Consumer attitudes towards beauty bloggers and paid blog advertisements on purchase intention in Vietnam

The purpose of this research is to discover how paid blog advertisements influence consumer attitudes toward bloggers and the products they advertise will help marketers gain an understanding of how to use bloggers as paid sponsors to influence consumer purchase intent. Using online survey approach, the study recruited 280 participants through an online survey platform. Participants answered questions about their attitudes toward bloggers and their advertising when purchasing products. Furthermore, participants also answered questions about their perceived trust in the bloggers themselves as well as the authenticity and credibility of the brand-related communication received from bloggers. Moreover, they reported on their attitudes towards how deceptive they considered bloggers and their advertising to be. Finally, participants reported how paid blog ad-vertisements influence their purchase intent. The results indicated that the similarity between the consumer and the ad creator was an important psychological reason on why consumers were more likely to perceive ad-vertisements as more authentic, more affective, less deceptive and more credible, and they were thus more likely to trust the blogger. On the other hand, the importance of ad attribute (authenticity) does significantly influence consumers’ intention to purchase products advertised by a blogger. As consumers are becoming more skeptical of advertisements, blogs need to be entertaining and a pleasure to view. Not only does the con-tent need to be interesting, but also the design, flow and clarity of the blogs must also be considered important factors. In addition, advertising needs to be believable, credible and honest. In the online world, trust and credibility are still paramount in attracting consumers’ engagement; hence, promoting companies’ products and services through blogs can be an effective strategy to lower consumer skepticism barriers.