Source credibility and its factors influencing consumer trust in influencers

The aim of the thesis is to identify and analyse the factors that influence consumer trust towards influencers and to explore how the concept of source credibi-lity contributes to the understanding of these factors. The theoretical concepts from the research of Ohanian (1990) and Munnukk et al. (2016), specifically expertise, attractiveness, credibility and similarity, were applied in the thesis to determine which type of influencer (AI-generated or real) is perceived as more credible. Four main hypotheses were formulated, focusing on a comparison of the individual factors, and one secondary hypothesis that examined perceptions of overall trustworthiness based on the respondent's beliefs about whether the influencer was real or AI-generated. Appropriate statistical tests were used to evaluate the hypotheses based on whether or not the normality of the data distribution was met. The results showed that there were no statistically significant differences in the perception of each credibility factor between real and AI-generated influencers. However, in the case of the secondary hypothesis, a statistically significant difference in the perception of overall trustworthiness was demonstrated.