YouTube “Unboxing:” An Influencer of Purchase Intent—A Quantitative Study

Purpose: Unboxing is a relatively new social media occurrence, where a YouTube unboxer’s amateur video gradually unwraps and reviews a new product for the followers. The phenomenon has caught the attention of both the marketing industry and academia due to its potential to influence purchase intent. The present research focuses on the relevant unboxing literature with a special focus on source characteristics, purposive motives, and nonpurposive motives; hypothesizes a research model and empirically tests it to probe how the unboxing phenomenon influences purchase intention. Design/Methodology/Approach: The researchers conducted an online survey for data collection from 705 social media users and used structural equation modeling and moderation analysis for data analysis. Findings: The present research proposed and tested a model of unboxing using parasocial interaction (PSI). It found that PSI does influence purchase intent in unboxing and found support for six out of seven antecedents of PSI hypothesized in the model. Practical Implications: The findings of the study can help marketing organizations to understand the importance of YouTube influencer-induced PSI to design effective advertising campaigns through influencer marketing in order to drive purchase intent. Originality/Value: The present study aims to understand the unboxing phenomenon by analyzing the proposed model. This study contributes to the limited literature on the nascent YouTube unboxing in an emerging economy context and extends previous research in this field by incorporating new variables. Also, it studies the effect of gender as a moderator in an unboxing context for the first time.