Impact of Personal Power Bases on Perceived Trustworthiness of Opinion Leaders in Social Media

Abstract

Opinion Leaders have gained control over social media in the 21st century: influencing their peers to disseminate news, gossip and politics. Their impact on followers is significant as they have attracted a considerable audience in social networking sites. Leadership is often explained with power and it is accepted that leaders use bases of power to influence their followers. As the validity of Raven's power taxonomy remained unexplored in the online context, this study assessed the impact of Personal power bases on the trustworthiness of Facebook Administrators as opinion leaders. The conclusions were drawn from the responses of 266 active Facebook users who submitted answers for an online questionnaire, utilizing a multiple regression analysis. It was evident that there was a significant positive impact of Expertand Referent power bases on Trustworthiness. So, the results confirmed that Facebook Administrators as opinion leaders have expert and referent power over their followers in social media and Raven's power taxonomy for these two bases of power is still valid even in the online context. These results are important to marketers as social media is one of the best platforms to market products and services. Marketers can utilize opinion leadership to gain attention and increase sales as followers trust opinion leaders and their recommendations. Also, this study will be a foundation to understand the relationship between social power and opinion leadership in the online context which is little explored in the existing literature.