Firms are increasingly turning to influencers to persuade consumers to purchase their brands. They do so because influencers have built a large social community around them on social media that they can persuade to adopt a recommended behaviour or brand. This objective is very similar to that of social recommender systems. Thus, this study aims to analyse influencer research and propose how to enhance the persuasion power of social recommender systems. A meta-analysis was conducted on influencer research obtained from the Web of Science core collection to this end. The meta-analysis revealed that influencers have a strong persuasion effect on consumer purchase intentions. Seven essential determinants of purchase intention were identified: trustworthiness, brand attitude, influencer’s credibility, parasocial interactions, expertise, and attractiveness. This paper discusses how social recommender systems in e-commerce platforms could be improved based on these findings. It emphasises credibility and identification as two broad factors that should be explored in future research on social recommender systems.