"I trust the influencer, do you?" : A quantitative study on Instagram users' level of activity and experience of trust towards influencers regarding purchase intentions during covid-19.

Abstract: People have now lived through a pandemic for over a year, where many parts of the world have undergone big changes. Such as, restrictions, which has made us keep physical contact with other people to the bare minimum. Because of this, people are more dependent on their social media platforms to stay updated, such as Instagram, where Swedes usage has increased since covid-19. According to previous research, this can impact our behaviour in different ways. We do not have the same freedom to do the things we enjoy as before the pandemic, which has impacted our opportunities to go shopping in clothing stores. However, users can still shop and get inspired by influencers' opinions online, on for instance the social media platform Instagram. According to previous research, an influencer on Instagram can impact other users' decisions regarding online purchases, and as the platform grows larger, so does influencer marketing. Previous research also suggests that motives for different behaviours online can be determined by one's age and gender. The purpose of this study was to analyse if there  was a connection between Swedish users’ level of activity and their extent of trust towards influencers  regarding purchase intention, to later analyse if there was a connection to users’ age and gender. This question has not been studied during covid-19 and therefore we wanted to investigate this gap within the research field. This study wanted to analyse Instagram users' own experience regarding the factors above.  Based on the purpose of this study, the following research questions emerged; What is the connection, if any, between users’ level of activity and their extent of trust towards influencers regarding purchase intention? In what way, if any, can users’ level of activity and their extent of trust towards influencers, regarding purchase intention, be connected to their age and gender? Is there a relationship between covid-19, their level of activity and their extent of trust towards influencers regarding purchase intention? Further, this thesis used a quantitative survey, built upon theories such as the uses and gratifications approach, eWOM communication, influencer marketing, opinion leadership theory and previous research within the field. This study analysed the answers of 210 respondents between the ages of 18-34, collected through an online survey in the Survey & Report program. The survey was spread through Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, and later analysed in SPSS. The results indicated that it is their level of non-engaging activity that increases the trust they experience towards influencers, not their level of engaging activity. Further, the extent of trust towards influencers has two levels: one, users who trust influencers fashion expertise, therefore, turn to influencers for inspiration and the second level, the trust towards influencers regarding specific clothing purchases. It takes a higher extent of trust towards the influencer if a consumer were to purchase the specific clothing item. We found that this extent of trust occurs within the users’ that are active regarding both engaging and non-engaging activities. Furthermore, their level of engaging activity or their age did not show any connections to their level of trust towards influencers.  The results also showed that women are more active on Instagram regarding both engaging and non-engaging activities than men. Those who are the most active women on Instagram, trust influencers to a higher extent when searching for clothing inspiration. According to our results, we could not conclude that users have trusted influencers regarding purchase intention either more or less during covid-19. However, we detected a relationship, that the users who experience an increase in their Instagram use, have also followed new influencers, looked at influencers content and clothing inspiration more during covid-19.