The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors driving parasocial relationships and their effect on brand equity. A conceptual model including the following variables is proposed: opinion leader attributes, parasocial relationship, brand equity and the moderating effect of endorser-brand congruency. The proposed research model is analyzed using a survey of 301 Chinese consumers. Structural equation modelling is employed to examine the hypothesized relationships among all variables. The findings show that the opinion leader attributes of expertise and exploration positively affect the parasocial relationship between consumers and the endorser, and the parasocial relationship and brand equity are positively associated. Furthermore, endorser-brand congruency acts as a moderator on the relationship between opinion leader attributes and the parasocial relationship. The implications, limitations, and discussions are provided.

• Chunlin Yuan(Institute of Enterprise Strategic Management, Henan University, China)
• Kyunghoon Kim(Changwon National University, Republic of Kore)
• Jenny Ma(University of Greenwich, UK)
• Chenlei Zhang(Business School of Henan University, China)
• Shuman Wang(Business School of Henan University, China)