The Influence of Viral Marketing and Celebrity Endorser On The Purchase Intention of Skintific Products In Tanjungpinang

: In the cosmetics industry, the use of viral marketing strategies and celebrity endorsers has been widely used to increase buying interest. Many studies have proven that buying interest is influenced by viral marketing strategies and celebrity endorsers. For this reason, this study aims to determine the influence of viral marketing and celebrity endorsers on the interest in buying Skintific products in Tanjungpinang. The sample in this study was 384 respondents taken from the people of Tanjungpinang city who had an interest in cosmetics. The research method used in this study is quantitative research with questionnaire distribution and using multiple linear regression analysis. The results showed that viral marketing and celebrity endorsers had a positive and significant effect on the purchase intention of Skintific products in Tanjungpinang. Several recommendations and managerial implications have been proposed at the end of this study.


INTRODUCTION
Having clean, white, and smooth skin has become a fundamental necessity for both women and men.This is evidenced by the strong purchasing power of people who view makeup and skincare products as essential items (Anisa, 2021;Kusumadewi & Saraswati, 2020).In line with this, Latifah & Iswari (2013) suggest that cosmetics are categorized based on their uses, namely makeup cosmetics and skincare cosmetics.It is no surprise that nowadays, both women and men are enthusiastic about using skincare products to take care of their facial skin.Achieving clean and smooth skin has become crucial, to the extent that there is a term "glow up" which refers to a person's face becoming cleaner and smoother.
Beauty products in Indonesia have been experiencing rapid growth and are widely available in the market, ranging from various forms, brands, qualities, and specific uses.There are numerous popular skincare brands in Indonesia, such as Somethinc, Avoskin, Skintific, Elsheskin, N'pure, and others.Among the most commonly used skincare products are moisturizers, sunscreens, serums, cleansers, and more.
Based on Statista's report (Mutia, 2022), the revenue generated in the beauty and personal care market reached US$7.23 billion or Rp111.83 trillion in 2022.The market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.81% from 2022 to 2027.According to a survey conducted by GoodStats, there are four product categories with the highest sales in eCommerce, with beauty and personal care products occupying the top position, followed by health products, mother and baby products, and food and beverage products (Angelia, 2022).These data indicate the high demand and competitiveness in the beauty industry.
Based on that, this indicates that players in the beauty industry requires to utilize social media to promote their products to a broader audience, enabling them to compete in the digital market, especially on social media.With the increasing advancement in technology, many consumers frequently use social networks in their daily lives (Irwansyah et al., 2019).According to a survey conducted by (Kemp, 2023), it is known that three social media platforms have the largest user base in Indonesia, namely WhatsApp with 92.1%, Instagram with 86.5%, and Facebook with 83.8%.The significant number of social media users is further supported by data from the (ZAP Beauty Index, 2020), which reveals that social media is the most commonly used tool by consumers to seek information about beauty products.One of the marketing strategies employed by the Indonesian beauty industry to increase purchase interest is collaborating with celebrities through social media and utilizing viral marketing approaches.
Kotler and Armstrong defined viral marketing as an internet version of word-of-mouth marketing that involves creating marketing messages, emails, or other marketing materials that can motivate customers to share them with their peers (Irwansyah et al., 2019).Viral marketing encompasses any strategy that persuades individuals to pass on marketing messages to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in message dissemination and penetration (Kirby, 2006) as cited in (Fard & Marvi, 2019).Viral marketing relies on social interactions and product attention to draw users into a virtual network that significantly influences their purchase intentions (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004).In other words, viral marketing serves as the cause, and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) represents the effect (Fard & Marvi, 2019).
Celebrity endorsement is one of the common strategies utilized by businesses as a promotional tool (Nugraha et al., 2018).Celebrity endorsement simply involves celebrities being engaged as endorsers to promote the advertised products or services (Ahmad et al., 2020).Additionally, (Dean, 1999) and (Dean & Biswas, 2001) add that celebrity endorsements are considered promotional tools due to their ability to influence consumer purchase intentions, behaviors, and product perceptions.Celebrity endorsement can be understood as an activity where companies use or pay the services of public figures (such as artists, singers, actors, politicians, etc.) to promote the products or services offered by the company (Spry et al., 2011).
Skintific is one of the skincare products that has gained a lot of popularity in Indonesia.One of Skintific's viral products is the 5X Ceramide Skin Barrier Repair Moisture Gel (Indonesia, 2023;Kusuma et al., 2023).This product has become quite popular and sought after for reviews because many consumers are satisfied with the results they experience after using it.It is known for its focus on repairing the skin barrier, especially for addressing issues like dryness and dehydration.
Skintific employs various viral marketing strategies, such as live streaming on TikTok, endorsements, TikTok affiliates, and numerous content creators posting about Skintific's products, especially their moisturizers, on social media.Utilizing viral marketing on TikTok aims to generate elements of informativeness, credibility, entertainment, and curiosity, thereby influencing purchase intentions (Dwinanda et al., 2022).Additionally, Skintific has implemented a celebrity endorsement strategy by partnering with Beauty Vlogger Tasya Farasya.The company hopes that this approach will further enhance consumer interest.Purchase intention refers to the tendency to act before the actual purchase decision is made (Gaol et al., 2023).
Source: Review from a Blogger (Ellyzabeth, 2021).Several studies have demonstrated the influence of viral marketing and celebrity endorsers on purchase intention.For instance, research conducted by (Ramadhan et al., 2023;Choshaly & Mirabolghasemi, 2022) indicates that viral marketing has an impact on purchase intention.Furthermore, studies carried out by (Barokah et al., 2021;Ahmad et al., 2020;Singh et al., 2021) have shown that celebrity endorsers also have a significant effect on purchase intention.
Based on the phenomenon and previous research, the purpose of this study is to determine the partial and simultaneous effects of viral marketing and celebrity endorsers on the purchase intention of Skintific products in Tanjungpinang.

METHODS
This research adopts a quantitative research method.The sample used in this study consists of 269 respondents from the community of Tanjungpinang who are interested in skincare.Data collection was conducted by distributing research questionnaires to the selected sample.
This study investigates the effects of viral marketing and celebrity endorsers on purchase intention, both partially and simultaneously.The viral marketing variable is measured using three indicators based on Kotler & Armstrong: Messenger, Message, and Environment (Situmeang, 2022).The celebrity endorser variable is measured using five indicators according to Shimp (Utarsih, 2014): Trustworthiness, Expertise, Attractiveness, Respect, and Similarity.The purchase intention variable is measured using four indicators as per Ferdinan (Situmeang, 2022), including Transactional Intention, Referential Intention, Preferential Intention, and Exploratory Intention.The data were analyzed using SPSS, including validity and reliability tests, classical assumption tests, multiple linear regression, and hypothesis testing.
Based on the theories, data, and literature review presented in the introduction and methodology sections, the conceptual framework in this study is as follows:

Characteristics of Respondents.
The researchers distributed questionnaires to 269 individuals from the city of Tanjungpinang who were interested in skincare products.Here is the data on the characteristics of the respondents: From the table above, it appears that the majority of respondents (84%) are female, then the rest (14%) are male.Based on age, the majority (73.6%) were respondents between the ages of 21-30, then 15-20 years (21.2%), and ages 31-40 years (5.2%).According to this table 42% is the highest percentage private employee, followed by students (20%), civil servants (16%), self employed (15%) and others (7%).

Validity and Reliability Test
The following is a table of validity and reliability test results of three variables with 30 sample of respondents.The table below is the result of the validity and reliability test of each variable in research.Based on table 2, each item of variable viral marketing (X1) and celebrity endorser (X2) has a value of rcount > rtable of 0.361.So, the conclusion is that all points of variable question X are statistically declared valid and worthy to be used as a variable measuring tool and can be used in the next analysis.And for the reliability test, it can be concluded that all variables are declared reliable and can be used for research data.The results in table 3 revealed that viral marketing and celebrity endorser significantly affects purchase intention simultaneously by causing a variance of 42.7% (adjusted R 2 =0.427,P=0.000).This rejects the null hypothesis that there is no significant effect of viral marketing and celebrity on purchase intention and upholds the alternative hypothesisPartially, the viral marketing variable has a positive and significant influence on purchase intention (tcount 6.588 > ttabel 1.969, p = 0.000).Similarly, the celebrity endorser variable has a positive and significant influence on purchase intention (tcount 5.306 > ttabel 1.969, p = 0.000).

The Influence of Viral Marketing on the Purchase Intention of Skintific Products in Tanjungpinang
Based on the research results on the influence of Viral Marketing and Celebrity Endorser on the Purchase Intention of Skintific products in Tanjungpinang, it is evident that Viral Marketing is one of the advantages of social media compared to traditional media (Muhajir et al., 2022).According to (Haudi et al., 2022) Viral marketing involves creating marketing messages or advertisements with the aim of being disseminated through online word of mouth (WOM).This is supported by the theory proposed by (Haya et al., 2021), which states that viral marketing is used to describe how a message is transmitted and is considered a marketing tactic that can prompt people to share it with acquaintances and social networks.The findings of this study align with the research conducted by (Muhajir et al., 2022) and (Astasari & Sudarwanto, 2021), indicating that there is a significant influence between viral marketing and purchase intention.

The Influence of Celebrity Endorser on the Purchase Intention of Skintific Products in Tanjungpinang.
In this research, celebrity endorser as a marketing strategy employed by Skintific, using Tasya Farasya as their celebgram endorser, has proven to effectively increase purchase intention in Tanjungpinang.The indicators used to measure the celebrity endorser include trustworthiness, expertise, attractiveness, respect, and similarity.This means that based on these indicators, Tasya Farasya possesses high credibility among consumers.The theory of source credibility has been studied by many researchers, including (Yoon et al., 1998), who connected this theory with reputation, status, and authority.According to (Ahmad et al., 2020), purchase intention among consumers can indeed be influenced by the perceived credibility of the endorser.The results of this study indeed demonstrate a positive influence between celebrity endorser and consumer purchase intention.Therefore, this research is highly significant, especially for advertisers and marketers, as it helps them understand how to choose the right celebrity with the appropriate qualities to maximize effectiveness.Ultimately, celebrity endorsements are aimed at optimizing sales and exposure in advertising campaigns.

The Influence of Viral Marketing and Celebrity Endorser on the Purchase Intention of Skintific Products in Tanjungpinang.
In this study, viral marketing and celebrity endorsers as a form of marketing strategy carried out by Skintific and obtained good results with a positive and significant effect on buying interest.The results of testing the coefficient of determination (R 2 ) found that viral marketing and celebrity endorsers sumultaneously influenced the variable of buying interest by 42.7% and the remaining 57.3% was influenced by other variables that were not studied in this study.This implies that when Skintific implements marketing communication strategies through viral marketing and celebrity endorser appropriately, it will increase the interest in buying Skintific products in Tanjungpinang.This is supported by the theory proposed by Schiffman and Kanuk (Shahnaz & Wahyono, 2017), which states that consumers' interest in a product leads them to seek additional information, and they are likely to make purchases by gathering information from various sources.These findings are also supported by research conducted by (Ardianti & Erdiansyah, 2022;Putri et al., 2021), where it was found that both viral marketing and celebrity endorser have an influence on purchase intention.

CONCLUSION
Based on the research findings and discussion regarding the influence of viral marketing and celebrity endorser on the purchase intention of Skintific products in Tanjungpinang, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1.The variable of viral marketing (X1) in this study has a positive and significant influence on purchase intention (Y).This means that as the viral marketing of Skintific products increases, the purchase intention of Skintific products in Tanjungpinang will also increase.2. The variable of celebrity endorser (X2) in this study has a positive and significant influence on purchase intention (Y).This indicates that the better the communication and message delivery by Skintific's endorser, the higher the purchase intention of Skintific products in Tanjungpinang. 3. The variables of viral marketing (X1) and celebrity endorser (X2) in this study, when considered together, have a positive and significant influence on purchase intention (Y).This implies that a well-executed viral marketing and celebrity endorsement will collectively increase the purchase intention of Skintific products in Tanjungpinang.

Fig. 1
Fig. 1 Product Review of Skintific Moisturizer by Celebgram Endorsers and Beauty Vloggers on SocialMedia.
Source: Adjusted Concept for the Study (2023) Fig. 2 Conceptual Framework Based on the conceptual framework above, the hypotheses in this study are as follows: H1: Viral marketing has an influence on the purchase intention of Skintific products in Tanjungpinang.H2: Celebrity endorser has an influence on the purchase intention of Skintific products in Tanjungpinang.H3: Viral marketing and celebrity endorser have a combined influence on the purchase intention of Skintific products in Tanjungpinang.