Do food influencers shape consumers’ decisions to co-create and purchase organic food brands? The role of homophily

Purpose Food influencers play an important role in shaping consumer behavior. However, little is understood about how food influencers affect brand co-creation and its subsequent effects on consumer purchasing intentions of branded organic food products. Therefore, this study cross-fertilizes the heuristic systematic model (HSM) with social presence theory (SPT) to investigate how content quality, credibility, and social presence of an influencer affect brand co-creation and purchasing intention of organic foods. Design/methodology/approach The study involved a sample size of 280 respondents who actively interact with Tanzanian food influencers on Instagram. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for data analysis. Findings The results indicate that content quality, credibility, and social presence influence brand co-creation. Besides, unlike content quality and credibility, the effect of social presence on brand co-creation is moderated by homophily. Additionally, brand co-creation impacts consumers’ purchasing intentions of organic food brands. Originality/value By integrating HSM with SPT, this study offers a novel understanding of how consumers make decisions to co-create and purchase in the food industry. Combining HSM with SPT enriches the explanatory power of the HSM’s dual-process framework by positioning social presence, along with credibility and homophily as heuristic cues and content quality as systematic cues in explaining consumer behavior in the food sector.