Impact of influencers on customer purchasing behaviours and its effectiveness

Abstract

Influencer marketing is growing as one of the major marketing techniques—influencers with a social following base act as opinion leaders. The expertise and trustworthiness of influencers make influencer marketing effective. Traditionally, brands enjoy two types of marketing: word-of-mouth and advertising. The balance used to be in favor of advertising. However, as the brands started receiving feedback about purchasing behavior of consumers, they became aware that a significant portion of the consumer base's purchases is driven by the opinions of their peers, friends, family, relatives, opinion leaders, etc. The exponential growth of social media has paved the way for influencer marketing as it enables relation ties among the masses. Influencer marketing is inspired by word-of-mouth marketing, where the satisfied consumers used to discuss the product with their friends, relatives, etc. The process is organic, and the brands never provided any monetary incentives to those consumers who do word-of-mouth marketing. However, as the social media channels penetrated the masses, relational marketing gained prominence and gave birth to influencer marketing. Many satisfied consumers who used to do word-of-mouth marketing for no monetary incentive have moved to influencer marketing. These influencers promote the products of a particular brand through giving their opinion on products, storytelling, sharing the posts related to the brand, etc.