Impact of Social Media Influencers on Purchase Intention of Fashion Apparel Industry: A Youtube Perspective.

Abstract

The rapid growth of digital media has transformed the way consumers discover, evaluate, and purchase fashion apparel products, and YouTube has become one of the most influential platforms driving consumer behavior. This paper focuses on studying the effects of YouTube fashion influencers on consumers' purchase intentions in terms of the following characteristics: argument quality, source credibility, kindness, entertainment, informativeness, credibility, and perceived value. With increasingly higher levels of fashion-related consumption taking place in online environments, understanding how the content created and published by influencers drives purchase intention has become a highly important strategic issue for brands, marketers, and digital content creators. This research is grounded in consumer behavior theory, persuasion models, and social influence frameworks and adopts a mixed-methods research design. The quantitative phase includes a structured online survey distributed among frequent YouTube fashion influencer viewers. It captures measurements of consumers' perceptions regarding the attributes of influencer content and resulting purchase intentions related to clothing, accessories, handbags, and other fashion items. The qualitative phase entails short semi-structured interviews that delve into deeper psychological insights, such as trust formation, emotional connection, and personal motivations driving purchasing decisions after exposure to influencer-generated content. It is expected that the results will show that influencers with high source credibility, strong argument quality, and authentic kindness increase viewers' trust and confidence, which in turn increases purchase intention. Furthermore, entertaining and informative content is expected to enhance engagement, perceived value, and emotional connection, all of which act together as catalysts for purchase decision-making. The findings will offer pragmatic insights for fashion brands in developing more efficient influencer marketing campaigns and how to optimize collaborations with YouTube creators. In sum, this study makes theoretical and practical contributions by extending influencer content characteristic knowledge in the realm of digital marketing literature and providing actionable recommendations on how consumer engagement and purchase intention can be improved in the fashion apparel industry.