A PARADIGM SHIFT IN ISLAMIC FINANCE INDUSTRY: VALUE BASED INTERMEDIATION, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX, ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT, AND SOCIAL IMPACT FINANCING

Abstract

Brands have long relied on celebrity endorsers to promote their products and services. However, the rapid growth of the internet and social media has reshaped the persuasion landscape, prompting marketers to shift attention from traditional celebrities toward social media influencers such as Instagram personalities, vloggers, and bloggers. A persistent feature of both forms of endorsement is sponsorship disclosure: endorsers sometimes reveal that a post is paid and sometimes conceal it. This paper investigates two focused questions: how does the disclosure versus non-disclosure of celebrity sponsorship influence consumer purchase intention and brand attitude, and how does the disclosure versus non-disclosure of social media influencer sponsorship influence the same outcomes. Using a 2 (endorser type: celebrity vs. influencer) × 2 (disclosure: disclosure vs. non-disclosure) full factorial experiment with 357 Instagram users in Pakistan, the study finds a strong interaction between endorser type and disclosure. For celebrities, non-disclosure produced significantly higher purchase intention than disclosure. For influencers, disclosure produced significantly higher purchase intention than non-disclosure. The results imply that brands should generally avoid disclosing celebrity sponsorships and avoid concealing influencer sponsorships, because the wrong pairing depresses both purchase intention and brand attitude. The findings advance the literature by bringing two previously separate streams—endorser type and sponsorship disclosure—into a single comparative frame, and they offer concrete guidance for marketers and policymakers navigating native advertising on social media.