Social Media Based Fashion Opinion Leadership and Consumer Decision Making

Abstract

Fashion marketers have yet to comprehend the use of online influencers to utilize the influencers opinion leadership. This reseach investigates the relationships between Indonesian fashion online opinion leadership on Instagram and consumers behavioral intentions, i.e. intention to adopt new fashion and purchase intention. This research employs a quantitative survey with 219 sample of Indonesian respondents who follow either influencers of traditional celebrities or the non-traditional celebrities. The unit of analysis consists of two Instagram communities, one includes the followers of the traditional celebrities and the other one includes the followers of the non-traditional celebrities. Results show that online opinion leadership has positive relationships with consumers behavioral intentions. However, there is no significant effect of perceived fit of personal interest on the relationships between them. In addition, findings show that there are no significant differences in the resulting behavioral intentions between the followers of traditional celebrities and non-traditional celebrities. This research provides scholars and practitioners further knowledge on the use of opinion leadership from different types of online influencers on social media. This research also pioneers the studies on fashion online opinion leadership on Instagram and its effect on consumer decision making process within the Indonesian fashion market.