Social media marketing

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Millennials

The thesis will base the studies on Millennials as the target group. The reason why is that the audience in this group has a high involvement in the digital field. More than 60% of social media users belong to the millennial’s generation cohort (Statista, 2016). The researchers often categorized individuals between the age span 1980-2000 as millennials (Lu, Bocks & Joseph, 2013). This generational segment is significant for the studies since they grew up in an environment where social networking, is a part of their daily life and have been influenced by the digital environment (Parment, 2008; Valentine & Powers, 2013). Millennial are usually referred to as a highly educated generation where the individuals have a great understanding of technology and digitalization (Syrett & Lammiman, 2003).

Credibility

A message is perceived as more authentic and credible when it is communicated by a fellow consumer i.e. Influencer, compared to when it would have been put forward by an advertiser (De Veirman, Cauberghe & Hudders, 2017). The act to start following an influencer is an active choice, the consumer already sees the chosen influencer as credible (Hsu, Chuan-Chuan Lin & Chiang, 2013). Credibility is when an individual state if a claim is true, factual, or unbiased (Hass, 1981). Influencer marketing and trust go hand in hand regarding this study. When building personal relationships with customer it is critical for influencers to create trust in order to be in successful on social media (Jabr & Zheng, 2014; Weiss, 2014). Therefore, more personal relationships can be created between the follower and influencers as the follower is more likely to see the influencer’s opinions as credible (Abidin, 2016).

Sponsorships

According to Meenaghan (1983), sponsorship can be regarded as the provision of assistance either financial or in-kind to an activity by a commercial organization for the purpose of achieving commercial objectives. While in accordance with Sandler and Shani (1989), they regard it to be the provision of resources (e.g. money, people, equipment) by an organization directly to an event or activity in exchange for a direct association to the event or activity. The providing organization can then use this direct association to achieve either their corporate, marketing, or media objectives. However, International Events group, (1999) view sponsorship to be a cash and/or in-kind fee paid to a property (typically sports, entertainment, non-profit event or organization) in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that property.

Ohanian’s model of source credibility

Source credibility is a term where the level of the persuasiveness of a message can be affected based on the communicator’s characteristics and credibility. Based on Ohanian (1991) studies, he found three factors (1) Trustworthiness, (2) Expertise and (3) Attractiveness, that adds a higher level of credibility of the source. Firstly, the level of trustworthiness is being discussed based on how valid the audience think the message is. The second factor is on which degree the spokesperson is perceived as. Expertise is the highest level in terms of credibility. Lastly, source attractiveness is based on how the message is being perceived. Hovland, Jane, and Kelly (1951) developed the credibility model, a more established model compared to the attractiveness model.

Primary Data through Semi-Structured interviews

Interviews have many advantages in terms of collecting data and these advantages are discussed by Saunders et al. (2009). There are three different ways to do interviews, which are: structured, semi-structured and unstructured. Semi-structured interviews are the best-suited approach for this thesis when it comes to understanding the influencerfollower relationship and its impact on the credibility of influencers’ Instagram profile. The benefit with this approach is the possibility of discussions is created which can lead to new views since the discussion is not limited to a structured set of questions, which makes semi-structured interviews advantageous (Gray, 2004). There were a set of questions created by the authors that were used as a guide for the discussion but not all questions were necessarily used.

Participation selection and Sampling Technique

The requirements for the participants who would be interviewed were to have an Instagram account and that they would belong to millennials, the participants were then chosen based on the authors’ assessment. A further requirement was that participants had to be within the age span set by the authors, millennials within the ages 18-29. Millennials have a recognized user experience for Instagram where they understand the platform and can analyse the influencer Instagram profile well (Becker, 2012) which makes them the most appropriate age group for this study. Prior to this study, purposive sampling was chosen as the sampling technique since the authors had specific requirements, mentioned above, in order to be able to participate in the study. The number of volunteers for the interviews was 17 individuals.

Table of Contents :

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Background
  • 1.2 Problem
  • 1.3 Research Purpose
  • 1.4 Research Question
  • 1.5 Delimitations
  • 1.6 Target Group
  • 1.7 Definitions
• 2. Frame of reference
  • 2.1 Social media marketing
  • 2.2 Instagram
    • 2.2.1 Regulation
    • 2.2.2 Cross-posting
  • 2.3 Influencer Marketing
  • 2.4 Influencer
    • 2.4.1 Different categories of social influencers
  • 2.5 Electronic Word-of-Mouth
  • 2.6 Millennials
  • 2.7 Relationship building
  • 2.8 Credibility
  • 2.9 Sponsorships
  • 2.10 Aesthetics
  • 2.11 Ohanian’s model of source credibility
  • 2.12 Hovland’s Model of Attribution of Credibility
• 3. Methodology and Method
  • 3.1 Research Philosophy
  • 3.2 Research approach
  • 3.3 Research strategy
  • 3.4 Data collection
    • 3.4.1 Primary Data through Semi-Structured interviews
    • 3.4.2 Secondary Data
  • 3.5 Sampling
    • 3.5.1 Participation selection and Sampling Technique
    • 3.5.2 Plan and execution of sampling
    • 3.5.3 Formulation of Interview questions
    • 3.5.4 Pilot testing
  • 3.6 Data analysis
  • 3.7 Ethics
    • 3.7.1 Transparency
    • 3.7.2 Reliability
    • 3.7.3 Validity
  • 3.8 Time Horizons
• 4. Empirical findings and analysis
  • 4.1 Research background
  • 4.2 Influencer definition
  • 4.3 Credibility
    • 4.3.1 Losing credibility of an Influencer
    • 4.3.2 Number of followers affects influencer credibility?
  • 4.4 Gender differences among participants activeness on Instagram
  • 4.5 Relationship with influencers
  • 4.6 Sponsorships
  • 4.7 Feed aesthetics
  • 4.8 Attitude towards influencers
• 5. Conclusion
• 6. Discussion
  • 6.1 Managerial Implications
  • 6.2 Limitations
  • 6.3 Contributions
  • 6.4 Future Research
• References
  • Appendix
  • Appendix 1 – Interview questions
  • Appendix 2 – Interview questions reviewed
  • Appendix 3 – Influencers used in interviews including pictures
  • Appendix 4 – Testimony of credibility

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Instagram profile’s effect on influencer credibility