Abstract

Despite extensive research on credibility and trust in advertising, there is little information on how native advertising and culture might impact these important constructs among social media users. In my thesis, I address this gap by testing the relationship between different types of native advertising (i.e., influencers versus newsfeeds) and culture on perceived advertising credibility. To measure culture, I focused on the individualism versus collectivism scale proposed by Hofstede. I also tested whether trust mediates this relationship. To anticipate, this thesis first thoroughly defines the meaning of native advertising and its presence in social media, then it goes over the concept of credibility, provides an overview of Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions and finally, I discuss the concept of trust. This led to the development of three hypotheses. The first hypothesis investigates how different forms of native advertising (that is, influencers versus news feed accounts) affect advertising credibility, and the second hypothesis examines culture as a potential moderator. Both hypotheses were supported. The third hypothesis examined whether trust mediated the effect, but no significance was found (though I did find evidence that trust predicted credibility). For the completeness of the research, Hofstede’s remaining dimensions of culture were analyzed as potential moderators. Moreover, some exploratory behavioural analyses were conducted (e.g., product recommendations and purchase intentions). After the results section, a discussion of future research and limitations is presented.