Abstract:
Influencer marketing is a trending social media marketing technique that focuses to drive a brand‟s
message to a larger market using influencers. Since the human beings are rapidly entering to the
cyber universe in this digital technological era, such social media marketing can easily be continued
with many organizational operations, including the arrival in the target market, the launch of
products, handling customers‟ orders and sales etc. Despite the growing trend of influencer marketing
technique around the globe, the impact of influencer marketing on purchase intention of Sri Lankan
customers is an under researched area. The aim of this study was to investigate the impacts of
influencer marketing on purchasing intention of cosmetics products of Instagram users in Sri Lanka.
Based on the source credibility and source attractiveness model factors of influencers that can affect
for the Instagram users‟ purchase intention are trustworthiness, expertise, likeability, similarity, and
familiarity of influencers were considered as independent variable of this study. 200 Instagram users
aged between 20 to 34 years who follows social media influencers in purchasing goods were selected
using snowball sampling technique as the sample of this study and the response rate was 66%. The
data were collected using a structured questionnaire. Descriptive Statistics, Correlation Coefficient
Analysis and Simple Linear Regression Analysis techniques were used for statistical analysis using
SPSS version 25 software. The study revealed that influencer marketing impacts on purchasing
intension of cosmetic products in Sri Lanka. Further, it revealed that the trustworthiness of the social
media influencer is the mostly affecting factor towards purchase intention of cosmetics products.
Hence, this study recommends the marketers who use influencer marketing technique to pay attention
on all the source credibility factors lending special consideration on the trustworthiness of the social
media influencers. The findings of this study will contribute to the marketing literature in particularly
to the social media marketing.
Keywords: Followers; Influencer marketing; Instagram; Purchase Intention; social media influencers
