To Influence and Be Influenced

Abstract: Marketing efforts using traditional celebrity endorsers have for long been widely used with great success. However, the rise and development of the internet, as well as businesses’ products and services becoming more digitised, new forms of product endorsement have emerged. A popular and effective marketing tool is the involvement of social media influencers, a new form of celebrity stemming from the increased popularity and prevalence of social media in today’s society. In the ongoing debate about social media marketing, where influencer marketing is projected to grow immensely in the coming years, the explosion of influencers is causing an “authenticity crisis”. This study investigates micro-influencers as product endorsers on Instagram and takes the approach from both a consumer and a micro-influencer perspective in order to understand how perceptions of authenticity and identification shape how consumers perceive micro-influencers’ marketing efforts. Interviews were conducted with eight female respondents; five consumers and three micro-influencers, both groups active on Instagram. The findings show that micro-influencers marketing efforts are appreciated by consumers as they manage to maintain a more genuine approach towards their followers by conveying authenticity, thus making them more identifiable. In contrast, traditional celebrities and macroinfluencers marketing efforts were not as appreciated by consumers as they appear to have an obvious monetary focus and are thus harder for consumers to relate to and identify themselves with, decreasing the perceived authenticity of their marketing efforts.