Opinion Leaders Go Online: An Empirical Study on Interpersonal Influence on Purchase Intentions in E-Retailing

“Social influence” in innovative e-retailing environments increasingly seems to have an important impact on online buying behavior. This chapter addresses this issue, focusing on the role of online opinion leaders. The opinion leadership construct has been associated with innovative behavior as well as with the early adoption of electronic shopping technologies. Despite these assumptions, little is known about online opinion leaders and their characteristics in e-retailing environments. The aim of the chapter is twofold: to identify the main features of opinion leaders in digital contexts and, by means of an exploratory empirical study, to analyse whether they have an impact on the purchase decisions of high involvement products, by explaining from where opinion leaders derive their skills.