Ephemeral Mobile Social Media Content and Switching Intentions in the Fitness Market: The Roles of Perceived Authenticity, Trust and Perceived Involvement

Ephemeral mobile social media content has become a dominant marketing communication format. However, little is known about how such content influences consumer behaviour in mobile messaging environments such as WhatsApp, particularly among women consumers. Also, the challenge for brands using ephemeral mobile social media content is a lack of understanding of the precursors to consumers’ switching intentions across varied contexts. As a result, this study investigated the influence of ephemeral mobile social media content on the switching intentions of women consumers, particularly in the fitness market of a developing economy (Zimbabwe). The study adopted PLS-SEM to analyse data and test the proposed hypotheses grounded in uses and gratifications theory (UGT) and the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) framework. The findings, based on a sample of 358 consumers, confirm that ephemeral content significantly influences switching intention and enhances consumers’ perceptions of authenticity and trust, which are key explanatory mechanisms linking ephemeral content to behavioural outcomes. Perceived involvement strengthens the trust pathway, although its moderating effect on the authenticity pathway is not supported. This study helps practitioners to develop effective ephemeral content capabilities and enables fitness marketers to target women appropriately, preventing costly and unproductive short-lived WhatsApp content advertising.