The Effects of Social Influence on Blog Advertising Use

Blogs emerged in the late 1990s as a technology that allows Internet users to share information. As an emerging advertising medium, blog advertising still faces challenges related to lukewarm consumer responses and unclear regulations governing commercial blog speeches. In this study, the concept of social influence was employed to examine its effects on consumer’s use of blog advertising. A questionnaire survey was designed and executed among 200 college student participants in a large Southwestern university. The survey instrument has a good reliability for this exploratory study. Regression analysis found that the social influence factor predicted blog advertising use. The factor accounted for 31% of variance in explaining consumer’s blog advertising use. To examine if the social influence factor continued to predict how consumers use blog advertising after taking into consideration consumer’s attitudes toward blog advertising and demographics, hierarchical regression analyses were also used. The statistical analyses found that the social influence factor remains a powerful and consistent predictor of blog advertising use.