Do the importance of influencer‐ and customer‐generated content on social media affect willingness to pay more for potential customers?

Abstract The number of social media platforms and users have reached significant amounts. Users can interact with millions of other users by sharing their experiences and evaluations concerning the product/service they purchased on social media. This social media sharing can hence affect the purchasing decision processes of potential customers who are searching for information. Moreover, sharing from different sources such as influencers and customers may create differences in the importance the potential consumer attaches to the shared content. Since there is there is a gap in the existing literature, there is a need to explore these relationships. Consequently, we examined the relationship between information quality, willingness to pay more (WPM), source credibility, the importance attached to participant sharing (IPS), and the importance attached to non‐participant sharing (INPS). A questionnaire designed to test this relationship was administered to 323 participants; the obtained data was then analyzed using partial least squares path modeling. According to the analysis results, we noted the emergence of a positive association of information quality with INPS and IPS (posts by both customers and influencers). In contrast, we discovered a relationship of source credibility with INPS (posts by both customers and influencers) and IPS (posts by influencers). In addition, the positive association of INPS (posts by both customers and influencers) and WPM was confirmed. These main findings indicate that e‐commerce companies should persuade and encourage their customers and influencers to post from their profiles.