‘TikTok Made Me Buy It’: Investigating Brand Influencer Impact on TikTok Users’ Purchase Intention

The TikTok social media platform has experienced exponential growth in the last few years and has become very popular among Gen Y and Gen Z users. Small and large businesses have started relying on the services of brand influencers for promotion and content marketing. Previous social media influencer literature has not examined whether brand influencer impact (defined as the persuasive influence exerted by influencers to impact purchase decisions) on TikTok environment can translate into purchase intention through engagement and loyalty. Using the lens of the social influence theory, the purpose of this study was to develop a model that investigates whether brand influencer impact predicts purchase intention directly, and whether engagement and loyalty explain any additional indirect effects on TikTok. Using a sample of 425 Generation Y and Generation Z TikTok users, data were collected and analyzed using partial least squares equation modeling. Results of this study showed that higher brand influencer impact on TikTok had a strong positive direct effect on purchase intention, while engagement and loyalty did not significantly mediate this relationship and gender did not moderate it. Theoretically, this study extended the social influence theory by showing that TikTok’s influencer impact operates on a direct path rather than through influencer engagement. The practical implications of this study showed that TikTok marketers should prioritize content that triggers immediate product response within the feed such as short demonstrations and call to action over gender targeting or engagement metrics as primary indicators of sales impact.