sponsored posts and non-sponsored posts can look alike, consumers have difficulties in recognizing commercial purposes (De Veirman and Hudders 2020). Recently, there has been a rise in papers researching the influence of advertising disclosure on followers’ behavior. Previous research found possible negative attitudes toward the advertising when an ad was visible compared to implicit or not disclosed (Lee and Kim J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276 5 of 21 2020), and a positive attitude when sponsorship of a post was clearly stated compared to ambiguous or not disclosed, which increased ad recognition but decreased influencer credibility among young people (Vogel et al. 2020). Therefore, to analyze if there is a difference in the perception of influencers’ credibility when ads are disclosed or not we pose hypothesis H1: Hypothesis 1 (H1). Influencers’ credibility will increase when influencers clearly disclose advertising status. 2.2.2. Moderating Effect of Influencer Type on Advertising Disclosure—Influencer Credibility Relation The research of Vrontis et al. (2021) implies that there is a need to analyze the role of different influencer types (micro-influencer vs. macro) to see whether different consumer responses are visible. It is well known that using celebrities in advertising campaigns increases advertising effectiveness. With the rise of social media, companies increasingly started to use ordinary people, so-called micro-influencers, in promoting their brands to reach desired markets. There is little evidence in the literature about the advertising effectiveness of micro-celebrities in promoting brands in regards to the well-established evidence of celebrities advertising effectiveness. Dwidienawati et al. (2020) analyzed customers and influencers’ reviews on purchase intention. The study showed that influencers’ reviews positively influenced purchase intention while customers’ reviews did not have a positive influence on purchase intention. Further, Fink et al. (2020) found that a celebrity endorser increased purchase intention when placing the sponsored brand image. A study from Schouten et al. (2020) found that influencer endorsement is more effective than celebrity endorsement regarding purchase intention. This category of micro-influencers possesses certain credibility characteristics that are appealing to companies as well as to their followers. Companies sponsor them because of their connectivity and relationship to their followers. Therefore, we pose the second hypothesis H2: Hypothesis 2 (H2). The positive effect of displayed advertising on influencers’ credibility will be moderated by influencer type. 2.2.3. The Relationship between Influencer Credibility, Brand Awareness, and Purchase Intention Previous research on the topic shows that influencers’ credibility builds brand awareness (Lou and Yuan 2019) and purchasing intentions (Müller et al. 2018;Lou and Yuan 2019); however, they alone are insufficient (Pick 2021). This applies in particular to the issue of the mediation role of brand awareness discussed in this article. Thus, examining the relationship between these categories is important both from a cognitive and a practical point of view. Erdogan (1999) claims that a credible source influences consumer beliefs, opinions, attitudes and behaviors. Pick (2021) and Kosim and Pasaribu (2021) showed that influencer credibility is an important criterion for determining purchase intention (Kosim and Pasaribu 2021;Pick 2021). Previous research confirms that influencer credibility measured by influencers’ expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness has a positive and statistically significant effect on purchase intention (Weismueller et al. 2020). The same results were obtained in the studies by Kemeç and Yüksel (2021). Further, the results of the research confirmed that purchasing intentions are positively influenced by the influencers’ trustworthiness and perceived expertise (Lou and Yuan 2019;Masuda et al. 2022). AlFarraj et al. (2021) found that attractiveness and expertise traits influence purchase intention through mediating role of online engagement among the aesthetic dermatology consumers in Jordan. Research indicates that marketing strategies which include influencers need to be well adjusted according to the person’s credibility traits; that is, personal attributes, characteri- J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276 6 of 21 zations and influencer type (Masuda et al. 2022), to give desired results such as purchase incentive. Further, memory about an advertised brand and its recognition determines brand awareness (Febriyantoro 2020;Aaker 2014). Brand awareness can be graded from not recognizing the brand at all to the fully recalling a brand (Ilyas et al. 2020). Advertising and distribution to broad groups of customers highly influence brand awareness (Foroudi 2019), therefore its close relationship with influencer credibility should be analyzed, since influencers’ credibility traits can positively create customers’ desire for brand purchase (Martin-Consuegra et al. 2018). Uzuno ˇ glu and Kip (2014) noted that reliability of social media influencers impacts effectiveness of their communication. Renchen (2020) and Kosim and Pasaribu (2021) also showed that influencers have a positive and strong effect on the development of brand awareness. Lou and Yuan (2019) found that influencers’ expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness significantly affects brand awareness while similarity was not found to be significant. The research of Wiedmann and von Mettenheim (2021) suggest that brand managers should concentrate on influencers’ trustworthiness and attractiveness, stating that the importance of expertise is insignificant since those credibility traits affect positively brand satisfaction, brand image and brand trust. The research of De Jans et al. (2020) analyzed whether the source (brand post or influencer post) of sponsored content affected advertising among Belgian adolescents. Results imply that adolescents like brand advertising more when it is through influencers’ posts than through brand posts, but consequently brand awareness is higher through brand posts than through an influencer’s posts. As indicated by AlFarraj et al. (2021) in the marketing literature, influencers’ credibility is associated with the effectiveness of communication, the aim of which may be brand awareness. Many prior studies show that brand awareness is a significant precedent of internet (Tan et al. 2021) and social media (Bilgin 2020;Dabbous and Barakat 2020) users’ purchase intention. Significant positive relationship was found between brand awareness, brand association and perceived quality and brand loyalty and brand purchasing intention (Susilowati and Sari 2020). Research has proved that brand awareness affects the purchase intention of Thai online customers (Kosakarika 2020), Australian social media users (Arli 2017) and followers of one Indonesian influencer (Kosim and Pasaribu 2021). To analyze the mediating effect of brand awareness, we have to test the direct effect of influencer credibility on brand awareness and purchase intention, then the direct effect of brand awareness on purchase intention, and finally to see the mediation effect (indirect effect) of brand awareness underlying this relationship, therefore we pose further hypotheses: Hypothesis 3 (H3). Influencers’ credibility positively affects participants’ brand awareness. Hypothesis 4 (H4). Brand awareness positively influences participants’ purchase intention. Hypothesis 5 (H5). Influencers’ credibility positively affects purchase intention. 2.2.4. Mediation Role of Brand Awareness The literature review showed a gap in analyzing brand awareness and its effect of mediating between influencers’ credibility and purchase intention. Previous researchers analyzed the mediating effect of brand awareness in the relationship between the attributes of mobile applications and travellers’ consumer behavior, such as purchase intention and word of mouth (Boonsiritomachai and Sud-On 2020). Further, brand awareness partially mediates the relationship between corporate social responsibility and brand equity (Hafez 2018) and between content quality and brand interactivity on offline purchase intention (Dabbous and Barakat 2020). Further, Barreda et al. (2015) found a positive mediation effect of brand awareness between online social networks and word of mouth (WOM). Sharifi (2014) also researched the impact of consumers’ cognition, affection J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276 7 of 21 and conation on future purchase intention through the mediation effect of brand awareness. The results indicate that brand awareness has a positive indirect effect on future purchase intention. Significant results were also found in the research of Surianto et al. (2020), where cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns did not influence directly repurchase intentions but had a significant and positive indirect effect through brand awareness. Social networking sites’ advertisement also has an effect on purchase intention only through brand awareness (Nofal et al. 2020, p. 148). On the other hand, Febriyantoro (2020) found that brand awareness does not mediate the relationship between YouTube ads and purchase intention and between social media marketing and purchase intention (Ardiansyah and Sarwoko 2020). Therefore, an attempt has been made to address the research gap and explore the mediation effect of brand awareness in the relationship between influencer credibility and customer purchase intention through the last hypothesis: Hypothesis 6 (H6). The relationship between influencers’ credibility and purchase intention is mediated by participants’ brand awareness. 3. Methodology In this section, we will explain the research design and methodology of the research. 3.1. Research Design To test the research model (Figure 1) we conducted two types of analysis. First, moderation analysis (Model 1, 5000 samples) to test the influence of advertising disclosure on influencer credibility moderated by influencer type (H1 and H2). Then, simple mediation analysis (Model 4, 5000 samples) to test the mediation effect of brand awareness between influencer credibility and purchase intention (hypothesis H3, H4, H5 and H6) with the help of Process v3.15 macro in SPSS v.26 (Hayes 2018). Mediation and moderation analysis represent a statistical method used in much business and social science research (Memon et al. 2018) in order to test a hypothesis about how an independent variable (variable X) transmits its effect on a dependent variable (variable Y) through a mediator (variable M) and a moderator (variable W) (Hayes 2018, p. 78). J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022, 15, x FOR PEER REVIEW 8 of 22 dependent variable (PURCIN). Those paths are analyzed as direct and indirect effects of INFCRED on PURCIN. The direct effect analyzes the effect of the independent variable INFCRED on the dependent variable PURCIN, without the mediator variable, while the indirect effect measures the effect the mediator (BRAND) has on the relationship between the independent variable INFCRED and the dependent variable PURCIN (path c’, Figure 1). Path a (direct effect of INFCRED on BRAND) and path b (direct effect of BRAND on PURCIN) are also analyzed. According to Zhao et al. (2010), if the indirect effect ab is greater or smaller than zero and statistically significant, then mediation is present. Therefore, moderation analysis was appropriate to test if advertising disclosure and influencer type affected credibility, while simple mediation analysis was the appropriate solution to test whether brand awareness transmits its effect between influencer credibility and purchase intention in our research. Figure 1. Research model. 3.2. Data Collection and Measurement For the purpose of conducting research, we chose a convenience sampling method. The sample consisted of students from Croatian University North. University North is the regional university in north-western Croatia and is the newest university in Croatia, dating from 2015, and today has approximately 4500 students. An online questionnaire was sent by mail to students of all departments in December 2021. The choice of this age group of respondents was justified by the fact that young people constitute the dominant groups of social media users. In 2019, 18% were 18–24 years old, 32% were 25–34 years old and 19% were 35–44 years old (Johnson 2022). Moreover, the use of social media by these users has become a habit (Gottfried and Shearer 2016). We collected data from 371 respondents in Croatia. Four respondents answered that they did not use social media networks and three were missing data so they were excluded from further analysis. A total of 364 respondents were included in the final analysis. The measurements for defined constructs in the research model were derived from the existing literature (Table 1). Table 1. Survey items and measurement. Purchase Intention (Kim et al. 2008; Dabbous et al. 2020) Likert scale 1 to 5, where 1 is “I do not agree at all” and 5 is “I completely agree”. PURCIN1: Do influencer posts on social media encourage you to buy and try a recommended product/service? PURCIN2: Do you actually buy products/services used and recommended by influencers? PURCIN3: Do you intend to buy a product/service recommended by an influencer in the future? PURCIN4: Do you recommend products (or services) to others, used and recommended by influencers? PURCIN5: When you choose between the products (or services) among the competition, do you base your decision on the influencer’s recommendation? Figure 1. Research model. Our research model for testing the moderation consisted of two dichotomous variables; sponsorship display status (SPONS-independent variable) and influencer type (INFLTY- moderator variable) and one continuous dependent variable, influencer credibility (INFCRED). Through this model we addressed further research questions: (a) Will different advertising disclosure (displayed vs. not displayed) increase influencers’ credibility? (b) Does influencer type (celebrity vs. micro-influencer) strengthen the relationship between advertising disclosure and influencer credibility? J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276 8 of 21 The mediation model consisted of one independent variable (influencer credibility— INFCRED), one dependent variable (purchase intention- PURCIN) and one mediation variable (brand awareness—BRAND). Through this model we addressed a further research question: (c) “Is there a statistically significant relationship between influencer credibility (independent variable) among the student population and purchase intention (dependent variable) and is this mediated by brand awareness (mediator)? To confirm the mediation effect of brand awareness, in a simple mediation model there are two pathways by which an independent variable (INFCRED) can influence a dependent variable (PURCIN). Those paths are analyzed as direct and indirect effects of INFCRED on PURCIN. The direct effect analyzes the effect of the independent variable INFCRED on the dependent variable PURCIN, without the mediator variable, while the indirect effect measures the effect the mediator (BRAND) has on the relationship between the independent variable INFCRED and the dependent variable PURCIN (path c’, Figure 1). Path a (direct effect of INFCRED on BRAND) and path b (direct effect of BRAND on PURCIN) are also analyzed. According to Zhao et al. (2010), if the indirect effect ab is greater or smaller than zero and statistically significant, then mediation is present. Therefore, moderation analysis was appropriate to test if advertising disclosure and influencer type affected credibility, while simple mediation analysis was the appropriate solution to test whether brand awareness transmits its effect between influencer credibility and purchase intention in our research. 3.2. Data Collection and Measurement For the purpose of conducting research, we chose a convenience sampling method. The sample consisted of students from Croatian University North. University North is the regional university in north-western Croatia and is the newest university in Croatia, dating from 2015, and today has approximately 4500 students. An online questionnaire was sent by mail to students of all departments in December 2021. The choice of this age group of respondents was justified by the fact that young people constitute the dominant groups of social media users. In 2019, 18% were 18–24 years old, 32% were 25–34 years old and 19% were 35–44 years old (Johnson 2022). Moreover, the use of social media by these users has become a habit (Gottfried and Shearer 2016). We collected data from 371 respondents in Croatia. Four respondents answered that they did not use social media networks and three were missing data so they were excluded from further analysis. A total of 364 respondents were included in the final analysis. The measurements for defined constructs in the research model were derived from the existing literature (Table 1). Because of the research context, some measures were adjusted. We used a 5-point Likert scale for three constructs; INFCRED, BRAND and PURCIN. Variables SPONS and INFLTY were dichotomous. We measured advertising disclosure variable (SPONS) as 0 = not displayed and 1 = displayed. Further, variable influencer type (INFLTY) was measured as 1 = celebrity, 2 = micro-influencer. At the beginning of the questionnaire, in the introduction part, we asked students to remember the moment when, thanks to the influencer’s posting on social media, they became aware of a particular product (or service) brand that the influencer advertised on social media, which we will call (product/service X) and to bear in mind that recalled product or service X when answering all questions. J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276 15 of 21 advertising disclosure and influencer credibility. The results of the research show a positive and statistically significant relationship, adding a new body of knowledge in the field of influencer marketing. The results of this study also replicate the previous research, contributing to a better understanding of the relationship between the credibility of an influencer, customer brand awareness, and purchase intention, thus addressing the gap stated in previous research (Sokolova and Kefi 2020;AlFarraj et al. 2021;Pick 2021;Vrontis et al. 2021;Masuda et al. 2022) and adds to new knowledge in this dynamically developing area of marketing activity. Our research results are in line with previous research conducted in the field of influencer marketing. The results confirm that influencer credibility has a positive and significant influence on brand awareness. Further, brand awareness has a positive and significant impact on purchase intention, and influencer credibility affects purchase intentions of respondents. The research results indicate that influencer credibility is something brand managers should consider when creating a brand marketing strategy since brand awareness created through influencers’ traits significantly affects participants’ purchase intentions. In addition, in communication policy (such as advertising disclosure), they should use various activities to increase brand awareness, because it affects the purchasing intentions of consumers in two ways: directly influencing them and indirectly increasing the effectiveness of the influencer’s credibility. The research results are particularly valuable in the context of the surveyed respondents, who were students. The rise of social media users will continue in the future and having in mind all the disruptions the pandemic brought, many people forcedly went online, especially students, who started learning online almost overnight. This continuous online activity, especially among students, leads to changing habits, from using books to e-books, from shopping in the store to shopping online, etc. This trend will continue and purchasing behaviors will change in line with this trend, therefore influencer marketing will certainly gain more attention in future research since this is a market worth billions of dollars. 7. Limitations and Future Research The research was done on a convenience sample, and future studies might be conducted on a representative sample. Further, this study was conducted during December 2021. At that time, the university offered online classes due to pandemic measures; conducting this online survey during the COVID-19 pandemic and collecting answer was not easy since the motivation of students to fill out questionnaires was found to be low, so this may have impacted the results. Therefore, we perceive motivation of students as a limiting factor. A second limiting factor one can perceive in the study design, where we did not address a specific product or a service or conduct an experiment with stimuli, but respondents had to remember a previous situation when, thanks to the influencer’s posting on social media, they became aware of a particular product (or service) brand that the influencer advertised on social media and had to bear in mind that situation when answering all questions. However, this also can be perceived as an advantage since De Veirman and Hudders (2020) state that the results sometimes may differ depending on the type of product. Addressing only one specific product in a research study may limit generalization of research results. A final limiting factor can be seen in the research instrument of the influencer credibility construct. Since some researchers had more than five items for testing this construct, further research could be conducted bearing in mind more than five items have been used to test the influencer credibility construct. In future research it would also be useful to analyze influencer credibility traits of trustworthiness, expertise, similarity and/or attractiveness and which are significant, since some previous studies found that some credibility traits have not the same significance on purchase intention. J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276 16 of 21 This study analyzed the impact advertising disclosure has on perceived influencer credibility and the overall effect of influencer credibility in the context of the direct and mediated impact of brand awareness on purchase intention. In future research, it would be advisable to check the significance of individual dimensions of credibility. It would also be interesting to see how these relationships are differentiated by different product categories or age groups. Future investigation could be done to analyze whether there are differences among young customers regarding influencer credibility and the use of preferred social network (for example Instagram vs. Facebook) in creating brand awareness. As constituted by source credibility theory, influencer credibility represents the main factor of influencers’ effectiveness. Brand managers will have to focus more on other factors that might have a bigger influence on the credibility of the influencer, such as psychological factors in terms of wishful identification (Hu et al. 2020) and product fit (Martínez-López et al. 2020). Author Contributions: Conceptualization, V.S. and I.M.; methodology, V.S. and M.B.-K.; software, V.S.; validation, V.S., I.M. and M.B.-K.; formal analysis, V.S.; investigation, V.S. and M.B.-K.; resources, M.B.-K.; data curation, I.M. and M.B.-K.; writing—original draft preparation, V.S., M.B.-K.; writing— review and editing, I.M. and M.B.-K.; visualization, M.B.-K. and V.S.; supervision; I.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. Funding: This research was funded by University North, grant number UNIN-DRUŠ-22-1-4. Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable. Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study. Data Availability Statement: All data are shown in article and supporting data wasn’t created. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. Appendix A Table A1. Key variables analyzed in previous studies. Independent Variable Mediators Moderators Dependent Variable Consumer Group Authors Sponsorship disclosure type (material compensation, financial compensation, not sponsored) Advertising recognition, skepticism, source credibility Message sidedness Brand attitude Amazon’s Mechanical Turk participants De Veirman and Hudders 2020 Influencer credibility Brand trust, brand satisfaction, brand image Purchase intention, price premium Student population, Germany Wiedmann and von Mettenheim 2021 Celebrity traits trust Cosmetic purchase Young millennials (Hassan et al. 2021) Advertising content value trust in branded posts Brand awareness, purchase intention Amazon’s Mechanic Turk (mturk) participants (Lou and Yuan 2019) Endorser type (celebrity, influencer) Wishful identification, perceived similarity, credibility Productendorser fit Attitude towards the ad, product attitude, purchase intention Students and adults collected through Amazon mtur (Schouten et al. 2020) Advertising disclosure (statement or hashtag) Influencer credibility Purchase intention University students in Germany with Instagram account (Weismueller et al. 2020) Customer/influencer review Trust Purchase intention University students from Jakarta, Bogor and Tangerang (Dwidienawati et al. 2020) Consumer website relation (strength, homophily, and source credibility) Consumer attitudes E Wom effectiveness Students and employees at a private university based in Belgrade (Kim et al. 2018) J. Risk Financial Manag. 2022,15, 276 17 of 21 Table A1. Cont. Independent Variable Mediators Moderators Dependent Variable Consumer Group Authors Gender and behavioral segmentation variables Dimensions for effective online influencers Young consumers (Tsen and Cheng 2021) Sponsorship disclosure (explicit/implicit/no disclosure), influencer credibility, and brand credibility Message credibility, attitude toward advertising, purchase intention. E WOM intention Study on Instagram usage (Lee and Kim 2020) Influencer–brand fit Influencer credibility Behavioral intention Facebook and Instagram users (Breves et al. 2019) YouTube ads Brand awareness and brand image Purchase intention Millennials (Febriyantoro 2020) Brand signature, brand logo Brand attitude, Awareness of consumers Brand reputation, brand performance Customers from UK who booked a hotel within past year (Foroudi 2019) Brand credibility Brand image Social media Purchase intention Spanish consumers who use social media networks daily (Martin-Consuegra et al. 2018) Influencer net-work involvement (IN), influencer motivation (IM), authentic communication style (IA) and quality of contributions (IR) Influencer product fit, influencer-audience fit Influencer followership, brand awareness, purchase intention 3 types of influencers and their followers (Renchen 2020) Social networking sites advertising Brand awareness Consumer purchase decision American university students in Cyprus (Nofal et al. 2020) Influencer attributes Perceived characterization Purchase intention All YouTube followers in South Korea with experience (Masuda et al. 2022) Social media marketing Brand awareness Purchase intention Thai people who bought something online within 6 months (Kosakarika 2020) Social media format (Instagram stories vs Facebook wall) Age, gender Ad attitude, ad intrusiveness and loyalty intentions Millennials vs. non millennials (Belanche et al. 2019) Source credibility User attitude Social media influencer following behavior (some ifb) Intention to visit Millennials—American millennial (1981–2001) some users with an active Instagram account (Han and Chen 2021) Ad informativeness, ad persuasiveness Brand awareness Poster category Purchase intention Participants from the Credamo sample pool (online survey agency) age 18–above 50) (Tan et al. 2021) Disclosure language Advertising recognition Disclosure i.d. 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