Content area
Full text
1. Introduction
As a channel offering unlimited access to a huge amount of information from all over the world, social media became part of its users' daily routine (Pentina et al., 2018). The growing numbers of social media users shaped marketing trends and strategies, and marketers started perceiving social media platforms as key channels to communicate and interact with customers (Bianchi et al., 2017). Few years ago, companies used to take advantage of the fame and social status of celebrities to promote their brands, but advancements in social media platforms led to an upward recognition of influencers (Xu (Rinka) and Pratt, 2018). Referred to sometimes as opinion leaders, social media influencers regularly share their daily life activities, skills, opinions and recommendations based on previous experience or expertise (Freberg et al., 2011). The unprecedented growth in the number of social media influencers' followers steered the emergence of influencer marketing as a rapidly growing marketing orientation in many industries. Fashion is one of the industries in which influencer marketing has been widely considered in recent years.
With the progressively increasing demands in the fashion industry, shoppers are becoming more fashion-sensitive and purchasing behaviors are highly influenced by fashion trends (Lang and Armstrong, 2018). Such trends are most commonly led by fashion influencers (FIs) or leaders (Park and Kim, 2016). FIs are personalities with large number of followers on social media who generate fashion content and have the power to persuade followers' opinion and purchase behavior. They are considered as new players in the fashion industry as they attract consumers with strong interest in stylish fashion items (Park and Kim, 2016). Though, so far, there is a lack of literature tackling the relationships between fashion leadership and consumer's purchase intention (Lang and Armstrong, 2018).
This study aims to bridge this gap in literature by examining factors affecting attitudes toward FIs and their impact on brand attitude and purchase intention. De Veirman et al. (2017) suggest that a key struggle for marketers is to identify influencers that will better suit their advertising campaign; such influencers should possess powerful convincing skills in order to persuade followers. Different assessment indicators have been used to evaluate influencers in prior literature, namely number of followers, number of likes, number...