How do Instagram influencers impact consumer attitude and purchase behaviour of young women?

Abstract

With the introduction of Web 2.0, social media has become an important marketing medium, enabling a new way for communicating and sharing information through e-WOM and User- Generated Content. Brands have begun to realize the benefits of using Social Media Influencers as a marketing tool to promote their products to a more targeted audience. This new practice, called Influencer Marketing, is mainly implemented on Instagram and works particularly in the fashion industry, which is why this research focuses on both this platform and this industry. This study examines the influence of fashion micro-influencers on Instagram and the relationship between self-representation, trustworthiness, and consumer behaviour towards fashion micro-celebrities endorsements. To investigate this as effectively as possible, this research is driven by a qualitative research strategy subject to interpretivism and constructionism. A thematic analysis has been the method used in this research to analyse the data collected from phenomenological semi- structured interviews of eight participants. This qualitative research follows an abductive approach allowing the researcher to continuously move back and forth between the theories made in the past and the empirical data emerging from the findings of the research. The results of this study clearly indicate that female consumers react positively to fashion micro-influencers influence since the latter have an effect on the way they shape their online and offline identity and on their purchasing intents. The results also show that fashion micro-influencers manage to build a relationship of trust with their followers through four main strategies, namely authenticity, transparency, credibility, and coherency, despite the growing consumers awareness of the partnerships established between brands and social media influencers. Lastly, the results demonstrated that, thanks to the visual nature of Instagram and its tools, and as a result of parasocial relationships, fashion micro- influencers create daily liminoid experiences for female consumers.