I will find you... But will I influence you? : A quantitative study on influencer endorsements impact on brand loyalty

Abstract: Background: Brand loyalty is an essential asset for brands as it helps brands to build a strong brand. Therefore, brands invest a significant amount of money in their marketing efforts and strategies to create and maintain brand loyalty in an ever-competitive market. One of these strategies is social media marketing, or more precisely, influencer marketing. Before influencer marketing arose, as it is known today, brands used celebrity endorsements to market the brand. However, as influencer marketing increased in popularity for brand endorsements, celebrity endorsement became less sought after and can be considered equal in their characteristics due to their fame and well-known personality. Prior research has not investigated how influencer endorsement impacts brand loyalty, therefore, this thesis applied the concept of celebrity endorsement in the context of influencer marketing and thereby treated influencers as celebrities due to their similar characteristics. Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explain the impact of influencers endorsement on brand loyalty. Methodology: This study used a deductive and quantitative approach and had an explanatory purpose and a cross-sectional research design. This study also presented a new model including three hypotheses that assumed a positive impact of the characteristics of an influencer’s endorsement on brand loyalty. The data collection was done through a self-completion questionnaire distributed online, which resulted in 104 valid responses. Findings: The findings of this study is that all the hypotheses (H1, H2, H3) are found insignificant in the all model (Model 5). This is because the hypotheses were rejected since the significance level of the ANOVA-test showed that the model was not significant as the significance level was above the accepted level (p<0.05). Hence,  no significant evidence can come from this study.  Conclusion: The conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that no significant relationship was found between the concepts of authenticity, credibility, and trustworthiness on brand loyalty, and based on these variables, influencer endorsements do not have an impact on brand loyalty.