Antecedents of Chinese millennial consumers'

purchase intentions via following influencers'

recommendations: the sports goods industry

MASTER
THESIS WITHIN: Business Administration
NUMBER OF CREDITS: 15 hp
PROGRAMME OF STUDY: International Marketing
AUTHOR: Xiangru Meng & Yue Xiao
TUTOR: Jalal Ahamed
JÖNKÖPING May 2020

Ⅱ
 Master’s in Business Administration
Title: Antecedents of Chinese millennial consumers' purchase
intentions via following influencers' recommendations:
the sports goods industry
Authors: Xiangru Meng & Yue Xiao
Tutor: Jalal Ahamed
Date: 2020-05-18
Key terms: Influencer marketing, Chinese millennials, TTI model
purchase intention, sports industry.

Abstract

Background

In recent years, with the rapid development of e-commerce in China, various online
media and digital social platforms have attracted more users, and online marketing
has gradually replaced traditional marketing strategies. The increasing frequency of
online shopping by Chinese consumers, especially millennials, presents a huge
opportunity for influencer marketing. Influencers with large number of followers
have been used by many companies as online marketing tools. In order to deeply
explore the reasons why Chinese millennial consumers buy products recommended
by influencer, the Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI) was used as the theoretical basis
to form the theoretical framework of this study after a review of academic literature,
and various factors such as Chinese culture, different industries, personal influence
stream, environment and society environment should be considered.

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to study the factors that affect Chinese millennial
consumers to follow the recommendations of influencers in purchasing sports
products through Taobao, Tik Tok or weibo.

Method

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In this quantitative research, 362 Chinese respondents' data were collected through
online questionnaire. The data of the 302 sample were tested and analyzed by SPSS
software since they were referring to Chinese millennials who have followed
influencers and purchased sports products online.

Conclusion

According to the data analysis results of this study, behavior control, self-efficacy
and attitude will actively promote Chinese millennial consumers' purchase intentions
of sports products that recommended by influencers. Finally, social norms are related
to Chinese culture, which may explain why this hypothesis do not significantly
predict consumers' online purchase intentions. Therefore, this study could provide
suggestions for influencers and online retailers to help them improve the online
purchasing intention of Chinese millennial consumers, and thus improve the sales
and profit. On the other hand, this study can help consumers understand the
marketing strategies of influencers in order to achieve the purpose of helping them to
make more rational consumption.

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Acknowledgments

This thesis lasted nearly 4 months from topic selection, argumentation method,
determination of theoretical basis to data collection. During this memorable period,
the authors would like to express their gratitude to Professor Jalal Ahamed for his
guidance, help and encouragement. Professor Jalal is knowledgeable and
academically prudent, he is conscientious during his working hours and provides
timely help and guidance to the authors in some of his personal time. At the same
time, His Suggestions and comments are the basis for the efficient and high-quality
completion of the thesis, which is very important and necessary for the authors.

Moreover, the authors would like to show thanks to Jönköping university for
providing an international learning environment, and the professors and students of
the Jönköping international business school for their consideration and helping.

Finally, the authors would like to thank their families and friends for their
understanding and encouragement, as well as the 362 anonymous respondents who
participated in the survey for their support.

Jönköping University, May 2020

Xiangru Meng Yue Xiao

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Table of contents
1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Background....................................................................................................... 1
1.2 Problem discussion............................................................................................5
1.3 Research purpose...............................................................................................6
1.4 Research question..............................................................................................7
1.5 Delimitation.......................................................................................................7
1.6 Definition of key terms......................................................................................8
2. Literature Review and Hypothesis Development.......................................................9
2.1 Influencers and influencer marketing................................................................9
2.2 Millennial consumers and purchase intention................................................. 12
2.3 The theory of triadic influence........................................................................ 14
2.4 Personal stream of influence........................................................................... 18
2.5 Social stream of influence............................................................................... 20
2.6 Environmental stream of influence..................................................................21
3. Methodology............................................................................................................ 24
3.1 Research strategy, approach, and method....................................................... 24
3.2 Data collection.................................................................................................25
3.2.1 Population.....................................................................................................26
3.2.2 Sampling.......................................................................................................26
3.2.3 Procedure for data collection........................................................................27
3.3 Measures..........................................................................................................27
3.4 Data analysis....................................................................................................28
3.5 Data quality..................................................................................................... 29
3.6 Data limitations............................................................................................... 31
3.7 Ethical considerations......................................................................................32
4. Results...................................................................................................................... 33
4.1 Sample characteristics..................................................................................... 33
4.2 EFA, validity and reliability............................................................................ 36
4.3 Correlation analysis......................................................................................... 39
4.4 Crosstab analysis............................................................................................. 40
4.5 Hypothesis testing........................................................................................... 41
5. Discussion................................................................................................................ 45
5.1 Chinese millennial consumers and influencer marketing................................45
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 5.2 H1: Self-efficacy and purchase intention........................................................ 46
5.3 H2: Behavioral control and purchase intention............................................... 48
5.4 H3: Social norm and purchase intention......................................................... 49
5.5 H4: Attitude and purchase intention................................................................51
6. Conclusion................................................................................................................53
6.1 Answers to the research question.................................................................... 53
6.2 Contribution of the study.................................................................................54
6.3 Implications..................................................................................................... 54
6.4 Limitations.......................................................................................................56
6.5 Suggestions for future research....................................................................... 57
7. References................................................................................................................ 58
8. Appendices............................................................................................................... 74
Appendix 1. Questionnaire in both Chinese and English......................................74
Appendix 2． The analysis from SPSS output..................................................... 82

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Figures
Figure 1 . The Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI). Adapted from Flay, Snyder &
Petraiti (2009).................................................................................................16
Figure 2 . The simplified version of TTI. Reprinted by authors. Adapted from
Flay, Snyder & Petraiti (2009)....................................................................... 17
Figure 3 . Geographic location distribution of all the respondents...................... 34

Tables
Table 1 Frequency of the demographic profile..................................................... 36
Table 2 KMO and Bartlett's Test..........................................................................37
Table 3 Structure Matrix....................................................................................... 38
Table 4 Reliability Statistics................................................................................. 39
Table 5 Pearson Correlation Between Independent Variables and Intention........40
Table 6.Table 6 Chi-Square Tests between variables and the amount of online
shopping sports products per month. Source: Calculated by author.............. 41
Table 7 Model summary of the regression...........................................................41
Table 8 Coefficients between independent variables and purchase intention......42

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1. Introduction

This section will introduce the development and importance of e-commerce, the
overview of digital marketing, in the case of influencer marketing, and investigate
what caused Chinese millennial consumers would like to follow influencers’
recommendations and have the purchase intention about sports products. Moreover,
after the discussion of the research problem, the purpose is presented as well as the
delimitation, and definitions of key terms.

1.1 Background

Since the 1990s, the rise of online business activities has brought new consumption
methods to people and also caused changes in business models (Strader & Shaw,
1997). Since the end of the 20th century, due to the evolution of the Internet and the
rapid update of information technology (IT), the traditional marketing model and
marketing strategy has been changed, e-commerce has come to a new stage (Opreana
& Vinerean, 2015). The advancement of IT has accelerated the development of e-
commerce, the great convenience and time saving digital consumption environment
provide consumers more shopping options and value-added services, thus the number
of consumers shopping online is gradually increasing (Bo & Benbasat, 2007). Online
shopping is gaining more and more consumers and providing more opportunities for
enterprises to build relationships with customers and boost sales on digital platforms
(Jiang et al., 2015). Meanwhile, digital marketing includes multiple marketing
channels, which are suitable for all industries to market any brand and product online,
and digital marketing is increasingly used by businesses and marketers (Sudha &
Sheena, 2017). As a part of contemporary culture, social media is a kind of
marketing tool utilized by almost all marketers in the 21st, it helps enterprises create
new marketing opportunities and customer value, improves their competitiveness and
relationship with customers (Constantinides, 2014). Enterprises and marketers
promote products or brands by partnering with social media celebrities (high traffic,
influential bloggers, or online celebrities), which is an active marketing approach
(Constantinides, 2014). The interaction between marketers and customers through
social media digital platforms can improve the user engagement of digital marketing
(Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014).

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Although social media marketing has advantages in terms of time and marketing
costs, market coverage, and customer relationships (Kirtis & Karahan, 2011),
influencer marketing could increase communication in specific areas between
products and customers through various social media platforms (Sudha & Sheena,
2017). Furthermore, as one of the multiple online marketing channels, influencer
marketing provides a good bridge between consumers and brands. Influencers helps
consumers identify products, lead consumers engagement, and support consumers
communicate with brands, which refers to the promotion of products or brands by
famous and influential people (Byrne, Kearney & Macevilly, 2017). Marketers could
identify new online celebrities and promote brands or products through collaboration
with online influencers (Gillin, 2007). In addition, influencers can be an ordinary
person or group from anywhere in the world (Sudha & Sheena, 2017). Enterprises
and marketers need to choose influencers who recognize and understand their
company's brand and products to assist them in developing potential customers
(More & Lingam, 2017). By June 2019, according to China Internet Network
Information Center (CNNIC), China has the world's largest number of netizens of
854 million, the number of online shopping users is 639 million, which means
China’s digital marketing environment has great potential for development. Based on
data from eMarketer (2019), there are more than 600 million people visited video
sharing platforms via accessed social media, for instance, Tik Tok, Taobao Live
broadcast, WeChat, and Weibo, etc. in 2018 in China. Thus, it can be seen that
China’s network society has laid a good foundation and provided a platform
for influencer marketing.

Nevertheless, Chinese netizens are not allowed to access any foreign social media
sites and web pages, there are strict restrictions on Internet access to foreign
countries in mainland China (Artem, 2018). One of the reasons that local social
medial platforms are thriving in China is because China restricts foreign websites
and social media entering the Chinese market. Due to the lack of international market
competition, the domestic social media platforms and influencer marketing in China
are developing rapidly and expanding in scale. Due to the Fragmented development
of social media in China, which is different from the development characteristics of
western media, China’s E-commerce market scale expanded further in 2018, with a
turnover of 31.63 trillion CNY (4.178 trillion EUR), far larger than that of other

2
countries, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce (Shan, Chen & Lin,
2019). According to CNNIC (2019), the fundamentals of the influencer economy
have continued to expand, and influencer marketing has become the new highlights
of online sales growth. With the growth of influencers' followers and their increasing
influence, influencers are widely recognized by followers (Booth & Matic, 2011).
Moreover, the “2018 China influencer economic development report” (CIE report)
argues that as of May 2018, the total number of followers of Chinese Internet
influencers reached 588 million, and the number of influencers with more than
100,000 followers had increased by 51% compared with last year. Above all, in such
an environment, the influencer economy arises at the historic moment in China.
Since the influencer marketing in China develops rapidly with each passing day, the
study about influencer marketing in China is particularly important.

More important, it's worth mentioning that 53.9% of followers were under the age of
25. With their growing purchasing power, millennials are able to exist on the Internet
as Internet users and consumers (Monica Bernardi, 2018). Due to millennials use the
Internet and social media more frequently, they are the most likely to be the
recommended group of potential customers (Jade, 2018). Those who born between
1979 and 1994 are defined as millennials (Smola & Sutton, 2002). However, Dimock
(2019) stated that 1996 was the last year to mark the birth year of millennials.
Therefore, in this research, we defined “Millennials” as people who are born in the
last two decades of the 20th century. One of the characteristics of millennials is that
they have grown up in the digital age (Kaifi et al., 2012), they are more familiar with
digital technologies, communication, and social media. Prensky (2001) argued that
millennials are the digital natives rather than digital immigrants because they are the
first generation who spend their whole life in the digital environment. Millennials are
active on social media platforms, using and sharing all aspects of their lives and work
(Bolton et al., 2013). This generation has grown up with socializing and online
shopping, and their usage of E-commerce increases along with the disposable
personal income (Smith, 2011). Since the influence on social media by millennials,
the research could be a harbinger of how millennial consumers’ purchasing
intentions affected by influencers. From a global perspective, 83% of netizens access
the Internet to know information related to personal hobbies or interests, and 52% of
them pay attention to information related to sports (Pew, Pew Internet and the

3
American Life Project, 2011). Furthermore, Porter (2001) mentioned out that the
popularity of the Internet has reduced the competitiveness of enterprises, and
enterprise managers should integrate the Internet with functional products, distinctive
sports, and personalized online services as the innovative marketing method to
enhance competitive advantage.

In addition, with the rapid development of the Internet and online shopping, sports
products have become more standardized and structured, and consumers are more
likely to get information about sports products, which include sportswear, sports
nutrition, low-calorie food, energy drinks, fitness tools or equipment and outdoor
sports supplies (Maja Štrbac, 2011). The products recommended by influencers
include not only fashion and food industries, high-tech products, maternal and child
products, and kitchen products, but also sports products. In terms of the global sports
market, sportswear and sports equipment account for the largest share of the sports
product trade, and Asia is competitive in these products (Andreff & Andreff, 2009).
As the living standards of Chinese residents improve, and the pace of life is getting
faster and more stressful, more and more people would like to participate in various
sports to create a healthier lifestyle, thus the demand for sports products is increasing.
After the Chinese government (State Council of China) issued the "opinions of the
state council on accelerating the development of sports industry and promoting sports
consumption" in October 2014, sports goods have gradually become mass consumer
goods, China has introduced many industries positive policies in order to promote the
development of the sporting goods industry. Therefore, China's sports product
industry has great development potential.

Furthermore, Porter (2001) mentioned out that the popularity of the Internet has
reduced the competitiveness of enterprises, and enterprise managers should integrate
the Internet with functional products, distinctive sports, and personalized online
services as the innovative marketing method to enhance competitive advantage. With
the rapid development of the Internet and online shopping, sports products have
become more standardized and structured, and consumers are more likely to get
information about sports products, which include sports apparels, sports nutrition,
low-calorie food, energy drinks, fitness tools or equipment and outdoor sports
supplies (Maja Štrbac, 2011). However, there is no relevant research on influencers’

4
recommendations of sports goods that have an influence on Chinese millennial
consumers. Therefore, this study has positive reference significance for Chinese
millennial consumers and influencer marketing in the case of the sports products
industry.

1.2 Problem discussion

With the development of the Internet, E-commerce and digital social platforms,
traditional marketing methods have become a thing of the past, and marketing
methods that adapt to the development trend need to be restudied (Constantinides,
2006; Porter, 2001; Thomas, 2007). E-commerce refers to the Internet as a trading
platform, which not only reduces the operating costs of enterprises but also improves
the efficiency of transactions (Strader & Shaw, 1997). Several studies have pointed
out that online communication between marketers and consumers is likely to
influence consumers' purchasing behavior (Godes et al. 2005). The most effective
advertisements are usually recommendations from trusted people, such as family,
friends, or influential people, and 92% said they would believe in people's
recommendations (Nielsen, 2015.b). Local (2014) researched that 88 percent of
consumers believe in other's post-purchase comments, which are similar to follow
the advice from friends or family. Although electronic word-of-mouth and product
recommendations have been widely studied, the influence of third parties on
consumers can help to understand the process of consumption (Jacobsen, 2018). As
we mentioned earlier marketers increasingly pay attention to the social media
influencers since influencers play the role of middleman, which can improve the
frequency and efficiency of marketing communication (Nikola, 2019). Due to the
group of influencers’ followers is constantly growing, more and more influencers
have emerged on the Internet, and the influence of them has continued to grow
(Booth & Matic, 2011).

Influencers communicate brand or product information and build relationships with

customers in the way of showing the authentic, original, and shareable content in the
form of video, which is more intuitive and visual (Booth & Matic, 2011). Therefore,
influencers can provide consumers with the latest and most detailed sports product
information and recommend products to consumers. This study focuses on the role of
influencers in the consumers’ purchase process of sports products, which is not

5
common in existing studies. This study takes sports products as an example and
establishes a theoretical link between the purchase intentions of Chinese millennial
consumers and the recommendations of influencers. In other words, consumers buy
sports products mainly because they yearn for health. According to the Ministry of
Commerce of The People’s Republic of China, E-commerce is becoming an
important way to boost national consumption. Since millennials are an essential
constituent part of the development of E-commerce, their consumer intention and
behaviors are influenced by technology profoundly, even their life and work (Bennett
et al., 2008). As millennials become more aware of doing sports and the desire for a
healthy life, they have a growing demand for sports products. However, sports goods
in digital marketing and influencer marketing have not been tested in developing
countries.

There are many studies on consumers’ attitudes, purchase intentions, and behaviors
online and offline. The theoretical basis and methods of the study are mainly
regarding the formation process of consumers’ purchase intention. However, the
Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI) has not been used to study consumer behavior in
the context of influencer marketing. In order to address this gap in academic research,
TTI can efficiently test how millennial consumers interact with influencers, thereby
understanding why consumers have the willingness to purchase sports products
recommended by influencers. For analyzing the factors that impact consumers’
purchase intention, and how are they influenced by the recommendations of the
influencers, there was a relevant literature review in the following chapter.

1.3 Research purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate the reasons that Chinese millennial
consumers have purchase intentions via following influencers’ recommendations in
the case of the sports goods industry. There are three main aspects of the research,
which are the influencer marketing in China, millennial consumers’ purchase
intentions of the sports goods, which were conducted to fill the gaps in the literature.
Since social media platforms develop and blossom recently, there are several
researchers focusing on investigating the millennial consumers’ buying intentions
and behaviors. For instance, Hwang and Griffiths (2017) examined that millennial
consumers’ purchase intention could be affected by their value perceptions, which

6
are utilitarian, hedonic, and symbolic. Woods (2016) explore the way of the brands
use influencer marketing on social media to promote their products. However, there
is no consensus on how influencer marketing impacts millennial consumers’
purchase intentions, which leads to a lack of generality. In addition, according to the
influencer marketing report published by Iresearch (2018), as an emerging sector in
the influencer marketing field, the sports industry is rising rapidly. This study can fill
in the gap of Chinese influencer marketing, especially in the sports goods industry,
and it is beneficial for entrepreneurs and marketers to adapt marketing strategies.

This dissertation uses quantitative research to analyze how millennials in China are
affected by influencer marketing to purchase the products and services of the sports
industry. To explore the results of a universal significance for this phenomenon and
make our contribution, TTI helps us explore the factors that affect consumer’s
intention to follow someone’s advice or recommendation, thus TTI has a
contribution and is meaningful of research the Chinese consumers’ purchasing
intention. Besides, through our research, we can put forward our feasible suggestions
on the development of influencer marketing, research on Chinese millennials, and the
development of the sports goods industry in China.

1.4 Research question

Based on the Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI), what are the antecedents that affect
Chinese millennial consumers’ purchase intentions of sports goods by following
influencers’ recommendations?

1.5 Delimitation

The study was completed within the following delimitations:

1. The research focuses on China.

2. Respondents were randomly selected from among Chinese millennials, who are
the age from 20 to 40, demographics were not limited by gender, ethnicity or religion.

3. The questionnaire was designed to focus on the sports products industry.

4. This study takes TTI on a theoretical basis.

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1.6 Definition of key terms

Influencers are the person who exhibits a certain combination of desirable attributes,
such as personal credibility, expertise, personal charisma, or network attributes
(Bakshy, Hofman, Mason & Watts, 2011). They usually are good at seeking out
information, sharing ideas, and giving recommendations with others (Keller & Fay,
2016).

Millennial consumers are the person who is defined as a user of a product or service
and born between 1980 to 1999 by Kantar (2017). In this thesis, a millennial
consumer will be referred to as the person whose consumer behavior is affected via
influencers.

Sports goods have two branches, respectively sports service and sports product
manufacturing industry (Rosen, Mohs & Davis, 2014). The sports product
manufacturing industry is the main part of the Chinese sports industrial structure,
including sports products and health care products (Wang, 2017). Sports service as
the main sports industry, includes fitness entertainment, competition performing,
intermediary and other related industries (Zhang, 2019)

Tik Tok is a music creative short video social application, which is based on a 15-
second music short video and live video streaming (Yang, Zhao, and Ma, 2019).

Weibo is China’s largest microblogging service (Yang et al., 2012). Users can share
brief real-time information through the attention mechanism.

Taobao Live is a live streaming platform launched by Alibaba, which is positioned

as consumer live streaming. Users can watch and buy the products that including
makeup, childcare, and so on (Alibaba, n.d.).

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2. Literature Review and Hypothesis Development

This section shows the theories and theoretical concepts that are related to this
research. Firstly, influencers, influencer marketing, and the situation of influencer
marketing in China have been defined and explained, especially in the sports
industry. Moreover, the definition of millennial helps to define the object of analysis,
and the characteristic of millennial consumer behavior is essential to understand the
context in which this research emphasis. It explains the background and constructive
answers to this research. Additionally, from the perspective of behavior related
theories, which include the development of the Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI), it
provides a theoretical basis for this research, and three streams of influence and
three influence levels of causation of variables have been explained and the
connection of the TTI and purchase intention in influencer marketing has been stated,
while the four hypotheses have been developed.

2.1 Influencers and influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is one of the most recent developments within the marketing
domain (Sammis, Lincoln & Pomponi, 2015). It based on the development of
Internet-technology. On one hand, the Internet is a system that has distinguishing
features, such as multi-dimensional channel, the ability of aggregating distribution,
transaction, and communication, can both coexist and compete with traditional
retailing channels (Burke, 1997). On the other hand, the development of technology
makes media landscape from traditional tools into social media. Traditional tools,
such as newspapers, radio, and television, are about delivering a message. However,
social media is about setting a connection with the audience and communicating with
(Drury, 2008). In recent decades, more and more consumers use large networks
available to obtain product information on social media (Stubb, Nyström, &
Colliander, 2019). The boom in social media platforms allows them to reach a large
number of consumers (Keller & Berry, 2003). Moreover, influencer marketing is a
way to promote a product or brand through influencers sharing information from
sponsored brands with their followers on social media (Sammis, Lincoln & Pomponi,
2015). Influencer marketing drives a brand to a bigger market by influential
individuals and affects making purchase decisions, rather than only targeting a group
of consumers (Woods, 2016). The paid partnerships between brands and influencers

9
are usually realized in the form of sponsored content, which results in financial gains
(De Veirman et al., 2017). Therefore, influencer marketing is seen as a low-cost and
efficient tool, which also can gain wide reach, no matter in industries and among a
wide range of people (Brown & Hayes, 2008). There was a study did by the
marketing agency Tapinfluence with Nielsen in 2016, which found that return on
investment (ROI) of influencer marketing was 11 times high than traditional types of
digital marketing (Nielsen & Tapinfluence, 2016). Another study found that
influencers have up to 22 times conversations about consumption, including product
recommendation, every week, which is double than normal consumers (Berger &
Keller Fay Group, 2016). Besides, more than 82% of the consumers were likely to
follow influencers’ recommendations, which can also prove that influencers have
more impact than normal people. According to Taobao 2019 influencer marketing
sales data, the live streaming transaction on Taobao exceeded 200 billion Yuan
(25.57 billion Euro), which shows a strong momentum of influencer marketing
development in China.

Moreover, influencer marketing is not a type of marketing aimed at spreading

promoted content (Lee, 2018). On the contrary, it is trying to promote advertising
content, which is created or re-created by influential individuals, called influencers,
who are regarded to be more reliable and believable than traditional marketing
advertisers (Hesse, 2015). Compared with other kinds of celebrities of the world, the
influencers are the groups who are kind of opinion leaders, neither celebrities nor
totally normal people (Johansen & Guldvik, 2017). Thwaites examined that
empirically, the validity of influencer was related to their personalities, a theory that
presents that the information contained by visual image is more than that contained
by explicit verbal arguments, the qualities of influencer are likely to pass onto the
endorsed product (2012). However, in practice, the choice of influencer should
match up with the relevance of the brand currently (Thwaites et al., 2012). When the
relevance fits with brand-image or brand-association, influencers will enhance the
connection with existing associations for those brands (Till, 1998). It is accurate
because of the popularity of influencers, consumers inevitably will have advance
knowledge and prior attitudes toward influencers before they purchase, until they
think that the image of influencer is favorable, then they will accept the
recommendation of the influencers (Mccormick, 2016). Therefore, it is important to

10
have a positive attitude toward influencers. However, in the other studies, the
consistency of consumer self-image and influencer-image plays a significant role in
the endorsement process (Choi and Rifon, 2012). Today, influencers post their daily
lives and a variety of forms of advertising online, and interact with their followers by
re-posting or replaying their followers’ comments. Even many influencers have
communications with their followers by online live on social platforms (Mccormick,
2016).

Furthermore, influence marketing has grown with the development of the Internet in
the world, there is no obvious difference in China. According to the Insight Report
on China’s Internet influence marketing development (CIIMR), (2018), there are
more than 588 million followers of influencers until May in 2018, a year-on-year rise
of 25%. The number of influencers who have more than 100,000 followers keeps
increase, up by 51% over the same period of the last year. The head influencers who
have more than 1 million followers increased to 23%. One of the reasons for the
growth of influencers is the increase of followers. In Chinese marketing, influencer
marketing went through three different stages of development. The first one is
around 1997 to 2003, represented by network writers. At that time, influencers used
humor, special, and different way from popular literature, adored by many people. In
the influence marketing 2.0 era, the Influencers not only won the approval of the
followers but also can achieve economic benefits. Since 2016, it comes to the 3.0 era,
which is with the development of Internet technology, platforms, and E-commerce,
the emergence of the group-effect phenomenon (Li, 2017). Huang and Liang (2017)
described that there are four trends in the 3.0 era of influence marketing: video-trend,
specialization-trend, diversification-trend, and platform-trend. Facing these trends,
one of the challenges is that followers have iterations, which different generations
have various preferences (Li and Wu, 2016).

According to the CIIMR (2018), with the huge increase in the number of influences
in China, the fields involved in influencer marketing are also expanding, not only in
the fields of content creation and fashion, but also in the professional fields, such as
medicine and law. Traditional entertainment fields still dominate influencer
marketing. The percentage of entertainment category reached 29.7% of the total.
However, the sports field is a newly emerging field, and it increased sharply.
Because of the rapid growth of influencer marketing, it promotes the development of

11
the sports industry. Millennials pay more attention to sports activities and advertising
than previous generations, which has a big impact on their acceptance of different
consumption patterns and the development of the sports industry (Güney & Sangün,
2017)). The consumption attribute of millennials has been changed via the awareness
of chasing after health, sportsmanship, and safety (Rugimbana, 2007). Based on the
above analysis, the influencer studied in this research is the person who is popular in
the sports industry and has at least 100,000 followers on three Chinese social major
networking platforms (Taobao, Tik Tok, and Weibo).

2.2 Millennial consumers and purchase intention

The ages of millennials are between 26 to 41 years old (Smola & Sutton, 2002).
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research report, millennials are more
diverse on race than other previous generations (National Bureau of Economic
Research, 2010). The salient characteristics of millennials are that they have grown
with digitalization (Kaifi et al., 2012). However, in recent decades, China has
followed a five-year-plan, with economic and social development taking five years
as a phase, so the definition of millennial in China is slightly different (Zhao, 2018).
Kantar (2017) conducted a series of surveys of residents in sixty Chinese cities and
concluded that millennials share common characteristics with China’s 80s and 90s
generations via research on lifestyle habits and consumer behavior. Thus, in this
research, the Chinese millennials were born from 1980 to 1999. A report from the
Chinese Nation Bureau of Statistics presents, there are more than 400 million
millennials in China, and they are the most educated Chinese generation as so far
(Jingxing, 2018).

For decades, Pew Research Center has been worked on measuring the public attitude
to key issues, recording and analyzing the difference between different demographic
groups. They called these kinds of differences as the generation gap. As the results of
the Pew’s research shows, different generation can be affected by world events,
technological, economic and social shifts so that they can shape their own world
value (Dimock, 2019). People’s social values, attitudes, and preferences may be
affected by social shifts, including war, political ideology, technical innovation, and
social upheavals (Schewe & Noble, 2000). Then, these social shifts occurred in all
generations’ childhood experiences and daily life, leading them to develop different
values and demographic characteristics (Young and Hinesly, 2012). With the

12
development of technology, especially the Internet, millennials are influenced by it
every moment. Therefore, they are self-confident and open-minded to use technology
to improve their ability, productivity, and creativity (Tanner, 2010). Due to the
growth of the millennial generation is accompanied by the development of high-tech,
they also called digital natives, which is the key difference of millennials from the
other generations (Bess & Bartolini, 2011). They grow up with mobile phone,
computers, e-mail, social media, and so on (McMahon & Pospisil, 2005). Thus,
millennials are more receptive to different forms of marketing. We believe that they
have a cohort effect, which can influence all aspects of their lives (Pew Research
Center, 2010). Considering the importance of technology to millennials, and the
importance of millennials to marketing, the research into the consumer behavior of
millennials is crucial.

Accordingly, mobile technology almost permeates into every aspect of millennials’

life. The patterns of consumption of millennials are influenced by mobile technology
too (Young & Hinesly, 2012). Due to the penetration of digital-tech and social media,
the lives of millennials are highly integrated with social networks. Because of
technological innovations, millennials have been more adapted materialistic and
consumer culture than previous generations (Bakewell and Mitchell, 2003). However,
from a consumer behavior perspective, what are the factors that cause differences
from millennials than other generations? In marketing, involvement is described as
personal importance, relevance, and stimulating interest. The level of consumer
involvement is related to personal factors, product factors, and environmental factors
(Blackwell, Miniard, & Engel, 2006). Millennials have already proved that they are
different from other generations, which means their consumer behavior with social
media or mobile tech is different too.

Considering the characteristics of Chinese millennials, researchers have been on

consumer behavior for over half a century with early work on types of purchase
styles (Jarratt, 1996). As a result, some consensus has been reached on stable
consumer behavior and style. In order to figure out that what guides the people
during the decision-making process, it is essential to have a better understanding of
the view of consumer behavior. Consumer behavior analysis is often used in many
industries to analyze the common behavior and choice patterns among different
consumer groups during the decision-making process (Rugimbana, 2007).

13
Millennials are identity-conscious, and they are more likely to be influenced by
brand status, the feeling of brand promotion, and the consistency of self-image and
brand-image (O’Cass and Frost, 2002). Particularly, during the digital area,
millennials are seen as the experienced consumers, who are more likely to boycott
commercial advertising rather than descriptive advertising, which is usually used in
influencer marketing (Gauzente and Roy, 2011). Thus, it is important to customize
information and consistent with the nature of consumer involvement for marketers in
contacting millennials (Eastman et al., 2014). Many millennials worship influencers
and idolizing them is a normal part of influencer’s identity development, according
to Pew Research Center. Millennial consumers can be found that their intentions are
affected by self-complacent and self-concept (McCracken, 1989). At the same time,
Kelman’s (1956) social influence theory described that consumers affected by others
along the way from compliance, identification, and internalization. Once they want
to gain favorable reactions from others, they will accept their influence, then
obedience will occur (Mccormick, 2016). Under this influence, consumers will seek
professional information for influencers, if they think the influencers have enough
knowledge then they will follow influencers’ recommendations.

2.3 The theory of triadic influence

Some previous theories have been used to explain and predict the behaviors of
individuals, for example, Fishbein & Ajzen (1975) mentioned that Theory of
Reasoned Action (TRA) is mainly about the decision-making process and used to
understand how the attitude toward behavior and subjective norms affect individual
behaviors. Based on the TRA, Ajzen (1991) found that the perceived behavioral
control could also influence people’s behaviors, thus the Planned Behavior Theory
(TPB) was originally developed from the TRA, which means behavioral intentions
are influenced by the attitude toward behavior, subjective norms and perceived
behavioral control, and intentions can predict behaviors. However, the different
features and usage of products in various industries, consumers' purchase intention
and behavior will change with personal characteristics, social and environmental
factors. Since this paper aims to study the factors that influence consumers' online
purchase intention of sports products, multiple earlier studies and scientific evidence
have shown that sport is one of the major components of a healthy lifestyle, and sport
has positive effects on physical health and mental health (World Health Organization,

14
2003). Therefore, a theory that helps explain the causes of human health-related
behaviors (HRBs) will be needed.

Flay & Petraitis (1994) integrated the proximal theory of HRBs, such as the TPB
(Ajzen, 1985, 1991) and the ultimate and distal concept of HRBs (McKinlay, 1992),
then developed a comprehensive theory for analyzing and explaining some health-
enhancing behaviors, namely the Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI). Flay and
Petraitis stated that human behaviors will be influenced by decisions or intentions,
and the TTI provides a 3 × 3 frameworks with three streams of influence and three
influence levels of causation of variables ultimately affect decisions or intentions,
which means human behavior can be influenced by personal, social, and
environmental streams, and each stream has three levels of influence and predictive
power, which are ultimate underlying causes, distal predisposing influences, and
proximal immediate predictors. Furthermore, Flay & Petraitis claimed that TTI is a
macro theory that covers the largest number of hypotheses that may affect human
behavior and intentions. Moreover, on the basis of the previous study, Flay, Snyder
& Petraiti (2009) developed TTI as a more complex and comprehensive theoretical
model, which could explain the influential and predictive factors of almost all
domain-related behaviors, and TTI linked the three streams of influence through
three degrees of influence and subdivided them according to the strength of the
causal relationship between each influential factor and the behavior.

According to the view of Flay, Snyder & Petraiti, since behavior is determined by
intention, the level of influence closest to intention is called the proximal predictor,
which means that the influencing factors at this level are mainly about the effect and
cognitions and have the strongest ability to predict and influence intention, including
self-efficacy, behavioral control, social normative belief and attitude towards
behavior, and these variables are related to each other (Ajzen, 1988). Self-efficacy is
the perception and control of behavior (Schwarzer et al., 2016), and it can predict
intention and behavior, while the predictors of expectation and evaluation have an
impact on self-efficacy (Maddux, Norton & Stoltenberg, 1986). Furthermore, some
behavioral trigger factors associated with the proximal predictors, which are at the
level of distal influence. In the distal impact level, the first distal variable is close to
the proximal direct prediction level, which is mainly about evaluations and

15
expectancies, such as including self-determination, skills, motivation, perceived
norms, values, and knowledge. The second variable refers to social or personal
relationship related to predicting intention and behavior, including self-awareness,
social skills, interpersonal relationships, others’ behaviors and attitudes, the
interaction with social institutions and information, which is in the proximal and
distal level variables predictors, compared with less effect on the willingness and
behavior. These variables at the distal level had less impact on intention and behavior
than the proximal predictors. The weakest influences with intentions and behaviors
are those underlying factors that are at the ultimate level, which are the most stable
factors and not easily changed, such as a person's interpersonal characteristics, social
situation, cultural environment, and other variables beyond an individual's control.
The relationship between the ultimate factors and behaviors is usually mediated by
distal predisposing influences and proximal immediate predictors. As shown in
Figure 1.

Figure 1. The Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI). Adapted from Flay, Snyder & Petraiti (2009).

Additionally, Flay, Snyder & Petraiti argued that TTI applies to predict and test the
determinants of human behaviors, and every human behavior is the result of a
combination of factors. For instance, TTI was used this as a theoretical basis to
explain the behavior of high school students use the Internet in Taiwan (Lin et al.,
2018), and the factors that influenced the young generation's addictive behaviors in

16
western countries and China (Bavarian & Saltz, 2014; Chun, 2015; Wang et al.,
2018), while the social influence factors such as price, promotion and access to
tobacco have significant effects on young people's tobacco use (Flay, 1999), and the
information and knowledge conveyed by the media to young people as well as the
perceived behavioral control can affect adolescents' intentions and behaviors (Peter
& Ekeanyanwu, 2010). Cho et al., (2013) stated that human thought and behavior are
the embodiment of their cultural connotation. Since China is a typical developing
country with a long history of culture, and Confucius is the founder of Confucianism.
Thus, Confucius' thought had a great influence on the thought of sports into Chinese
people’s daily life. From the Chinese people's interest in martial arts in the past to
modern national fitness, Chinese people have always attached great importance to
health and sports (Tan, 2018). In addition to the analysis about the Chinese
millennial consumers' personality, the influence of China's unique social situation
and cultural environment is the important influence stream of the intention and
behavior, so TTI has more advantages as a theoretical basis for investigating factors
affecting the buying intentions of Chinese millennial consumers. In order to explain
and analyze the factors that influence Chinese millennials to follow influencers’
recommendations to generate purchase intention analogs to previous researches, and
to see the influential factors more clearly, this study will simplify the original
theoretical model of TTI and use the simplified version of TTI. Assuming that the
behavior is caused by the decision or intention, and the decision or intention is
determined by self-efficacy, behavioral control, social normative beliefs ， and
attitudes toward the behavior, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The simplified version of TTI. Reprinted by authors. Adapted from Flay, Snyder &
Petraiti (2009).

17
2.4 Personal stream of influence

The personal stream of influence begins at the stable biological predispositions, such
as testosterone levels, and personality characteristics, such as the famous Big Five:
openness to experience, consciousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism
(Flay, Snyder & Petraitis, 2009). Biological predispositions which have a direct
influence in a personal stream, including one’s self-view, general ability, and specific
behavior. Self-view, such as self-esteem, plays an important role in making decisions
because whatever decisions people make, they must respect and affirm a good image
of themselves (Dunning, 2007). Secondly, one’s general ability, for example, self-
control, will get affected in social networks (Haws, Bearden & Nenkov, 2012).
Tangney et al. (2004) mentioned that the main points of self-control are resisting
temptation, keeping self-discipline, and breaking habits. However, consumer
research presents that there is a direct relationship between the consumer situation
and self-control (Wilcox & Stephen, 2013). Thus, in a specific consumption situation,
the consumer’s self-control will be affected, which will eventually affect his/her
consumer behavior. The third influence factor is specific behavior, for example,
one’s aspiration and ability of perception. People desired goals and want to achieve
sensory ability via agency thinking and using those pathways. Self-efficacy is the
expectation of people’s ability to perform a particular action in a specific situation
(Wang, Yeh & Liao, 2013). People who have a higher self-efficacy have more
confidence in performing the response or task (Bandura, 1986). Therefore, the
specific behavior converges on the sense of self-efficacy. Driven by TTI, multiple
component interventions targeting millennials’ personal context, in order to influence
their self-efficacy. The efficient intervention needs begin with millennial’s proximal,
such as individual level (Flay, Snyder & Petraitis, 1994).

This personal stream of influence is on behalf of the characteristics of millennials’

biological makeup and general personality, which affect their self-efficacy towards
influencers (Egbe, Egbochuku, Meyer-Weilz & Petersen, 2017). According to the
view of Petraitis et al. (1995), distal influences of millennials refer to the affective
state related to not only internal motivation to purchase, including self-esteem, self-
satisfaction, and stress, etc., but also behavioral abilities, including refusal skills and
coping skills (Chun, 2015). Ajzen (2002) stated that self-efficacy has a strong
correlation with perceived control. Thus, perceived control can influence purchase

18
intention by self-efficacy directly or indirectly (Li, Xu & Xu, 2018). Once the
consumer has greater perceived control, their self-efficacy can be also improved and
leading a stronger purchase intention online (Li, el at., 2018). With the rise of
China’s sports industry expansion of the national sports fever in China, millennials’
self-efficacy has been strengthened, so they have a greater demand for sports
products and a stronger intention to buy them (Zhang, 2017). Hence, the following
hypothesis can be developed:

H1. Self-efficacy positively influences the purchase intentions.

TTI is a meta-theory, including but not limited to, expectancy-value theory (Feather,
1982), the theory of social cognitive (Bandura, 1986), and the theory of planned
behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1988). Therefore, TTI includes many theories with a single
framework to form a pluralistic theoretical framework. In the personal stream of
influence, Flay, Snyder & Petraiti (2009) explained that behavioral control directed
at specific behavior, including a person’s intention or the perceptual skills to engage
in the behavior. Rick Snyder (2002) noted such perceptual skills the expectation of a
person’s behavioral intention and the method to obtain the expected goal. However,
in the TPB of Ajzen (1991), behavioral control reflects the resources you will need to
perform a behavior and perform the required belief.

Behavioral control contains two parts. The first one is that behavioral control reflects
the availability of the resources when an individual needs to do a behavior. These
resources may include access to money, time, and other resources. The second part
reflects the individuals’ confidence in their own behavioral abilities, which is also
mentioned in Bandura’s (1977) theory of social cognitive. Behavioral control is
consistent with self-efficacy. Behavioral control refers that individuals can rationally
synthesize information to control their behavior (Chen, 2007). Hence, people with a
higher degree of behavioral control tend to have stronger behavior disposition to
engage in certain behaviors (Ajzen, 1991). Therefore, when people have more
resources such as information, time, money, access, and so on, their behavioral
control will grow, and their purchase intention will increase as well (Kim & Chung,
2011). In China, more and more online shopping platforms are booming, the
behavioral control to consumers is affected by more and more factors, thus affecting
consumers’ intention (Khan, Liang & Shahzad, 2015).

19
Armitage and Talibudeen (2010) show that behavioral control is the most powerful
factor affecting behavior change. In the study of Greaves et al. (2013), it also
presents that behavior control is a factor directly predicting intention and behavior.
Because individuals have increased confidence and a sense of control over their
executive actions, they are willing to use additional efforts to ensure the successful
execution of specific actions. Sports good, especially in the health products used to
people’s daily life, it is necessary for consumers to understand its specific
information. After receiving the resources, consumers compare the risks and benefits
under a given situation and choose the risks under different choices (Tiijuis et al.,
2012). Therefore, when consumers are influenced in their consumption behaviors,
information, process knowledge, and other resources about sports products will help
consumers perceive the risks and benefits, thus influencing their consumer behaviors.
Therefore, the following hypothesis can be postulated:

H2. Behavioral control has a positive effect on purchase intentions.

2.5 Social stream of influence

From the theoretical content of the TTI, health-related behaviors are influenced by
people's social norms and beliefs in the micro-social environment and social
conditions (Flay & Petraitis, 1994). In the social environment, the interpersonal
bonding, others’ behaviors and attitudes, the motivation to comply, and the perceived
norms are microscopic factors that impact people generate the beliefs of social norms,
thus generate the intention or decision of behaviors, and finally forming specific
behaviors (Flay, Snyder & Petraiti, 2009). From the view of Flay, Snyder & Petraiti,
firstly, the social situation has the farthest relationship to behavior in the influence
flow, it is stable and not under the control of people, but it also has the most lasting
effect on behavior. Secondly, in the distal influence level, the variables of
interpersonal bonding and others’ behaviors and attitudes are about social or personal
nexus, it is more rational; the motivation to comply and the perceived norms are the
influences variables about evaluations and expectancies, which are more emotional.
Emotional value is defined as the beneficial feeling obtained from emotion (Sweeney
& Soutar, 2001). Consumers produce emotions related to purchasing after thinking
(Bagozzi & Lee, 1999). There is a positive interaction between perceived value and
purchasing intention, which is consumers’ purchase intention will become strong

20
after they feel the emotional value matched with their own value, which means
follow the development trend of the social environment (Dodds et al., 1991). Thirdly,
the social normative beliefs are the proximal variables about effect and cognition that
directly influence behavior, and they are the most volatile predictors. Social
psychology uses social norms to explain the formation of individual behavior
(Belgiawan et al.,2017).

The United States, Japan, and China share almost the same dimensions of social
norms, but due to cultural differences, Chinese people pay more attention to the
internalization of social norms (Ling, Zheng & Fang, 2003). For example, in Chinese
culture, gift-giving is a common way to meet with social norms and demonstrate
one's social status, and it can help create and manage harmonious human
relationships (Yang & Paladino, 2015). Giving gifts to important people is one
reason why Chinese young consumers are willing to shop online (Manrai, 2019).
Moreover, the steady growth of Chinese consumption is related to the social situation
and the continuous improvement of the social system (Chen, 2018). Young people's
consumption behavior is easily influenced by social situations (Lu et al., 2003).
Young people care about the opinions of their family and friends and trust their
advice, and young people are more likely to be influenced to purchase online by
important or influential people (Sin, Nor & Al-Agaga, 2012). People expressing their
opinions and sharing their shopping experiences on social media are a way for people
to increase their trust in products and brands (Chu & Choi, 2011), and if someone
can guide people's opinions about brands or products on the internet can effectively
increase the online sales of goods (Jabr & Zheng, 2014). Social norms play an
important role in consumers' purchasing decisions and intentions (Ozaki &
Sevastyanova, 2011). Therefore, the following hypothesis can be postulated:

H3. The social norm is positively correlated with the purchase intentions.

2.6 Environmental stream of influence

Environmental influence refers to the influential factors related to the cultural

environment on attitudes toward the behavior, such as interaction with a social
system, information or opportunity, value or evaluation, knowledge or expectation,
and other macro factors (Snyder & Petraiti, 2009). Culture is a process of gathering
thoughts and spiritual wealth. It can divide people into different groups (Hofstede,

21
1980), and it is also an important factor affecting consumers' purchasing behavior. In
the process of changing the cultural environment, the consumption habits of their
consumers will change accordingly. According to the view of Snyder & Petraiti, in
TTI's environmental stream, the cultural environment is at the level of ultimate
underlying causes, which is a macro concept, and it is hardly affected by individuals.
Variables at the distal predisposing level of the environment include the nature of
people's interactions with social institutions (e.g., relevant policies, laws, religions,
etc.), the information or opportunities they gather from local culture (e.g.,
information and knowledge provided by the media, celebrities or influencers), the
evaluation and expectations of behavior, such as whether following the
recommendations from influencers’ is correct. Intuitive and effective product
information will promote consumers' online shopping behavior (Hong, Thong & Tam,
2004). Moreover, consumers often perceive higher expectations of services and have
satisfaction with products (Zeithaml, 1981). Finally, the variable of environmental
stream influencing behavior is mainly the attitude towards a specific behavior, and it
is also the proximal direct predictor, which has the strongest predictive power and it
is the most easily affected by other variables. If consumers lower their expectations
for services, the risk perception will decline as well thus they have positive attitudes
(Gummesson, 1981). Consumers' personalized needs and desire for communication
will directly affect their purchase intention (Wang, Yu & Wei, 2012). A person's
positive evaluation of behavior is a prerequisite for developing the intention (Raines,
2013), the expectations of the outcome of the behavior affect the attitudes, which
means the higher the expectation, the more positive the attitude toward the behavior
(Cheung & To, 2017).

Previous studies have demonstrated that attitudes are less likely to be changed when
the content of information is dispersed, whereas they are more likely to be changed
when the information is collected and received in a centralized manner (Smith et al.,
2008). From the perspective of psychology, individuals’ attitudes affect their
behavioral intentions (Murray, Wood & Lilienfeld, 2012). In the macro cultural
environment, attitudes to behavior are influenced by health concepts, knowledge,
expectations, and evaluation (Flay & Petraitis, 1994). In the context of Chinese
Confucian culture, people's attitudes towards specific behavior have their values and
expectations (Tan, 2018). According to many theorists, consumers’ attitudes have the

22
primary positive effect on whether consumers have the purchase intentions, and the
positive purchase intentions can be generated by the recognition of attitudes, thus the
attitudes are a part of person’s value system (Rosenberg et al., 1960; Fishbein &
Ajzen, 1975; Eagly & Chaiken, 2007; Dalege et al., 2016). Consumers’ attitudes
refer to the belief, emotion, and behavior of a particular object (Dalege & van Der
Maas, 2018). Moreover, in the digital environment of online shopping, the purchase
intention of the follower is positively correlated with the expectation of the product
recommended by the influencer (Jiménez-Castillo & Sánchez-Fernández, 2019). In
other words, the higher the expectations of followers for the products recommended
by those influencers, the stronger their purchase intentions. Due to the forms of e-
commerce and online consumers’ attitudes toward behavior are different in various
cultural environments (Tsai & Men, 2017). Hence, the following hypothesis was
proposed:

H4. The attitude is positively correlated with the purchase intentions.

Intentions can measure the degree to which people expect and work for a specific
behavior (Ajzen, 1991), which means the stronger the intention, the greater the
motivation for the specific behavior, and the greater the effort to achieve the
behavior. Although consumers' purchase intentions can be changed by many factors,
which can explain and predict the specific purchase behavior (Belgiawan et al.,2017),
as well as intentions can predict their online buying behavior (He et al., 2008; Taylor
& Laohapensang, 2009). Furthermore, consumers believe that the opinions of
influential people are credible, so they are willing to follow the advice of influential
people to make purchase decisions or create purchase intentions (Magno, 2017;
Wang & Yu, 2017). Thus, influential people on social media or other external factors
can influence consumer behavior obviously (Bao & Chang, 2014). Millennials use
the internet the most, they are a representative and consistent consumer group (Helal
et al. 2018), based on TTI, intentions determine behaviors, considering that Chinese
millennial consumers' intention to buy sports products online will change to different
degrees due to follow the influencers' recommendation, Chinese millennial
consumers' purchasing behavior will also be affected accordingly.

23
3. Methodology

Since this is a quantitative study, the data collection of this study will be collected
from Chinese millennial consumers through an online questionnaire survey. The
method of online survey increases the authenticity of the data of this study because it
can collect real information about consumers' online shopping. Moreover, the
measurement, scaling of the data collection, sampling approach, data limitations and
ethical considerations of the survey were stated in the following sections.

3.1 Research strategy, approach, and method

There are four main research philosophies: positivism, realism, interpretivism, and
pragmatism, which are important to understand that how to perceive, direct and
proceed the method and strategy in the right way (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill,
2008). Positivism, as a philosophy, adheres that only factual knowledge gained via
observation, including senses and measurement, is trustworthy (Ryan, 2018). In
positivism, researchers collect and analyze data objectively, and all the research
results can be observed and quantified (Ryan, 2018). Crowther and Lancaster (2008)
argue that, generally, positivism usually adopts a deductive approach. In this research,
it takes the fact as the center and analysis the fact objectively. The purpose of this
study is to predict, test and interpret with empirical methods. Therefore, as observers,
we are independent, and no personal opinions are involved during the process.

Epistemology is people’s belief in how to learn the world (Ryan, 2018). It consists of
two parts: objectivism and subjectivism. Objectivism thinks that there is only one
version of the truth that can be measured and observed with little intervention from
the researchers, regardless of the researchers’ perspective. By contrast, subjectivism
takes that reality is measured by people’s perceptions, experiences, and feelings
((Howell, 2013). In this thesis, consumer’s intention and influencer’s effect are truly
social phenomena and categories that are independent of social actors. However, to
distinguish the different philosophy research, it is essential to understand how
theories and conclusions were drawn from the data. There are two types of research
reasoning, inductive and deductive (Danermark et al., 2002). The main difference
between inductive and deductive reasoning is that deductive reasoning makes a
hypothesis and then checks it by observation, while inductive reasoning begins with
existing observations and develops into a theory (Daniel Miessler, 2019). In our

24
research, we have chosen this top-down approach, as we wanted to discover more
about more factors that affect Chinese millennials to follow influencers’
recommendations, besides, how influencers affect millennials’ purchase intention
through the TTI model and prove causality in our explain. Usually, with a deductive
approach, hypotheses were formed, and then collect data to test hypotheses (Trochim,
2006).

Influencer marketing and consumer behavior have both been popular research topics
(Ndubisi, 2007; Sudha & Sheena, 2017). Based on the TTI model, this research
indicated the antecedents that affect Chinese millennial consumers’ purchase
intentions of sports goods by following influencers’ recommendations. Since the
essential is important for the choice of the right research strategy (Flick, 2009), as a
research strategy, the quantitative method is deductive and objective and combines
with the natural science model (Bryman & Bell, 2015). Moreover, the quantitative
method has long been identified with positivist approaches to the philosophy
(Babones, 2016), and it aims to achieve research objectives through empirical
assessments involving numerical measurements and analytical methods (Babin &
Zikmund, 2016). In addition, compared with the qualitative method, the quantitative
approach included the use of numerical indicators, summarize, describe, and explore
the relationship among traits (McMillan & Wergin, 2002), which could help us to
test and verify the hypotheses with a structured approach. Therefore, in order to
achieve the purpose of the research, the quantitative research method is adopted in
this study.

3.2 Data collection

Based on the research from Saunders et al. (2007), a survey study is a popular and
common strategy for researchers to answer questions such as, what, where, how
much, and so on, and it can collect a large group of data in a cost-effective way. We
choose the questionnaire as a tool to collect data. Malhotra et al. (2007) mentioned
that the questionnaire as a structured, data-gathering survey of a population sample
was designed to extract specific information from respondents. The target population
of this research was required to fill out an online questionnaire based on
Wenjuanxing, which is a professional online questionnaire software, evaluation and
voting platform in China. To collect their opinions and ensure they could answer the

25
questionnaire without misunderstanding, the questionnaire was written both in
English and Chinese. Moreover, for the ethical consideration, this questionnaire
showed a clear and concise introduction of the research purpose and a promise of the
individual privacy to respondents. The questions of the questionnaire were measured
in the form of Likert 5-point-scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly
agree).

3.2.1 Population

Babin and Zikmund (2016) mentioned that the population is any complete group
whose members share some common characteristics. The planned target population
of this research should be the Chinese millennial consumers who had the experience
of purchasing sports products by following influencers’ recommendations. In
addition, considering the purpose of this research was only focusing on Chinese
millennial online consumers, and influencer marketing was growing fast and changed
rapidly, the respondents’ nationality is China but who live abroad are not included.
Because they are more likely not to have purchase experience in recent years in
China.

3.2.2 Sampling

To highlight the output of the study, samples are drawn from a list of population
elements, known as a sampling framework, which is often different from the actual
definition of the target population (Babin & Zikmund, 2016). According to the data
of CIIMR (2018), the number of followers of influencers on Taobao, Tik Tok and
Weibo increased by 25% compared with last year. Moreover, while the age
composition of influencers' followers is significantly younger, more than 80 percent
of them are born in the 1980s and 1990s, who are also millennials. Based on the data,
the influencer marketing has a good foundation in China, but this study needs data
from Chinese millennial consumers, who follow the advice of influencers and buy
sports goods online, so our target population and planned sampling have more
specific requirements.

Snowball sampling usually uses procedures to select some initial respondents and
then use those respondents to find other relevant populations (Babin & Zikmund,
2016). Since this study requires respondents' nationality, age, online shopping

26
experience with the influencers, the researchers randomly invited some WeChat
friends as a group of respondents to answer the questionnaire, after the first group of
respondents completed the questionnaire, they were asked to send the link of the
questionnaire to their friends who met the requirements of this study, the number of
people who fit the sampling framework snowballed. Therefore, snowball sampling is
efficient and cost-saving for this study. Besides, in this way, the sample selection
error could be avoided. However, since there is a high similarity among the target
population, some response bias and self-selection bias might arise. Thus, we decided
to collect at least 300 available samples to avoid bias by expanding the sample. In
sum, snowball sampling was the most appropriate sampling approach.

3.2.3 Procedure for data collection

Questionnaires designed to collect appropriate data will be completed by the

respondents themselves. Considering the WeChat, QQ, and Weibo are the main
social media in China, the questionnaire link shared on them, which will give
respondents access to the research questionnaire. In order to get better responses and
more respondents to help complete this research task, we also shared the
questionnaire link in the comments section of sports influencers’ social media
account. Promoting and sharing the link also can help eliminate bias from getting
responses from the people who may know each other or the people who may know
researchers personally (Abratt, 2019). The questionnaire begins with some
introduction of this research, describing the purpose of research and some specific
definitions, including influencer and sports products. Then the initial section of the
questionnaire included screening questions that can help to confirm eligibility for the
response. The respondents have to satisfy three conditions: (1) their age is between
20 to 40; (2) their nationality and current residence must be China; (3) they have
experience of following influencer’s recommendation to purchase sports products. If
the respondent does not meet any of the criteria, the questionnaire will be terminated.

3.3 Measures

The Chinese millennials’ online consumption of sports goods affected by influencers’

recommendations was measured by the following items: self-efficacy, behavioral
control, social norms, attitude, and intention, which were belonged to personal
stream, social stream, and environment stream respectively based on the TTI model.

27
To assess personal stream factors, self-efficacy and behavioral control were
investigated in this research. Firstly, Chun (2015) developed the measurement of
self-efficacy based on KYPS (Lee et al., 2007), who suggested that using three
parameters to measure self-efficacy: have the confidence to do something; believing
that the measures I take can solve my problem; my life can be better under my
management. In this research, we used five items to measure self-efficacy based on
the three parameters. Secondly, behavioral control was assessed through five items
related to information, time, and money (Chun, 2015). Thirdly, according to Flay,
Snyder, and Petraitis (2009), social norms are affected by family system and
conformity of social normative beliefs. In this research, we use five items to measure
social norms: friends or family’s suggestions, health awareness, aesthetic standards,
fashion trends, and group awareness of Chinese society. Fourthly, the attitude was
assessed by three indicators with the sentence structure “I think it is okay for
somebody to…” (Bavarian et al., 2014). In this research, we used five items to
measure attitude by using “I believe that I can get…, with the recommendation of
influencers”. Finally, Bavarian et al., used three immediate foreshadow items to
measure intention with a sentence structure “How likely is it that you will…”. In this
research, we used three items: self-improvement, social-personal nexus, and positive
expectation of the effect of sports, to measure intention with the similar sentence
structure “I will likely purchase sports products recommended by influencers for…”.
Each item was measured on a five-point Likert scale and the higher score represented
higher level.

3.4 Data analysis

The data analysis process includes (1) descriptive analysis, (2) reliability analysis, (3)
exploratory factor analysis, (4) correlation analysis, and (5) regression analysis. The
survey was established through Wenjuanxing, which is an online questionnaire tool
and distributed to social platforms (WeChat and Weibo) to collect data. Afterward,
the collected data in the questionnaire tool were uploaded to the SPSS software.
During the verification of our results, we need methods of data analysis to verify
whether the hypothesis is valid or not and answer the question raised in this study.
First of all, the descriptive analysis provides a convenient way to picture a
comprehensive overall analysis of the data (Stehlik & Babinec, 2017). After
obtaining data, such as mean, percentage, variance, and other data, the distribution of

28
each sample in the population could be clearly seen, which is convenient to analyze
the concentration and dispersion of basic information such as gender, education level,
and occupation.

Moreover, before any measurement or evaluation tool can perform data analysis, the
reliability of the data must be confirmed. Koo and Li (2016) pointed out that
reliability is a property of data that can be measured repeatedly. The reliability
analysis is not only a way to prove whether there is a correlation between the data,
but also a way to measure the consistency between the data. It mainly depends on the
Cronbach's alpha value, which is calculated by dividing the true variance by the true
variance plus the variance of error (Koo & Li, 2016). Therefore, the closer the
Cronbach’s alpha value is to 1, the stronger the reliability is. In addition, the Pearson
correlation coefficient R was used to test different hypotheses in the t-test (Malhotra,
2007). In another word, the t-test can find significant differences between two
samples or observed values (Choudhary, 2018). We selected the sampling adequacy
test of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) from SPSS to test whether it is suitable for factor
analysis. According to KMO, the value is between 0 and 1, and the value greater than
0.7 is acceptable (Jepson, 2010). Through the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA),
the validity could be tested, and then the new variable can be obtained by an
appropriate rotation method.

The basic model of the observed data will not affect the error rate of Varimax and
Promax rotation methods, because the most important factor affecting the results of
both is the correlation, and the error rate of the two types of rotation is close (Finch,
2006). Moreover, the results of the oblique rotation are more suitable for reflecting
factors with simple structure and high correlation degree (McLeod et al., 2001).
Therefore, Promax is suitable for factor analysis with large data volume and high
correlation, and it is faster than the calculation of orthogonal rotations. Furthermore,
whether the four hypotheses are accepted or not can be verified by multiple
regression analysis.

3.5 Data quality

Reliability is an important indicator of the consistency and replicability of the survey

results. CR and Cronbach’s Alpha is commonly used by many researchers to test the
reliability and evaluate the construct of the questionnaire, which can analyze the
29
accuracy of the data (Saunders at al., 2016). The pre-testing can avoid mistakes of
question phrasing in the questionnaire is clear and appropriate, and it can also test
whether the survey was feasible designed. Moreover, the data of a small number of
samples collected by the pre-testing can be analyzed for reliability and validity.
Therefore, we did the pre-testing before the formal distribution of the questionnaire,
and timely modified the question phrasing. Afterward, in order to ensure the
objectivity of the survey data, this study was conducted jointly by two authors, and
each step of the survey research was presented, which also contributed to the
reproducibility of the academic research (Saunders et al., 2016). Moreover, since the
respondents' errors will reduce the reliability of the survey results (Saunders et al.,
2016), potential respondents must answer three questions for avoiding the
inconsistent error with the purpose of this study, including nationality and current
residence, age, and online shopping experience of sports products. If potential
respondents do not meet the sampling standard, the questionnaire will be terminated,
which can effectively ensure the reliability of the survey results. Furthermore, since
this survey was conducted online, it is impossible to control the time and place for
respondents to participate in the survey. However, we believe respondents will
choose an appropriate time and convenient place to answer the questionnaire. In
addition, the length of the questionnaire will influence the accuracy and response rate
of respondents' answers (Saunders et al., 2016). Thus, this questionnaire only needs
about eight minutes to answer all the questions, which will not cause visual fatigue
and affect the results of the survey.

Validity refers to accurately reflecting the nature of the measured object through a
wide range of objective measurement methods and using appropriate measurement
methods for different types of research purposes (Saunders at al., 2016). A clear
indicator system helps to improve the coverage and scientific nature of the survey
results and helps respondents to see a well-structured questionnaire and understand
the questions. The Alpha coefficient can measure whether the problems of each set
of independent variables have good reliability (Saunders et al., 2016). On the one
hand, the structure validity is the ability to measure the problems in each dimension.
On the other hand, the content validity is that the questions in the questionnaire are
worded accurately and there are no excessively heavy overlapping measures, which
are easy to be understood by the respondents. Therefore, the questionnaire was

30
available in both Chinese and English, and the Chinese respondents could complete
the questionnaire without any language barrier. In addition, the Bartlett test and
KMO test can check the correlation and coverage of each independent variable, and a
value higher than 0.7 indicates a certain correlation between the measured
independent variables (sanders et al., 2016).

In the research, in order to ensure the reliability and validity of the survey data, this
study used questionnaire, a survey method common in the fields of economics and
sociology, and authoritative Likert scale in academic research to ensure the validity
of this survey (Saunders et al., 2016).In addition, since the double check of the
questionnaire questions and structure with the thesis supervisor and experienced
graduate students can guarantee the reliability and validity of the questionnaire
(Saunders et al., 2016), we cross-checked all the questionnaire items and asked the
thesis supervisor to review them.

3.6 Data limitations

Since this study was conducted among Chinese millennial consumers of online sports
products, we distributed the online questionnaire to collect data via some common
Chinese social media platforms, such as WeChat, QQ, and Weibo. However,
snowball sampling and online questionnaire distribution are difficult to control the
representativeness of the population, which may lead to biased survey results.
Furthermore, the respondents could not communicate directly with the researchers,
which may affect the reliability and validity of the questionnaire to some extent.
Most of the existing theories and scales are observed and summarized from western
culture, lacking relevance of Chinese culture. Since cultural influence plays an
important role in the TTI model. After carefully studying the applicability, feasibility,
completeness, and accuracy of the Likert scale, the researchers applied the five-point
Likert scale to this survey. However, the differences between traditional Chinese
culture and western culture may lead to the limitation of using the scale in the special
cultural background of China. Secondly, in order to ensure that the respondents'
understanding of the question is more accurate, the questionnaire was conducted in
both Chinese and English, indicating that there may be some limitations in the
translation of English words because some English words have several extended
meanings.

31
3.7 Ethical considerations

Scientific research must consider moral principles and ethical issues. In this research,
the respondents are voluntary, and without pressure and threatens. The questionnaire
complies with the principles of anonymity and confidentiality. The purpose of the
study is clearly stated on the first page of the questionnaire, and the results of this
survey will be used for academic research and not for any commercial or market
research. In addition, since Chinese millennials were the target demographic for the
study, thus the questionnaire was available in Chinese and English, which ensured
the respondents with different levels of English could fully understand the contents
of the questionnaire.

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4. Results

In this section, the quantitative results collected during the questionnaire survey
have been presented. The authors analyze and evaluate each hypothesis with the
results of SPSS statistical analysis. Firstly, sample characteristics are analyzed
through the results of descriptive analysis. Secondly, exploratory factor analysis
followed by reliability and validity tests to determine the item's consistency with the
research item and the measured variables, and whether the item's reliability for each
variable was good enough. Thirdly, after the factor is extracted, correlation analysis
will be conducted to determine whether the independent variables are positively
correlated with the dependent variable. Afterward, crosstab analysis and chi-square
tests verify the correlation between variables and items. Finally, the statistical value
of each hypothesis is analyzed through the results of multiple regression analysis,
and the explanatory ability of the dependent variable to independent variables is
studied.

4.1 Sample characteristics

A total of 362 respondents from online respondents who related to influencer

marketing participated in this study. Ideally, the target population should be the
Chinese millennials who have the shopping experience that follow the
recommendation from influencers. According to the purpose of this study, 60
respondents who did not fit the sample criteria, namely age range, nationality, and
the experience of following influencers to recommend online shopping sports
products were removed. 302 viable cases for this study were satisfactory. Via a
snowball sampling approach, all the respondents were from 32 provinces across
China, excluding Tibet and Macau. The respondents not only from Tier 1 cities,
including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, but also the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities
such as Taiyuan and Harbin. The geographic location is shown in Figure 3.

33
Figure 3. Geographic location distribution of all the respondents.

The majority of the 302 respondents were women (58%). Males represented 42% and
none opted to “other”. There were three options for respondents to accommodate the
complicated arguments of gender. In addition to biological males and females, we
added a third option “other”.

Our respondents are more educated (98%, versus 69.9% with bachelor’s degree,
26.8% with master’s degree, and 1.3% with PhD). In the sample, Chinese millennials
are considered well educated. According to CIIMR, 2018, the influencers are
increasingly educated recently years. According to statistics from 2018, the number
of influencers with a bachelor’s degree or above accounted for 77.6%, the
influencers who with a master’s degree or higher occupied 13%. Influencers, who is
with a high degree, can produce high-quality content to attract followers. Both
influencers and followers are well educated, which provides the basis for our
following analysis.

Nearly half of the respondents were employees (43.4%), followed by students

(32.1%). Based on the normal school promotion mechanism in China, some
millennials are still getting a college education or just entering the workforce. This
also explains why the proportion of students is relatively high.

The most frequently used social media, where respondents follow influencers
through, are Weibo (57.28%) and Tik Tok (56.95%). Because this question (Q7) is
multiple choice. The multiple-choice percentage is calculated by dividing the number
of times the option has been selected by the number of valid answers. Thus, 173
respondents chose Weibo, 172 chose Tik Tok, and 110 respondents chose Taobao. In

34
addition, 77 respondents gave other options where they follow the influencers, such
as Red who also popular social media in China.

59.93% of respondents follow one to three sports influencers through Taobao, Tik
Tok, or Weibo, followed by 21.19% of respondents who follow four to six
influencers. Remarkably, 28 respondents chose to follow 0 influencer.

For the frequency of checking the influencers’ news, around half of the respondents
were in the middle of frequent and infrequent. In general, Chinese millennials do not
always browse sports influencers’ posts. The results present that the millennials are
in general open-minded towards the sports influencers. The Chinese millennials
maintain a neutral attitude towards sports influencers.

As for the sports products recommended by the influencer, most respondents prefer
to follow sportswear (59.3%), fitness tools or equipment (45.4%), and low-calorie
food (41.7%). 14 respondents provided other options, for instance, fashion items for
sports. Because Q10 is also a multiple-choice, the calculation way is as same as Q7.

25.8% of respondents spend 50-100 RMB (6.4-12.8 EUR) on online sports products
each month, while 24.4% of respondents spend less than 50 RMB (less than 6.4 EUR)
and 101-300 RMB (12.9-38.4 EUR) on online sports products each month. The
demographic profile is shown in table 1.

35
Table 1 Frequency of the demographic profile.

4.2 EFA, validity and reliability

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is applicable to study and identify the potential
factors of certain projects without a specific model (Finch, 2006), this research will
focus on the context of EFA. The method is based on eigenvalues (>1) three factors

36
are obtained by the criterion. The measured value of the sampling adequacy (MSA)
of KMO was 0.96, indicating that the data structure of this study is meritorious and
highly correlated. The P-value of Bartlett's test is less than 0.001, which rejects the
null hypothesis, which means the data can be extracted by the principal component.
Therefore, the questions are consistent with the measured variables and the research
purpose, and the questionnaire is valid and conforms to EFA. The output results of
SPSS are as follows:

Table 2 KMO and Bartlett's Test

When using EFA for validity analysis, the 25 scale questions were divided into 5
dimensions. The total variance explained rate was 77.06% (>50%), indicating that
most of the item information can be extracted from the five dimensions. Therefore, it
shows that the research data have a good level of structural validity. Then, the
Promax rotation was did, the Kappa parameter is set to 3 or 4 was supported, and it
determines the amount of relaxation (Dien, Beal & Berg, 2005). Promax rotation is
to raise the current factor load to a higher power determined by the setting of the
kappa parameter, and SPSS uses 4 as the default value of the kappa parameter (Dien,
2010). In this study, the oblique rotation procedure of Promax was adopted to
increase the load to a power of 4. After Promax rotation, we left the items with the
high value in each component, the value of the measurement items in each
component of the principal component analysis is greater than 0.6, which is
calculated by the weighted average algorithm and renamed as the new dimensions.
Question 21 (behavior-control 3) was deleted since it was blank, and finally, 24 items
were left. The 24 items were in good agreement with the dimension, which was in
line with the professional expectation. The resulting structure matrix is shown in
table 3:

37
Table 3 Structure Matrix

Factor loading can verify the correlation between items and factors (Tabachnick &
Fidell, 2001), which means the larger the load value is, the more obvious the
characteristic is, and the stronger the relationship between items and factors is. We
correlated the results of these measures with the most heavily loaded factors, the
adjusted and renamed dimensions are: Self-efficacy, Behavioral control, Social norm,
Attitude, and Intention.

38
Cronbach’s Alpha was developed by Lee Cronbach in 1951 and expressed as a
number between 0 to 1. It is regarded as a measurement of scale reliability. The
number of test items, the relationships between items, and the dimensions will affect
the Alpha value. Reports on acceptable Alpha values vary from 0.7 to 0.95 (Tavakol
& Dennick, 2011). The higher the Cronbach’s Alpha, the higher the reliability. Field
(2013), and Hair et al., (2014) suggested that all Cronbach's Alpha values exceed 0.7
so that it could be verified that the measurements used were valid. The Cronbach’s
Alpha of the questionnaire is 0.94, which is higher than 0.7, indicating that all the
items have a higher internal consistency, and the reliability of the questionnaire is
good. The Cronbach's Alpha values of self-efficacy, behavioral control, social norm,
attitude, and intention are higher than 0.7, indicating the renamed dimensions have a
good reliability. The reliability statistics is shown in table 4.

Table 4 Reliability Statistics

4.3 Correlation analysis

Correlation analysis is a statistical method used to investigate relationships among

variables, at least between two variables, which could be either positive or negative.
It assumes that all analyses are correlated, and gets an estimate by detecting variables
(Thompson, 2005). Table 5 shows that all four independent variables have positive
relationships with Intention at different levels. If the value of the Pearson Correlation
is close to +1, the correlation is perfect: as one variable increases, the other variable
tends to increase, and vice versa. If the coefficient value is between ± 0.5 and ±1, it
can be considered a strong relationship. If the coefficient value is between ± 0.3 and

39
±0.49, it can be considered a moderate relationship. While if the coefficient value
lower than ±0.29, it means that there is a weak relationship. When the value equals 0,
it means there is no relationship (Sedgwick, 2012). We can see from the table 5 that
the relationships between these four variables and intention are strong: self-efficacy
and intention (r=0.747, p=0.000); behavioral control and intention (r=0792, p=0.000);
social norm and intention (r=0.765, p=0.000); attitude and intention (r=0,785,
p=0.000). Thus, increases in self-efficacy, behavioral control, social norm, and
attitude were correlated with increases in intention.

Table 5 Pearson Correlation Between Independent Variables and Intention.

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). Source: Calculated by author.

4.4 Crosstab analysis

The crosstabs are also called contingency tables because they analysze the
relationships between two or more variables or hypotheses, or the assumption that an
increase in one variable affects an increase, decrease, or curve change in another
variable (White & Korotayev, 2004). The chi-square test is a test to verify if the
proposed null hypothesis should be rejected (Martínez, Olmedo Torre, Amante
García & Farrerons, 2014). If there is no relationship between two variables, the
results of the statistical test will be insignificant, which means that we cannot reject
the null hypothesis. Then if the variables are related to each other, the statistical test
will be significant, which means we can declare that there is a relationship between
the items. According to the chi-square test, the observed tabular relationship has a
very low probability of occurring, which lower than 5%, we could say that the results
are statistically significant (Qualtrics). The tables 6 shows that the relationships
between gender, education, occupation, and the number of influencers that followed
by respondents and the number of respondents spent online each month online of

40
sports products respectively. The gender (p=0.084), education (p=0.796), and
occupation (p=0.162) are higher than 0.05, which means they were statistically
insignificant and there was no relationship between these items. However, the
number of influencer people followed is related to the amount of online shopping
sports products per month (p=0.000). The number of sports influencers people
followed affects how much they buy sports products online.

Table 6.Table 6 Chi-Square Tests between variables and the amount of online shopping
sports products per month. Source: Calculated by author.

4.5 Hypothesis testing

Multiple regression analysis was used to examine whether Hypothesis 1 (self-

efficacy), Hypothesis 2 (behavioral control), Hypothesis 3 (social norm), and
Hypothesis 4 (attitude) had significant predictive effects on purchase intention. The
results of multiple regression analysis are shown in table 7.

Table 7 Model summary of the regression

a. Predictors: (Constant), attitude, behavioral-control, self-efficacy, social-norm

b. Dependent Variable: intention

As the value of Durbin-Watson in the multiple regression analysis is 2.018, it

satisfies the condition of linearity, which indicates that four independent variables
satisfied the condition of error independence, and there is no autocorrelation between
them. The regression results show that the R² value is 0.743, and the adjusted R²
value is 0.74. These two values are very close, which indicates that the data is very
stable. The regression equation can explain 74% of the change of Chinese millennials’

41
purchase intention for sports products recommended by influencers, while the change
in purchase intention of the remaining 26% is affected by other factors not
considered in this study.

The relationship between dependent variables and independent variables was tested
by multiple regression model (MRM). As shown in table 8:

Table 8 Coefficients between independent variables and purchase intention

Source: Calculated by author.

H1: Self-efficacy positively influences purchase intentions. The values of

unstandardized beta coefficients indicate that the relationship between self-efficacy
and purchase intention was significant (β= 0.21, P< 0.001), indicating that self-
efficacy was positively correlated with purchase intention, and confirming
Hypothesis 1. The self-efficacy of Chinese millennial consumers has a direct and
positive influence on the purchase intention of sports products recommended by
influencers. With the internet providing consumers with low cost, abundant shopping
opportunities and the presence of influencers' live broadcast rooms, Chinese
millennials as followers of influencers who have the consciousness of online
shopping, and they are confident that the products recommended by the influencers
will work, so they are more likely to purchase sports products recommended by
influencers online. In another word, consumers with high self-efficacy seemed to be
more willing to buy the sports products recommended by the influencers.

H2: Behavioral control has a positive effect on purchase intentions. Behavioral

control can significantly affect purchase intention (β= 0.38, P< 0.001), supporting
Hypothesis 2. From the perspective of consumers' behavioral control and their
purchase intention of sports products recommended by influencers, behavioral

42
control has a strong positive influence on purchase intention and is closely related to
purchase intention. As followers of influencers, Chinese millennials are young and
have more interest on internet and influencers, they have the ability and skill to
follow the influencers and shop online, they can get a timely response and save time
in product selection if follow influencers' recommendations. Thus, as behavior
control increases, consumers are more likely to buy sports products recommended by
influencers online.

H3. The social norm is positively correlated with purchase intentions. However, the
social norm did not have a statistically significant predictive effect on purchase
intention (β= 0.06, P > 0.05), Hypothesis 3 was not confirmed. Hypothesis 3 studies
the relationship between social norms and buying intentions. The statistical results
show that social normative factors do not seem to affect the intention of Chinese
millennial consumers to follow the influencers' recommendation to buy sports
products online. Nevertheless, the influence of social norms on people's behavior
refers to the influence of social values or social regulations on people's behavior in a
given environment and situation (Reno, Cialdini & Kallgren, 1993). In fact, when
shopping online, Chinese millennials are less influenced by the advice of friends and
family or social values than by the advice of influencers. Because they are followers
of influencers, they are more likely to trust them. Moreover, social norms are
influenced by culture (Mc Breen et al., 2011), there is a lot of difference between
Chinese culture and western culture. Therefore, social norms probably have an effect
on Chinese millennials’ purchase intention of the sports products recommended by
influencers, but that the effect is not that significant.

H4. The attitude is positively correlated with purchase intentions. The results of the
data analysis show that the attitudes of Chinese millennial consumers have a
significant impact on their purchase intention (β= 0.30, P=0.000), so hypothesis 4 is
accepted. The more enthusiasm and commitment influencers make people feel, the
more information people received, and the higher expectations and trust people will
have towards the products they recommend (Hunter & Davidsson, 2008). Chinese
millennial consumers can not only interact and communicate with their favorite
influencers on online platforms but also communicate with others about the purchase
experience and after-sales experience of products recommended by influencers. It

43
seems reasonable that consumers' attitude towards sports products recommended by
influencers has a positive impact on their purchase intention.

In sum, in addition to H3, the standardized coefficients β value of H1, H2l, and H3
are greater than 0, and the significance value is less than 0.05. Therefore, an increase
of 1 in the standard deviation of self-efficacy, behavior control, and attitude is
associated with an increase in purchase intention of 0.224, 0.372, and 0.300,
respectively. The relationship between the dependent variables (purchase intention)
and the four independent variables (self-efficacy, behavior control, social norm and
attitude) can be expressed as follows: Purchase intention= 0.209×Self-efficacy +
0.379×Behavioral control + 0.301×Attitude + 0.345

This equation indicates that H2 (Behavior control) has the strongest explanatory
ability on purchase intention, since the standardized coefficient of H2 on the
purchase intention of Chinese millennials to the sports products recommended by
influencers is 0.379, followed by H4 (Attitude) 0.301 and H1 (Self-efficacy) 0.209.

44
5. Discussion

In this section, the authors use SPSS data analysis results to discuss how influencer
marketing has influenced the purchasing intentions of Chinese millennial consumers.
This section begins with the characteristics of Chinese millennial generation
respondents and the current status of influencer marketing in China. Moreover, the
authors discussed the relationship between the four hypotheses of this study and the
purchase intention by combining the TTI model and the particularity of Chinese
culture.

5.1 Chinese millennial consumers and influencer marketing

In general, in this survey, influencer marketing is booming among the Chinese

millennials. The result is consistent with the research results of Dudarenok &
Hallanan, (2018). Among the 362 questionnaires, 86.29% of respondents had online
shopping experience followed the recommendation of influencers. Chinese
millennials make up 46% of the population, according to the 2018 Chinese
population age structure data from the national bureau of statistics. Therefore, the
effect of millennials on influencer marketing is also significant as Chatzigeorgiou
(2017) mentioned in his research. Overall, Chinese millennials are very positive
about following influencer’s recommendations to shop online. Based on data of
gender, education, occupation, the number of influencer people followed, and the
cost of online shopping per month, these variables do not have much impact on
millennials following influencer’s recommendation to purchase sports products.
Dybdal and Schreck (2018) mentioned that these variables did not differ in their
study of millennials shopping online. In this study, there were more female
respondents than males, with 58% of females and 42% of males. However, there
were more male followers (61.4%) than female followers (38.6%) in the CIIMR
(2018), which was inconsistent with the results of this study. This may be because
man has always been more active than women in sports, but in recent years,
women’s pursuit and development of sports are becoming more and more similar to
that of men (Xu, Fan & Brown, 2019). In addition, the promotion of women’s rights
has made them more equal in sports.

In the education aspect, it also presents that both followers and influencers are well
educated. On the one hand, according to data from China’s education bureau (2019),

45
the average undergraduate admission rate for the post-1980s generation is about 20%,
and that for the post-1990s generation is about 40%. Gu, Li & Wang (2018)
mentioned three reasons for the rising undergraduate acceptance rate. First, the
population of the 1980s is nearly 40 million more than that of the 1990s. Second,
since 2009, China’s college enrollment policy has been reformed to increase the
admission rate. Third, the universal implementation of compulsory education, the
number of 1990s who take the college entrance examination is increasing. A large
proportion of China's millennial respondents have a bachelor's degree or higher, and
highly educated people are more receptive to new Internet products (influencer
marketing). Moreover, people with higher education have better economic strength.
Influencer marketing can not only meet the material needs of shopping but also meet
the spiritual pursuit.

In the crosstab’s analysis, there was no significant correlation between gender,

education, or occupation, and millennials’ following to influencers’ recommendation
to purchase. But the number of influencers people followed is related to purchase
intention and behavior. Therefore, it can be concluded that influencer marketing is
not significantly influenced by people’s own conditions when it affects the purchase
intention of millennials, and its influence only exists in the number of influencers
followed. The more influencers people focus on, the more likely they are to be
affected, the easier to have purchase intention of the products recommended by
influencers.

5.2 H1: Self-efficacy and purchase intention

There is a positive correlation between Chinese millennials' sense of self-efficacy

and their purchase intentions of sports products recommended by influencers.
Therefore, it can be interpreted that the stronger the self-efficacy, the stronger the
purchase intention. It is consistent with Li, Xu, Z., and Xu, F’s research (2018). In
1959, White proposed that efficacy is the motivation of human behavior. It refers to
the sense of environment efficacy or the ability to deal with environmental problems.
In other words, self-efficacy refers to a person’s confidence and ability to perform an
action, which may lead to the desired result. In this study, self-efficacy is associated
with health and sports ability: I have the confidence to manage my body, achieve my
exercise goals, and overcome exercise difficulties. Self-efficacy plays a self-

46
regulating role in millennials followers who follow influencers’ recommendations,
which is the same as the research results of Kam and James (2012). First, self-
efficacy helps millennial followers to self-regulate and gain the skills and confidence
to know how to deal with their health, exercise, sports fashion, and so on. For
instance, when influencers recommend items, they often introduce the function of the
item or share some professional skills. After the followers learn knowledge and skills,
they will be more confident when they are engaged in their own or use the item, thus
reducing the uncertainty of the unforeseen and increasing the purchase intention.

Secondly, from the view of Zhang et al., (2012), individuals do not simply react to
the external environment, however, to a large extent, they take self-cognition as the
medium to have an important impact on individual psychology and behavior. Self-
efficacy plays an important role in predicting whether an individual can complete a
task at the cognitive level. In this study, influenced by influencer recommendations
of sports products, people showed positive states in trying new products and
overcoming difficulties in sports. Under the influence of influencers, people are more
confident to accept the unknown and overcome the foreseeable difficulties, so the
purchase intention increases. Specifically, individuals with high self-efficacy tend to
have more confidence in themselves and can correctly view and face the difficulties
encountered in the process. For example, when people with low self-efficacy accept
new sports products or exercise methods, they will begin to question their own
ability, and even dare not try or give up halfway, resulting in a negative impact.

Thirdly, the positive effects of self-efficacy offset the negative effects in influencer
marketing. Bandura (1999) proposed to treat mental illness by improving self-
efficacy in controlling one’s fears or incomprehension. Similarly, Bandura
emphasized that the generic imitation of social models can improve self-efficacy and
thus reduce negative effects. By accepting professional knowledge about sports or
relevant experience from influencers, followers can establish the connection with
influencers, and then get psychological benefits that can help them to reduce or
eliminate the unknown and confusion of the ways for sports or healthy lifestyles. In
addition, these benefits also help followers against their own worries or difficulties in
sports.

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5.3 H2: Behavioral control and purchase intention

Flay, Snyder & Petraiti (2009) pointed out that behavioral control in TTI evolved
from perceived behavioral control, which is one of the single composite variables in
the influential stream of TTI. It refers to that people will comprehensively consider
their abilities and resources (money and time) before doing a certain behavior, and
people’s perception of controlling behavior would be affected by the importance of
resources (Ajzen, 2002; Bavarian et al., 2014). The stronger the perceived ability of
behavioral control, the stronger the purchase intention, which is because the process
of online shopping involves consumers' control over their disposable resources,
which will have the most direct impact on their purchase decision (Li, Xu & Xu,
2018). Additionally, perceived behavioral control is one of the necessary factors for
the intention of Chinese consumers to make the intention of buying sports clothing
online (Chiu & Choi, 2018). When consumers choose a product, they will consider
the characteristics of the product and whether the product is necessary for them, and
their dependence on a brand or a seller is related to the situation of shopping (Gao,
2009). The output of the SPSS analysis shows that behavioral control is known to
have the strongest predictive power of Chinese millennial consumers’ purchase
intention of sports products recommended by the influencers, which is mainly
reflected in the following aspects.

First of all, from 1989 to 1997, due to lack of exercise and increased intake of high-
calorie and high-fat, Chinese women's obesity rate increased by two times, and men's
obesity rate increased by three times (Bell, Ge & Popkin, 2001). These people are the
current millennials. Thus, Chinese millennials are more likely to pursue a healthy
lifestyle and a good figure, they are increasingly concerned about and demanding
health-related products (such as sports products). Moreover, Chinese consumers care
a lot about fashion, price, and quality (Kerbouche et al., 2012), as the followers of
the influencers, Chinese millennial consumers can know latest fashion trends, the
function, place of origin, use, quality, composition, sales status, the honors, and other
information will be displayed through videos, pictures or texts. Since sports products
are more professional, displaying the functions and features of the sports products
and sharing technical knowledge about fitness could let Chinese millennial
consumers believe that the influencer is capable of product identification and then
their purchase intentions of the products will increase. Millennials shop online

48
mainly by following other people's recommendations and reviews, especially
influencers because the information received visually and knowledge about the
product is intuitive (Aquino, 2012). So, directly seeing the influencers’ explanation
of products through vision, display and commitment are important ways to enhance
consumer's behavioral control, and the buying atmosphere created by influencers will
also promote consumers' intention to purchase the products they recommend.

Secondly, the influencers often share the tips and stories of their selection of the
sports products and test the performance of the product, such as wearing the
sportswear they recommend, eating the low-heat food or demonstrating the
installation and use of sports equipment, when they are doing live streaming. In
addition, Chinese millennial consumers can interact with their favorite influencers
and see other followers' comments about products to help them learn more about
their products, and they could get extra discounts and freebies if they buy products
recommended by the influencer during the live streaming, for instance, from the
Taobao or Tik Tok broadcast. Sometimes, although consumers don't have the plan to
buy sports products at the beginning, consumers can buy the same products as
physical stores at a preferential price through online influencer marketing, and there
are additional gifts, This makes consumers feel that they can't miss the opportunity to
save money, and they will suffer a loss if they don't buy them in a hurry. This makes
consumers feel that this opportunity to save money cannot be missed. If you do not
buy quickly, you will lose money.

Thirdly, buying products recommended by influencers online can save time in

product selection, get a timely response, and consumers are not limited by time,
geography location, or society rules. Moreover, many influencers are able to make
unconditional and unwarranted refunds after a consumer purchases the products they
recommended. So, Chinese millennial consumers think the after-sale service is
guaranteed and good. In sum, the results of Chinese millennial consumers' control of
perceived behavior will have a positive impact on their purchase intention of sports
products recommended by influencers.

5.4 H3: Social norm and purchase intention

The questionnaire in this study is based on the construct of TTI model, and social
norm is one of the factors that can directly influence people's intentions and
49
behaviors in TTI model (Flay, Snyder & Petraiti, 2009). Culture can create
civilization and help maintain social stability and standardize social order (Sakaeva,
Sabirova & Kuznetsova, 2018). China is a collectivist country, and the United States
is an individualistic country, the impact of social norms on the online purchase
intentions of Chinese consumers is more influential than that of American consumers,
which is due to the difference between Chinese and western cultures (Paul & Lin,
2002). Collectivism cares more about other people's opinions and they like to be
consistent with others (Luo, 2009). Nevertheless, young people are more likely to be
influenced by the social environment when they consume (Lu et al., 2003), and they
have a weaker price awareness and they are more interested in fashionable products
(Vuong, G & Nguyen, 2018). Based on the results of SPSS data analysis, we found
that social norms had no significant predictive effect on the purchase intentions of
sports products recommended by influencers among Chinese millennial consumers.
It could be that the millennials have grown up together with the Internet, witch
mentioned in chapter 2, and they were affected by the cultural conflict between east
and west, so their understanding and definition of Chinese culture are different from
the older generation. Thus, the influence of social norms on the purchasing intentions
and behaviors of Chinese millennials is likely to be influenced by Chinese culture.

Lin, H & Ho (2009) mentioned that Confucian culture is the essence of Chinese
traditional culture, and its survival and development have influenced the way of
thinking, values, and behavior of Chinese people to some extent. Although Chinese
culture affects the values of most people (Levenson, 1964), Chinese young people
have less sense of Confucian culture than elders, they pursue personalization, and
they don't like to save money. In addition, for the Chinese millennials, the traditional
way of communication has been replaced by online interactions and communication,
and online interaction could increase the motivation of online buying sports products
(Swinyard & Smith, 2003), so Chinese millennials are less likely to be affected by
the opinions of their parents or other important people, but rather to focus on some
influencers and to follow the recommendations from their favorite influencers. As it
showed from the SPSS output, for most Chinese millennials, they will not choose
sports products because of the aesthetic standards and fashion trends of Chinese
society, and they are not obviously influenced by the conformity value. Sports
products are more functional than their products, Chinese millennials love and trust

50
of the influencers they followed. Therefore, the sports products recommended by the
influencers they like are not significantly affected by social norms. That is how
traditional Chinese culture influences millennials’ social normative beliefs and
purchasing intentions when it comes to sports products recommended by influencers.

5.5 H4: Attitude and purchase intention

First of all, from the results of our test, we found that in both the classic TTI model
and the TTI model with Chinese cultural background, the attitude had a significant
positive impact on consumers' behavioral intention. It is consistent with the research
results of TTI theory and subsequent scholars (Kassim et al., 2015). Similarly, the
information obtained from influencers about product quality, logistics, information
(knowledge), interaction, and so on, makes people increase the trust in the products
recommended by influencers. Therefore, such detailed information creates a sense of
trust among people so that they have a positive attitude to accept the products
recommended by influencers. This is also in line with what we proposed in Chapter 2.
If consumers reduce their risk perception of services or products, they will have a
positive attitude and become more active in forming a behavioral intention. In the
TTI model, attitudes are influenced by the macro culture environment. In China, a
country with a history of thousands of years, the influence of culture on people is
deeply rooted. In our research, from the regression model which presents the
relationship between five attitude items and intention, it showed the impact of each
specific attitude item from the information received by the consumer on his or her
purchase intention. Attitude 1, 4, 5 (respectively the quality of the products
recommended by influencers, accessing to interactive opportunities, and gaining the
professional knowledge), these three items are positively correlated with purchase
intention (B=0.23, B=0.27, B=0.27). These three items satisfied two of the five-
stages of the five-stage model of the consumer decision-making process proposed by
Kotle & Armstrong (2010), which are demand recognition and information search. In
the process of consumer consumption, they will have a clear consumption purpose
for their own consumption, in order to meet their needs. Then they search for
information to help them identify different products. Influencers blend the two
phases well by creating demand and providing the information that consumers need
(Liu, et al., 2020). Chinese influencers grasp consumers’ desire for product
information when making product recommendation,

51
and provides appropriate product introduction and professional knowledge sharing.
The advertisement of influencers consists of persuasive arguments (Johansen &
Guldvik, 2017), which means that consumers get high expectations and form a clear
attitude when they accept the information shared by influencers. In addition, real
interaction opportunities and professional knowledge deepen consumers’ thoughtful
process, reduce the risk of shopping, and thus affect consumers’ attitudes towards the
purchase (Madhavaram & Appan, 2010).

However, the positive correlation of number three question of attitude 3 is slightly

weaker (B=0.12). Chinese millennial consumers care about the service of logistics
after shopping online, which may be related to the current situation of China’s
express delivery industry. With the rise of the O2O market of the takeout industry in
2015, instant logistics companies also experienced explosive growth. According to
Iresearch (2020), from 2013 to 2019, the scale of express delivery business in China
has increased, from 9.19 billion pieces in 2013 to 62.38 billion pieces in 2019.
However, the instant logistics market in China is shared by several major head
logistics companies (Yang, 2019). The total business volume of SF Holding and TD
(including ST, ZT, YT, and YD) accounted for 61.4% of the express business in
China, and the express business market of head companies continued to expand
（MOFCOM, 2020）. The difference between the whole express delivery industry
in China is not obvious (Yang, 2019). Therefore, consumers’ attitudes towards
express delivery service will not have a big impact on the products recommended by
influencers.

But surprisingly, attitude 2 (for good after-sales service) had no significant

correlation (p=0.24) in our test. According to the model, consumers may respond
cognitively from their own shopping experience, therefore there is no significant
relationship between getting good after-sales service and purchase intention. It might
be that in Chinese influencer marketing, most of the influencer uses the form of
brand cooperation to promote products. After following the recommendation from
the influencers, consumers still have to go to the official store or online store of the
brand to buy products. Therefore, after-sales service also provided by companies
themselves rather than provided by influencers.

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6. Conclusion

In this section, the authors have presented the answers to the research question and
conclusions of empirical data discussions. Further, the contribution and the
practical implications of this research have been provided. Finally, limitations and
suggestions for future research are proposed.

6.1 Answers to the research question

In recent years, with the popularization of Internet technology and the rapid
development of e-commerce, millennial consumers have gradually become one of
the largest consumer groups in China. More and more influencers have captured the
attention of Chinese millennial consumers and recommended products to them
through online platforms, such as Weibo, Tik Tok, and Taobao. The new and
convenient shopping experience brought by influencers is accepted by Chinese
millennial consumers. Compared with traditional online consumers, the purchasing
intention of Chinese millennial consumers is more complicated, and they have more
trust and higher expectations for the sports products recommended by their favorite
influencers (Chiu & Choi, 2018). In this study, descriptive, reliability, variance
analysis, and independent t-test analysis were performed on 302 samples by SPSS
23.0. The differences between the number of genders, education, occupation, and
influencers in demographic data and the amount spent on online sports products were
found through the analysis. The analysis results showed that the more influencers
Chinese millennial consumers followed, the more likely they were to have purchase
intention on the sports products recommended by influencers. In TTI model, self-
efficacy, behavioral control, social norms, and attitude are all significant predict
factors, through the analysis of the four hypotheses, we found that the behavioral
control of Chinese millennial consumers has the most significant explanatory ability
on their intention to buy sports products recommended by influencers, followed by
attitude and self-efficacy. However, social norms have a low level of prediction on
their purchase intention, which is contrary to the literature. Since the Confucian
culture has permeated every aspect of Chinese lives, and Chinese traditional culture
influences the mainstream thought of Chinese society and values of the public
(Levenson, 1964; Lin, H & Ho, 2009). So, the purchase intention of Chinese
consumers to the sports products recommended by the influencers was not

53
significantly influenced by the social environment and social norms. To sum up, this
study found that the behavior control, attitude, and self-efficacy of Chinese
millennial consumers differed from their social norms in their purchase intention of
sports products recommended by influencers.

6.2 Contribution of the study

This research is the first to use the TTI model as the theoretical basis to study the
Chinese millennials who follow the recommendations of influencers to buy sports
products, which fills the gap in this academic field. Self-efficacy, behavioral control,
social norms, and attitudes developed based on the TTI model as the four hypotheses
of this study can explain Chinese millennial consumers' purchase intentions of sports
products recommended by influencers online, supporting self-efficacy, behavioral
control, and attitude as the significant predictive factors. Although social norms
failed to significantly predict the purchasing intentions of Chinese millennial
consumers in this study, it provided new research directions for other researchers.

Moreover, this research provides a clear and easy-to-understand explanation of the

characteristics of influencers, influencer marketing, and Chinese millennial
consumers and sports products, which helps readers, other researchers, or influencers
to understand and apply. On one hand, influencers, the influencer agencies, and
companies who cooperating with influencers in online retail, to choose products and
marketing methods, improve their strategies and, increase consumer purchase
intention. On the other hand, followers of influencers are people who are likely to
become consumers who purchase their recommended products, which is helpful to
understand the main reasons for their purchase intentions through this study, and
helps them to consume rationally.

6.3 Implications

For the theoretical implications, this study is the first to provide a reference for
studying influencer marketing and consumer online consumption behavior, and it is
the first time for researchers exploring the factors that affect Chinese millennial
consumers’ purchase intention of sports products that recommended by influencers
to use TTI model as a theoretical basis. TTI model includes self-efficacy, behavioral
control, social norms, and attitude, which affecting consumers’ purchase intention to

54
consume from three dimensions: personal stream, social stream, and environmental
stream (Flay, Snyder, & Petraitis, 2009). The respondents in this study reported that
their intention to buy sports products online based on the recommendation of
influencers was mainly influenced by three factors, which are behavioral control,
self-efficacy, and attitude. According to the results of this study, behavioral control
had the most significant predictive effect on the intention of Chinese millennial
consumers to purchase sports products recommended by influencers online, followed
by attitude and self-efficacy, while social norms had no significant effect on the
intention to purchase sports products online, which helped us understand the
characteristics of Chinese millennial consumers in online shopping.

From the practical implications, first, the data analysis results of this study show that
the amount of Chinese millennial consumers' online shopping for sports products is
positively related to the number of influencers they follow. In other words, the more
followers of influencers, the greater the chance of marketing success. Thus,
influencers could try their best to increase their online exposure, so as to increase the
number of followers, so as to expand their online customer base (Chiu & Choi, 2018).
When recommending products, influencers should focus on how to help consumer
build self-efficacy, improve their perceived behavioral control and positive attitude
toward the products. There are different self-development methods between mature
influencers and new recruits. The training of new influencers is more inclined to help
them determine the development route and increase their own professional
knowledge and ability. Facing the market and products, mature influencers need to
be trained on how to utilize consumer psychology and the effects of Chinese culture
on consumer behavior to fit into the products and guide consumers to purchase.
Moreover, influencers can provide communication and interaction between
consumers and brands, which could gain their trust, and meet their expectations.

Second, the influencer agency is an indispensable role in promoting the development

of influencer marketing, which provides a boost to influencer commercial cashability.
When an influencer agency trains influencers, it should be in line with the purpose of
meeting consumer demand, not only trains the basic ability but also focus on the
acceptance of products recommended by influencers by consumers in each segment
industry, thus it can improve the training and development strategy of influencers.

55
Third, the influencer is like a brand spokesperson with huge effects, and cooperating
with influencers is a good way of marketing. Brands can cooperate with suitable
influencers, who can effectively build consumer trust or have professional
knowledge related to products rather than those who just have a lot of followers. In
this way, the influencers can present professional recommendations that match the
brand’s business, help to position the brand and attract potential consumers. Thus,
influencers can use professional marketing methods and strategies to help brands
expand their popularity and increase sales.

6.4 Limitations

Although we carefully considered the process of each study before conducting this
study, it is not without limitations. Firstly, as the theoretical basis of this study, the
TTI model is widely used to study various health-related behaviors, but it is rarely
used in the study of consumers' intention and behavior, which makes us lack of
effective reference when applying TTI model into the analysis. In addition, in order
to understand more clearly the factors that influence the online shopping intention of
Chinese millennial consumers, This study simplified the original TTI model and
developed four hypotheses, but this study did not specifically explain the three levels
of causation in the TTI model.

Secondly, this study is only for Chinese millennial consumers, and the results may
not be applicable to other countries outside of China. Furthermore, the snowball
sampling method we used makes it impossible for the samples to represent the
population as probability sampling (Saunder et al., 2016). Thus, the
representativeness of the sample we collected is limited, because it cannot represent
the characteristics of the whole population. Especially in a country like China with a
1.4 billion population, the limitation is more obvious. But we believe that the
problem of the research is acceptable because of the large collection of effective
responses to provide a high confidence level of 95% and 5% of low error rate
(Saunder et al., 2016). Moreover, in the process of we collected samples, as we
mentioned in chapter 4, most of the respondents are between 20 to 30 years old, and
the respondents between 30 to 40 years old accounted 18% of the total. However, we
defined the age range of Chinese millennials belongs to 20-40 years old, so there is
no equilibrium distribution of the age of the respondents in the sample.

56
Thirdly, we did not mention all of the reasons that influence Chinese millennial
consumers’ purchase intentions of sports products, which may reduce the motivation
of some respondents and affect their reaction. For instance, some consumers buy
sports shoes for the purpose of collecting or investing. However, for most people,
investing or collecting is not the main function or value of sports products, so this
limitation is acceptable for this study.

6.5 Suggestions for future research

First of all, since this study only focuses on millennial consumers who live in China
and have Chinese nationality, but the older generation and people from other
countries may have different opinions about the products recommended by
influencers. Therefore, it is obvious that larger sample size is needed to further
explore the factors affecting influencer marketing and consumer purchase intentions,
which could make the results more reliable and universal, and the conclusions more
convincing.

In addition, this research is in case of sports products, we recommend verifying the

applicability of TTI's theoretical model to the study of consumer intentions and
behaviors by studying other types of products. It is recommended to verify the
applicability of TTI's theoretical model to the research on consumer intention and
behavior by studying other types of products in order to better understand the
differences in the influence of influencer marketing on consumers' purchase intention,
and finally reach more objective conclusions.

Further, the significance of hypothesis 3 was not demonstrated in this study, but
social norms have been shown to be a direct influential factor in many previous
studies of consumers' purchase intentions. Therefore, it is suggested to further study
the influence of social norms on the marketing of Chinese consumers and influencers,
and draw a more dialectical conclusion to further improve and develop the
relationship between TTI's theory and consumers' purchase intention.

Finally, since Chinese consumers are more likely than their western counterparts to
share their shopping experiences and product reviews online (Chiu & Choi, 2018).
future studies can consider the relationship between brand awareness and consumer
word-of-mouth and influencers' affect consumers' purchase intentions.

57
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8. Appendices

Appendix 1. Questionnaire in both Chinese and English

Dear Respondent!
This is an academic questionnaire designed to study the factors influencing the intention of
Chinese millennial consumers to buy sports products recommended by influencers. Please fill in
the form according to your true thoughts and conditions. The personal information you provide
is anonymous and confidential. The only personal data collected include age, gender, and
nationality. Data will only be used for educational purposes. There is no individual identification
of the respondents.
Influencers refer to people who have more than 100,000 followers on three digital platforms
such as Taobao, Tik tok，and Weibo. The sports products are including sports apparels, sports
nutrition, low-calorie food, energy drinks, fitness tools or equipment and outdoor sports supplies.
We appreciate your collaboration. It will take about 5 minutes to answer. In case you have any
questions, please contact the following people. Thank you!
Best wishes!
Xiangru Meng & Yue Xiao

您好！

这是一份学术调查问卷，旨在研究影响中国千禧一代消费者购买网红推荐的运动产品意愿
的因素。请根据您真实的想法和情况填写此表格。您提供的个人信息是匿名和保密的。涉
及到个人隐私的信息只有年龄、性别和国籍。数据将仅用于教育目的。无需个人身份证明。
网红指的是在淘宝、抖音和微博等三个数字平台上拥有超过 10 万粉丝的人。运动产品包括
运动服装、运动营养、低热量食品、能量饮料、健身工具或设备、户外运动用品等。
感谢您的合作。这份问卷将花费您大约 5 分钟的时间。如果您有任何问题，请联系以下人
员。谢谢！
祝您一切顺利，平安健康！
孟祥如 & 肖月

1. What age category do you belong to? /您的年龄是？ *

○<20 ○20~30 ○31~40 ○41~50 ○51~60 ○>60

2. Is your nationality and current residence China? /您的国籍和现居地是中国吗？

*
○Yes

○No

3. Have you ever bought a sports product online (e.g. sportswear ，sports nutrition,
low-calorie food, energy drinks, fitness tools or equipment and outdoor sports
74
supplies) recommended by influencer？/ 你曾经网购过由网红推荐的运动产品
吗？（例如：运动服，营养品，低热量食物，能量饮料，健身工具或设备和户
外运动用品） *
○Yes

○No

4. What is your gender? / 您的性别是？ *

○Male / 男性

○Female / 女性

○Other / 其他

5. What is your highest education level? /您的学历是？ *

○Primary school / 小学

○High School / 中学

○Bachelor Degree (Undergraduate) / 本科

○Master Degree (Graduate) / 研究生

○PhD or equivalent / 博士

6. What is your current occupation? / 您的职业是？ *

○Student / 学生

○Employee / 雇员

○Homemaker / 家庭主妇

○Unemployed / 无业

○Self-employed / 自由职业者

○其他

7. Which platform do you follow influencers from? (Multiple choice) / 您通过以下

哪个平台关注网红？ *
□Weibo / 微博

□Taobao / 淘宝

75
□Tik Tok / 抖音

□Other / 其他

8. What is the number of sports influencers do you follow through Taobao, Tik Tok，
or Weibo? / 您通过淘宝， 抖音，微博关注了几个推荐运动产品的网红？ *
○0

○1~3

○4~6

○7~9

○>9

9. How often do you check the influencer's news (e.g. blogs, articles, promotional
links, and videos) / 您查看网红动态的频率是？ *
○Very frequently / 非常频繁

○Frequently / 频繁

○Somewhat frequently / 比较频繁

○Somehow rarely /比较不频繁

○Rarely / 不频繁

○Very rarely / 非常不频繁

10. What kind of sports products do you prefer recommended by influencers?

(Multiple choice) / 您喜欢关注网红推荐的哪类运动产品？ *
□Sportswear / 运动服

□Sports nutrition / 运动营养品

□Low-calorie food / 低热量食物

□Energy drinks / 功能饮料

□Fitness tools or equipment / 健身工具或设备

□Outdoor sports supplies / 户外运动产品

□其他 _________________

76
11. How much do you spend on sports products online each month? / 您每月花费在
网购运动产品的金额是？ *
○<50 RMB (<6.4 EUR)

○50~100 RMB ( 6.4~12.8 EUR)

○101~300 RMB (12.9~38.4 EUR)

○301~500 RMB (38.5~64 EUR)

○>500 RMB (>64 EUR)

Second part：main body of the questionnaire

The following questions will be asked from the five dimensions of self-efficacy,
behavior control, social norms, attitude and purchase intention. Please choose the
most consistent option according to your experience and real idea of buying sports
products recommended by influencers, 1= strongly disagree; 2= disagree; 3=
undecided; 4= agree; 5= strongly agree.

第二部分 问卷主体
以下将从自我效能，行为控制，社会规范，态度和购买意图这五个维度展开提
问，请以您购买网红推荐的运动产品的经历和真实想法选择最符合的选项，1=
非常不同意；2=不同意；3=难以判断；4=同意；5=非常同意。
Self-efficacy

12. I believe I can manage my body by using sports products like the influencer, so I
want to buy the sports products recommended by influencers./ 我相信我可以像网红
一样，通过使用运动产品，管理自己的身材，所以我想购买网红推荐的运动产
品 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

13. I am confident that I can become beautiful / handsome by using sports products
like the influencer, so I want to buy the sports products recommended by
influencers./ 我相信我可以像网红一样，通过使用运动产品变美/帅，所以我想
购买网红推荐的运动产品 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

14. I believe I can gain healthy lifestyle by using sports products like the influencer,
so I want to buy the sports products recommended by influencers./ 我相信我可以像
网红一样，通过使用运动产品，获得健康的生活方式，所以我想购买网红推荐
的运动产品*

77
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

15. I believe I can try new lifestyles and types of exercise by using sports products
like the influencer, so I want to buy the sports products recommended by
influencers./ 我相信我可以像网红一样，通过使用运动产品，尝试新的生活方式
和运动类型，所以我想购买网红推荐的运动产品 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

16. I believe I can achieve high quality sports results by using sports products like
the influencer, so I want to buy the sports products recommended by influencers./ 我
相信我可以像网红一样，通过使用运动产品，达到高质量的运动效果，所以我
想购买网红推荐的运动产品 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

17. I believe I can overcome all the difficulties I may meet by using sports products
like the influencer, so I want to buy the sports products recommended by
influencers./ 我相信我可以像网红一样，通过使用运动产品，克服一切我可能遇
到的困难，所以我想购买网红推荐的运动产品 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

Behavioral control

18. I think the information about the sports products recommended by influencers
has detailed text description, vivid pictures, and intuitively video presentation. / 我认
为网红推荐的运动产品， 有详细的文字说明，生动的图片和直观的视频展示。]
*
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

19. I think the information about the sports products recommended by influencers is
professional, broad, and up to date. / 我认为网红推荐的运动产品的信息是专业的，
广泛的，最新的。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

20. I think by following influencers' recommendations and buying sports products, I

78
can get a timely products consulting and after-sales reply. / 我认为通过网红推荐购
买运动产品，我可以得到及时的产品咨询和售后回复。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

21. I think by following influencers' recommendations and buying sports products, I

can save time in product selection. / 我认为通过网红推荐购买运动产品，我可以
在挑选产品时节约时间。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

22. I think by following influencers' recommendations and buying sports products, I

can get more discounts or freebies. / 我认为通过网红推荐购买运动产品，我可以
得到更多的折扣或者赠品。*
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

Social norm

23. Due to the suggestions given by my family or friends, I would like to follow the
recommendations of influencers to buy sports products. / 因为家人和朋友的建议，
我愿意听从网红的推荐购买运动产品。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

24. Due to the sports products promoted by influencers conform to the public
aesthetic standards of Chinese society, I would like to follow the recommendations
of influencers to buy sports products. / 由于网红宣传的运动产品符合中国社会的
大众审美标准，我愿意听从网红的推荐购买运动产品。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

25. Due to the sports products promoted by influencers conform to the people's
desire for health in Chinese society, I would like to follow the recommendations of
influencers to buy sports products. / 由于网红宣传的运动产品符合人们对健康的
追求，我愿意听从网红的推荐购买运动产品。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

26. Due to the products recommended by influencers conform to the fashion trend of

79
Chinese society, I would like to follow the recommendations of influencers to
buy sports products. / 由于网红推荐的产品符合中国社会的时尚流行趋势，我愿
意听从网红的推荐购买运动产品。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

27. Due to the group awareness of Chinese society, I would like to follow the
recommendations of influencers to buy sports products, as most people do. / 由于中
国社会的从众价值观，我愿意像大多数人一样听从网红的推荐购买运动产品。
*
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

Attitude

28. I believe that I can buy good quality sports products, with recommendation of
influencers. / 我相信根据网红的推荐，我可以买到质量好的运动产品。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

29. I believe that I can get good after-sale service, with recommendation of
influencers. / 我相信根据网红的推荐，我可以得到好的售后服务。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

30. I believe that I can get good delivery experience, with recommendation of
influencers. / 我相信根据网红的推荐，我可以得到好的物流体验。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

31. I believe that I can get opportunity to to interact with other people, with
recommendation of influencers. / 我相信根据网红的推荐，我可以得到和别人互
动的机会。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

32. I believe that I can gain professional knowledge in health and sports., with
recommendation of influencers. / 我相信根据网红的推荐，我可以学到有关健康
和运动的专业知识。 *

80
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

Intention

33. It is likely that I will purchase sports products recommended by influencers for
self-improvement purpose. / 我有可能出于自我提高的目的购买网红推荐的运动
产品 。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

34. It is likely that I will purchase sports products recommended by influencers for
promoting the relationship between individual and society ( family, friends, or other
important people). / 我有可能因为促进个人与社会的关系（与家人，朋友，其他
重要的人）的目的购买网红推荐的运动产品 。*
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

35. It is likely that I will purchase sports products recommended by influencers for
positive expectations of effect of sports. / 我有可能因为对运动的效果有积极的预
期所以购买网红推荐的运动产品 。 *
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

36. It is likely that I will purchase sports products recommended by influencers in six
months. / 我有可能未来六个月内购买网红推荐的运动产品 。*
○Strongly ○Strongly
○Disagree ○Undecided ○Agree
disagree agree

81
Appendix 2． The analysis from SPSS output

Descriptive Statistics
Std.
N Range Minimum Maximum Sum Mean Deviation
What is your gender? 302 1 1 2 477 1.58 .494
What is your highest
302 3 2 5 989 3.27 .516
education level?
What is your current
302 5 1 6 765 2.53 1.781
occupation?
Valid N (listwise) 302

What is your gender?

Cumulative
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent
Valid male 127 42.1 42.1 42.1
female 175 57.9 57.9 100.0
Total 302 100.0 100.0

What is your highest education level?

Cumulative
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent
Valid high School 6 2.0 2.0 2.0
Bachelor’s degree
211 69.9 69.9 71.9
(Undergraduate)
Master’s degree
81 26.8 26.8 98.7
(Graduate)
PhD or equivalent 4 1.3 1.3 100.0
Total 302 100.0 100.0

What is your current occupation?

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid student 97 32.1 32.1 32.1

employee 131 43.4 43.4 75.5
homemaker 3 1.0 1.0 76.5
unemployed 4 1.3 1.3 77.8
self-employed 21 7.0 7.0 84.8
other 46 15.2 15.2 100.0
Total 302 100.0 100.0
82
What is the number of sports influencers do you follow through Taobao, Tik Tok
or Weibo?
Cumulative
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent
Valid 0 28 9.3 9.3 9.3
1~3 181 59.9 59.9 69.2

4~6 64 21.2 21.2 90.4

7~9 12 4.0 4.0 94.4

>9 17 5.6 5.6 100.0

Total 302 100.0 100.0

83
 Case Processing Summary

N %
Cases Valid 301 99.7

Excluded a
1 .3

Total 302 100.0

a. Listwise deletion based on all variables in the

procedure.

Reliability Statistics

Cronbach's Alpha
Based on
Cronbach's Alpha Standardized Items N of Items
.935 .918 43

KMO and Bartlett's Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy. .961

Bartlett's Test of Sphericity Approx. Chi-Square 7156.755
df 300

Sig. .000

Total Variance Explained

Rotation
Sums of
Squared
Initial Eigenvalues Extraction Sums of Squared Loadings Loadingsa
% of % of
Component Total Variance Cumulative % Total Variance Cumulative % Total
1 14.897 59.586 59.586 14.897 59.586 59.586 9.959
2 1.693 6.774 66.360 1.693 6.774 66.360 11.283
3 1.252 5.009 71.369 1.252 5.009 71.369 10.765
4 .761 3.046 74.415 .761 3.046 74.415 10.362
5 .661 2.643 77.058 .661 2.643 77.058 9.298
6 .613 2.454 79.512
7 .533 2.131 81.643
8 .489 1.958 83.601
9 .437 1.747 85.348
10 .388 1.551 86.899
11 .355 1.421 88.320
12 .347 1.388 89.707

84
13 .311 1.246 90.953
14 .292 1.169 92.122
15 .248 .994 93.116
16 .230 .919 94.035
17 .223 .893 94.928
18 .203 .813 95.741
19 .195 .778 96.519
20 .181 .723 97.242
21 .169 .675 97.917
22 .148 .593 98.510
23 .146 .583 99.093
24 .119 .476 99.569
25 .108 .431 100.000

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

a. When components are correlated, sums of squared loadings cannot be added to obtain a total
variance.

Structure Matrix
Component
Behavioral control Self-efficacy Attitude Social norm Intention
self_efficacy1 .823
self_efficacy2 .876
self_efficacy3 .888
self_efficacy4 .874
self_efficacy5 .870
self_efficacy6 .803
behavioral_control1 .819
behavioral_control2 .620
behavioral_control4 .886
behavioral_control5 .699
social_norm1 .797
social_norm2 .859
social_norm3 .736
social_norm4 .794
social_norm5 .820
attitude1 .842
attitude2 .935
attitude3 .922
attitude4 .691
attitude5 .662
intention1 .652

85
 intention2 .868
intention3 .624
intention4 .698

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Rotation Method: Promax with Kaiser Normalization.

Model Summaryb

Change Statistics
Std. Error
R Adjusted of the R Square F Sig. F Durbin-
Model R Square R Square Estimate Change Change df1 df2 Change Watson
1 .862a .743 .740 .45633 .743 214.377 4 296 .000 2.018

a. Predictors: (Constant), attitude, behavioral_control, self_efficacy, social_norm

b. Dependent Variable: intention

ANOVAa

Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

1 Regression 178.565 4 44.641 214.377 .000b

Residual 61.638 296 .208

Total 240.203 300

a. Dependent Variable: intention

b. Predictors: (Constant), attitude, behavioral_control, self_efficacy, social_norm

Coefficientsa

Unstandardized Standardized 95.0% Confidence

Coefficients Coefficients Interval for B

Lower Upper
Model B Std. Error Beta t Sig. Bound Bound
1 (Constant) .345 .109 3.166 .002 .131 .559

self_efficacy .209 .045 .224 4.627 .000 .120 .298

behavioral_control .379 .049 .372 7.770 .000 .283 .475

social_norm .058 .059 .061 .974 .331 -.059 .175

attitude .301 .058 .300 5.224 .000 .188 .415

a. Dependent Variable: intention

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Crosstabs:

1. gender VS How much do you spend on sports products online each month?
Case Processing Summary
Cases
Valid Missing Total
N Percent N Percent N Percent
How much do you spend on
sports products online each
302 100.0% 0 0.0% 302 100.0%
month? * What is your
gender?

Chi-Square Tests
Asymptotic
Significance (2-
Value df sided)
Pearson Chi-Square 8.226a 4 .084
Likelihood Ratio 8.209 4 .084
Linear-by-Linear Association 4.483 1 .034
N of Valid Cases 302

a. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected
count is 13.88.

2. Education VS How much do you spend on sports products online each month?

Case Processing Summary

Cases
Valid Missing Total
N Percent N Percent N Percent
How much do you spend on
sports products online each
302 100.0% 0 0.0% 302 100.0%
month? * What is your
highest education level?

Chi-Square Tests
Asymptotic
Significance (2-
Value df sided)
Pearson Chi-Square 7.865a 12 .796

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Likelihood Ratio 9.427 12 .666
Linear-by-Linear Association .064 1 .800
N of Valid Cases 302

a. 10 cells (50.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum

expected count is .44.

3. Occupation VS How much do you spend on sports products online each month?
Case Processing Summary
Cases
Valid Missing Total
N Percent N Percent N Percent
How much do you spend on
sports products online each
302 100.0% 0 0.0% 302 100.0%
month? * What is your
current occupation?

Chi-Square Tests
Asymptotic
Significance (2-
Value df sided)
Pearson Chi-Square 26.126a 20 .162
Likelihood Ratio 26.494 20 .150
Linear-by-Linear Association 2.823 1 .093
N of Valid Cases 302

a. 12 cells (40.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum

expected count is .33.

4. How much do you spend on sports products online each month VS What is the
number of sports influencers do you follow through Taobao, Tik Tok£¬orWeibo??
Case Processing Summary
Cases
Valid Missing Total
N Percent N Percent N Percent
How much do you spend on
sports products online each
month? * What is the
302 100.0% 0 0.0% 302 100.0%
number of sports influencers
do you follow through
Taobao, Tik Tok£¬orWeibo?

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 Chi-Square Tests
Asymptotic
Significance (2-
Value df sided)
Pearson Chi-Square 80.068 a
16 .000
Likelihood Ratio 81.177 16 .000
Linear-by-Linear Association 40.291 1 .000
N of Valid Cases 302

a. 12 cells (48.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum

expected count is 1.31.

Correlations

intention self_efficacy behavioral_control social_norm attitude

intention Pearson
1
Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed)

self_efficacy Pearson
.747** 1
Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed) .000

behavioral_control Pearson
.792** .694** 1
Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000

social_norm Pearson
.765** .761** .756** 1
Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000

attitude Pearson
.785** .727** .728** .843** 1
Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

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