Impact of Social Media Influencers on Online Fashion Apparel Purchasing Intention in relation to the Female Gen Y and Gen Z Consumers in Sri Lanka: Mediation Effect of CBR and Moderating effect of IT Literacy

Abstract

Businesses are being urged to use cost-effective marketing strategies such as influencer marketing to increase brand visibility in the fast-expanding ecosystem of IT technology and social media platforms. Notably, social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram have proven to be efficient methods for communicating product information to customers. This study highlights the effectiveness of influencer marketing on social media platforms, with a focus on younger consumers impacted by actual social media experiences. This study investigates social media's substantial influence on customer motivation during the purchasing process, emphasising the difficulty of finding reputable influencers for product promotion. It focuses on the fashion apparel industry, investigating the function of social media influence and its impact on online garment purchasing intentions. As a quantitative research strategy, it used a structured questionnaire to obtain primary data from the sample. Finally, it was able to collect 401 responses by adopting a convenience sampling method, which falls under non-probability sampling. This study illustrates a positive correlation between social media influencer reputation and buying intention, providing marketers with insights into ways to identify influencers in the competitive e-commerce apparel business. While the current study focuses on online retail, future research could investigate comparable phenomena in other online services, such as banking and insurance.