Influencer marketing: What if everything revolves around the consumer’s self-esteem : A study about the purchasing behaviour of Swedish women in relation to influencer marketing

Abstract: This thesis examines how female consumers’ self-esteem may impact an influencer’s ability to create a purchase through suggesting and testing a developed conceptual model. The Source credibility model, Similarity and Tie-strength were utilized as underlying theoretical frameworks. Five different independent variables were identified; Source- Attractiveness, Trustworthiness, Expertise, Similarity, and Tie-strength, which were evaluated in relation to the dependent variable; Purchase intention. Lastly, Self-esteem was introduced as a moderating variable. The goal with the conceptual model was to gain a deeper understanding of how a consumer’s self-esteem may affect their purchasing behavior, as well as which factors that may influence their purchase intention. A quantitative research method was used, and ten hypotheses were developed from the conceptual model.    To test the hypotheses and answer the research questions, a questionnaire was distributed with the use of snowball sampling. Overall, 1029 Swedish females who followed an influencer on a social media participated in the survey. It was stated in the results and the analysis that all five independent variables had a significant positive relation on the consumer’s purchase intention. However, data shows that a consumer’s self-esteem solely had a relation on two of the five independent variables; Trustworthiness & Tie-strength. Trustworthiness was found to have a negative relation to the purchase intention, while Tie-strength was found to have a positive relation. A content analysis was conducted in order to identify other factors that the participants in the survey felt had a significant impact on why they followed their favorite influencer. The result of the content analysis identified two more factors that may impact the ability of an influencer to create a purchase. These were the Entertainment value and the Core values of the influencer.