How the authenticity, credibility and trustworthiness of influencers impact the engagement and purchase intentions of their followers?
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2024
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Marketing
Language
en
Pages
73
Series
Abstract
Social media influencers are nowadays an essential part of businesses’ marketing strategies. Influencers are able to shape the opinions of their followers regarding new products and trends hence being an asset for brands they are promoting. Even though social media influencers are a very recent phenomenon, they have been studied quite vastly. However, there hasn’t been research that would provide insights directly from an influencer's community. According to previous research the authenticity, credibility and trustworthiness of an influencer is what will separate a successful and unsuccessful influencer in the future. These influencer characteristics have been studied separately but their interplay has not been examined yet nor has it been studied which of the characteristics has the biggest impact on consumer behaviour. This study examines how the authenticity, credibility and trustworthiness of influencers impact the engagement and purchase intention of their followers. An online survey was conducted which was shared directly to an influencer’s community and got over 1000 responses. This is a quantitative research, and the main methods used for analysing the results are factor and regression analysis. The results of the research both support and challenge some of the findings of previous studies. This research also provides some completely new insights. Influencers’ authenticity, credibility and trustworthiness do have an impact on consumers’ behaviour in the form of engagement and purchase intention. Authenticity has the biggest influence on engagement, and, on the other hand, credibility has the biggest impact on purchase intention. At the end of the thesis managerial implications are presented with suggestions for influencers on how to increase engagement rate and purchase behaviour among followers and for brands on what kind of influencers to choose for campaigns.Description
Thesis advisor
Kajalo, SamiKeywords
influencer marketing, influencers, social media marketing, social media influencers