Increasing public awareness of healthy lifestyles has contributed to the growth of subscription-based healthy food services. However, maintaining consumers’ subscription intentions remains challenging because of inconsistent healthy eating behaviors and high subscription discontinuation rates. Marketing strategies involving celebrity influencers and electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) are widely used; however, the mechanisms through which these marketing stimuli influence subscription intentions remain insufficiently explored, particularly in the healthy food sector. This study aimed to examine the effects of celebrity endorser credibility and e-WOM on hedonic motivation, utilitarian motivation, attitudes toward subscription, and subscription intention while investigating the mediating roles of motivation and attitude and the moderating role of health consciousness. This study employed a quantitative explanatory approach using an online cross-sectional survey involving 127 respondents who had purchased healthy food products but had either never subscribed to or discontinued a healthy food subscription service. Data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4. The results indicated that celebrity endorser credibility and e-WOM had significant positive effects on hedonic and utilitarian motivation, which subsequently influenced attitudes toward subscription and subscription intention. Hedonic motivation had a stronger effect than utilitarian motivation on attitudes toward subscription. Furthermore, motivation and attitude fully mediated the relationships between the marketing stimuli and subscription intention, whereas health consciousness did not significantly moderate the relationship between attitude toward subscription and subscription intention. These findings provided empirical support for the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework and offered practical insights for healthy food businesses seeking to develop more effective consumer engagement and subscription strategies.
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