Gains And Methods Of Using Social Media Influencers In Promoting Skincare Product

Project and Seminar Material for Marketing

Abstract

These day, influencer is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field. Influencer content may be framed as testimonial advertising; influencers play the role of a potential buyer, or may be involved as third parties. Our research cover related to attitude influencers, credibility influencers, social attractiveness and purchase intention of skincare product. The purpose of this study was to investigate how social media influencer affect promotion of skincare product. This study is a descriptive research study. Quantitative data collection method and convenience sampling method were used by distributing 300 questionnaires. The analysis of research data was performed using spss26 and google form software. The result from this study shows that credibility influencers was found to exert a significant positive factor on purchase intention of skincare product of skin care product which has influence toward purchase intention of skincare product which is 7.185. With the mean 3.89, majority of the respondents strongly agreed that they are consider to purchase of skin product from base credibility influencers.

Table of Content

Chapter One:

Introduction

1.1 Introduction
1.2 Background of the study
1.3 Research Problem
1.4 Purpose of the Study
1.5 Research Objective
1.6 Research Question
1.6 Significant of the study
1.7 Definition of terms
1.8 Organization of the study

Chapter Two:

Literature Review

2.1 Conceptual Review
2.2 Theoretical Review

Chapter Three:

Research Methodology

3.1 Introduction
3.2 Research design
3.3 Population, Sample size and Sampling Technique
3.4 Scales and Measurement
3.5 Data Collection
3.5.1 Primary Data
3.5.2 Secondary data
3.6 Research Instrument
3.6.1 Questionnaire Design
3.6.2 Pilot Test
3.6.3 Reliability Test
3.7 Statistical Data Analyses
3.7.1 Validity and Reliability
3.7.2 Descriptive Analysis

Chapter Four:

Data Analysis and Result Presentation

4.1 Data Presentation
4.2 Data Analysis

Chapter Five:

Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation

5.1 Introduction
5.2 Discussion
5.3 Implication of Study
5.4 Limitation of Study
5.5 Future Research
5.6 Conclusion
References
Appendix

Chapter One

Introduction

1.1 Introduction

Social media is a form of media used online by enabling users to easily join, share, and create content across blogs, social networks, wikis, forums and the virtual world. Blogs, social networks are the most common form of social media used by people around the world. With 500 million profiles, 60K categories and five-year historical data, it boasts the most powerful influencer search engine out there. Easily find and manage influencers in any category and location in the world across Twitter, YouTube and blogs. This is how influencing social media can affect a buyer’s intentions.

Often, they (companies) hired an influencer on social media to advertise their product. This study was designed to analyse the impact of social media influencer and brand image on consumer’s purchase intention of skincare products. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyse the data collection. The result of this study hammering the current believes that it is true the medial social influencer has a significant impact on building the brand images, and it has positive correlation.

But based on the study, using social media influencers to influence consumer’s purchase intention of skincare product was not giving a significant impact.

It will help the brand to build a perceived image on consumer’s minds then the brand image was driving their consideration to purchase. We will discuss the background of the study for Social Media, problem statement and follow by research objectives and research questions. Moving on, this study will also discuss the Significance of the study and definition of terms and last with the conclusion for this chapter.

1.2 Background of the Study

Social Media has been defined as websites which allow profile creation and visibility of relationships between users (Boyd & Ellison, 2008); web-based applications which provide functionality for sharing, relationships, group, conversation and profiles (Kietzmann et al., 2011).

Social media has been referred to as “social media sites” (Diga & Kelleher, 2009), or a set of information technologies which facilitate interactions and networking (Kapoor et al., 2017; Oestreicher-Singer & Zalmanson, 2013). However, there appears to be a broad agreement that Web2.0 technologies played a significant role in the development and adoption of social media.

According to that particular meaning, social media is referred to “Internet-based applications built on Web 2.0, while Web 2.0 refers to a concept as well as a platform for harnessing collective intelligence” (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013 p. 246). Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, provide people with pervasive network connectivity (Asur & Huberman, 2010). The term “Web 2.0” refers to the set of technologies and ideologies that enable and drive media-rich content creation on the internet (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Web 2.0 is rooted in the open-source ideology, whereby users collaborate freely using free tools and sharing their work and information with each other. Technological advances in Web 2.0 and open ideology supported the emergence of User Generated Content (UGC). The UGC – the ability to create and share content free of censorship and at low cost, contributed to the proliferation of social media (DesAutels, 2011).

Next, the influencer is Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) refer the influencer is influential. And a person who can influence the purchase decision of other consumer’s. And Watts and Dodds (2007) use this term for highly-connected people”. Social media influencer represents a new trend of independent third party endorsers who shape audience attitudes through blogs, tweets and the use of other social media. However, Influencer marketing is like a hybrid of old and new marketing tools, taking the idea of celebrity endorsement and placing it into a modern-day content-driven marketing campaign. The main difference is that the results of the campaign are usually collaborations between brands and influencers.

However, there is a peculiarity the lack of reputable brands that choose to raise awareness with mega-influencers Scale. Amber Fillerup, a skincare blogger with 1.4 million followers, can host partnership with major brands such as Tropicana, airlines and department stores. Khloe Reality TV star with close to 100 million followers, completed a promotion with a small one skincare brand that has only 54,000 Instagram followers on its account. The biggest trend brands teaming up with bigger influencers do not match if the celebrity status is the variable. Some may assume that the bigger the more an influencer is worth, the bigger the brand available for partnership.

There could be a disconnection in the influencer’s budgets, dependence on influencers marketing, fear of reputation risk or Figure 1 any other combination of brand strategies that leads to this result, but it is interesting to note that most of the influencers used by the Fyre Festival existed in the mega-influencer category.

1.3 Research Problem

Although social media offer easier and more accessible ways to interact with others, how we communicate and interact hinders the quality of our interpersonal relationships. The quality of interpersonal relationships is at risk because “as the Internet becomes more intertwined in daily life, the use of the Internet or social media becomes a higher priority” (Porter et al. 8A, recently published by my company, Stackla, revealed that only 23% of people believe that the content of celebrities and influencers is influential. Alternatively, 60% say that the content of friends or family members influence their purchasing decisions. As a sector, we have lost sight of the fact that social influencers are inherently inauthentic. Even if they are true fans of your brand, the content they are creating is not earned; it’s just a modern form of paid advertising and content creation. While social media provides easier and more accessible opportunities to interact with others, how we communicate and interact hinders the quality of our interpersonal relationships.

The quality of interpersonal relationships is at risk because “as the Internet is becoming more interwoven into daily life, the use of the Internet and/or social media becomes a higher priority” (Porter et al. 8). The usage of social media is deemed more important because users are able to easily interact and communicate with those in their social network by just liking a photo on Instagram or commenting on a post on Facebook. However, this type of online communication and interaction is changing how we think about relationships and how we maintain them. Individuals are no longer using face-to-face interaction to facilitate communication, rather they are depending on social media to do the job. Today, those in romantic relationships are writing on one another’s wall on Facebook to display and express love and affection. College students are frequently checking and updating their social networking sites daily in order to stay connected with friends and family back home. Even in friendships, individuals believe that if you are friends on Facebook or followers on Instagram and Twitter that you are friends in real life. Porter et al.

Acknowledge that “…these new [communication] technologies make it extremely possible to become dependent…on them” (8). Milani, Osualdella, and Di Blasio also recognize this and claim that “…it is precisely the social function of the Internet that could explain the dependence on” social media (683). Users are enticed by the idea of easier and convenient ways to keep in touch with family and friends (Sponcil and Gitimu 5), thus individuals are becoming dependent on social media to facilitate communication efforts in their relationships .As a result, social media can ultimately affect interpersonal relationships when we choose to allow them to control our communication in a relationship.

When we become dependent on social media to facilitate communication, there are shifts in relationship maintenance behaviours, misconstrued thoughts about what a true relationship really is, and there are emotional barriers, where there is lack of emotional intimacy. Hence, causing the quality of relationships to deteriorate and “weak ties” in a relationship to develop. Influence marketing has become the social media equivalent of local advertising, and in my view, the effects are similar: incremental improvement of soft metrics such as awareness and engagement, while hard metrics like conversions and sales at scale. The National Advertisers Association (ANA) found that, while 75% of marketers are currently doing influencer marketing activities, only 36% consider these efforts to be effective and 19% have admitted that they are “ineffective”. Although the effectiveness of the influencer varies by industry and marketing goals, an epidemic of fake followers has undoubtedly plagued the entire influencer industry. The prevalence of social bots and the purchase of fake followers has sowed mistrust among consumers and brands alike. How can you be confident on the consumer side that someone is as credible and popular as their number of followers implies if there is a high probability those numbers are artificially inflated? And on the brand side, and reach, impression or commitment informed by influential people who take advantage of fake accounts or bots are made fraudulent and essentially useless.

1.4 Purpose of the Study

To assess gains and methods of using social media influencers in promoting skincare product.

1.5 Research Objective

The general objective of this study is to analyze the factors that influence purchase intention of skincare product. These are some research objective as follow,

RO1: To determine the relationship between attitude influencers and purchase intention of skincare product.
RO2: To determine the relationship between credibility influencers and purchase intention of skincare product.
RO3: To determine the relationship between social attractiveness and purchase intention of skincare product.

1.6 Research Question

RQ1: Does attitude influencers influence purchase intention of skincare product?
RQ2: Does credibility influencers influence purchase intention of skincare product?
RQ3: Does social attractiveness influence purchase intention of skincare product?

1.6 Significant of the Study

1.6.1 Theoretical Significance

Building on the persuasion theory developed by Petty and Cacioppo (1986), previous researchers found the importance of the arguments in the persuasion process, but, according to Mosler (2006), the peripheral cues could play a more important role than the arguments themselves in persuading a group. Users connect to social media websites to fulfil their information, entertainment, and mood management needs (Shao, 2009). The content is entertaining and easy to absorb, adapted to the young population that refers to the peripheral route of the Elaboration likelihood model (ELM) (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). theory of in this study we are using parasocial interaction (PSI) as our theory. The reason we have chosen this theory is that the matching. This study will help the academic person to understand more about the current trend which is social media marketing. They can offer interaction, value-adding, and promotion to the user. The new generation of the marketing team can use social media as their advertising platform.

1.6.2 Practical Significance

Benefit to Government

Social media influencers can help the government in many areas. One of the industry is tourism, politics, traffic. The government can find an influencer to raise awareness about travel in Nigeria, has many benefits and we can improve Nigeria’s economic and tourism sector by promoting the visit to the countryside to Nigeria. Consumers can easily reach the influence of social networks to gain more influence to get more information. The government can also use SMI to promote new government policies. For example, life spends time renewing its driver’s license.

Benefit to Marketer

A new study conducted for a new marketing trend, the use of social media influencers, can significantly increase sales for the company product. A marketer can reach the influencer directly by contacting the influencer agency. Today, the seller can reach more public and target the customer through the use of social media marketing. The marketer can, however, use social media influence to promote their company product in order to increase awareness and sales directly. Marketers can get more feedback and information from the customer. The new big impact of marketing can increase the turnover of the company. In summary, marketers can use social media influencers to advertise because it is cheaper than commercial advertising.

Benefit to User

The new trend in social media marketing allows the user of social media to easily reach our desired product. The social media influencer will give you information about the product attached by a tutorial video and how to use the product. The video can provide information about social media users about how effective the product is and the way to use the product. Moreover, the user will be able to summarize or remember the brand or product if the influencer of social

Media takes this over. User confidence will increase when social media influencer is promoting it. The user of social networks can not only obtain the product information from advertisement and the company. You can also learn more or get new information from social media influencer. For example, the influencer of social networks will promote the new product from Maggi. They give us knowledge of the product, the promotional code to get a discount on the articles and they give a question and answer session to the audience. so we can get to solve our problem immediately.

1.7 Definition of Terms

1.7.1 Credibility

Credibility could be defined as the degree of the trustworthiness and reliability of the source (Rogers and Bhowmik, 1970).

1.7.2 Social Attractiveness

Social attractiveness refers to the likability of the speaker. Attractive speakers can change the attitudes of the audience (Sharma, 1990).

1.7.3 Attitude

Attitude, defined as the degree to which people tend to bond with similar others, is deemed an explaining factor of interpersonal communications and influence-based relationship patterns, especially in social networking studies (McPherson et al., 2001; Aral and Walker, 2012; Walker, 2014).

1.8 Organization of the Study

This study contains five chapters.

Chapter one contains the background information to the problem, statement of the problem, research objectives, and the research questions. Also, chapter one provides the significance and scope of the study.
Chapter two is about review of literatures, both theoretical and empirical. It begins with definition of key terms used in the study, the theoretical basis of the study as well as review of empirical literatures on HSB.
Chapter two ends up with analysis of the research gap and the conceptual framework.
Chapter three provides a discussion on how the research was accomplished. The chapter shows the research design used, the methods of data collection, presentation and analysis as well as techniques to ensure data credibility.
Chapter four is all about presentation and discussion of findings; while
Chapter five provides summary, conclusion, recommendations and areas for further study.

Chapter Five

Discussion and Conclusion

5.1 Introduction

This chapter discusses the statistical results in Chapter 4. It recapitulates the study and discusses the major findings in the later section. Implication and limitation of the study will be discussed and suggestion for the research will be highlighted for future use.

5.2 Discussion

While the previous section of this chapter focuses more on the abstract overview of all descriptive and inferential studies, this section focuses more on the analysis of key findings in order to validate research goals and conclusions.

5.2.1 Relationship between Attitude Influencers and Purchase intention of skincare product.

H1 indicates that attitude influencers have significant relationship on purchase intention of skincare product. Result shows P-value is 0.000 and β-value is 0.205, which expressed that H1 is supported. Consumer purchasing in social media is influence by influencers. Furthermore, attitude influencers, which is an important know ledge for developing a successful marketing operation.

Based on these, the hypotheses H1 is supported.

5.2.2 Relationship Credibility Influencers and Purchase intention of skincare product

H2 indicates that attitude influencers has significant relationship on purchase intention of skincare product. Result shows P-value is 0.000 and β-value is 0.460, which expressed that H2 is supported. Information presented by a credible influencers can effect consumer belief, opinions, attitudes and behavior. Additionally, influencers who have been viewed as experts tend to be more persuasive and capable of driving promoting skincare product. H2 is supported.

5.2.3 Relationship Social Attractiveness and Purchase intention of skincare product

H3 indicates that social attractiveness has no significant relationship on purchase intention of skincare product. Result shows P-value is 0.594 and β-value is 0.032, which expressed that H3 is not supported. There was no impact between social attractiveness on purchase intention of skincare product which is from the are not creating an effective respond from consumers to be an incentive to buy. Social media nfluencers appearance can’t capture follower intention to buy the product. H3 is not supported.

5.3 Implication of Study

The findings of this study help in understanding of relationship between the effectiveness of social media influencers towards promoting skincare product. Through this understanding of study, it is applicable to use social media influencer review as a product to buy.

5.4 Limitation of Study

Despite the useful findings of this study, this empirical study has several limitations that needs to be acknowledged.
Firstly, the data should primarily be based on a larger sample size to explore this and ultimately produce high extensive result.

Secondly, the findings in this study depend on the honesty of the respondents. It is known individuals would agree more on socially desirable answers and disagree more towards socially undesirable answers rather than fully and truly express the feeling and opinions.

Thirdly, the respondents background were also restricting factor, they were teenagers with minimal incomes.

5.5 Future Research

Future research can consider administering a brand or social media influencers to eliminate the potential bias that could influence the respondents’ questionnaire answers. Similarly, communication can be added as another construct in the model, explained that communication is the first interaction between companies and consumers in the value creation process. It important for marketers to invest a substantial amount of time in conducting a genuine and real-time dialogue with customers to promote their products. Tailored promotional content ideally resonates well with the target audience, and can simultaneously lead to an increase in the rate of reach.

5.6 Conclusion

The key findings were discussed in detail in this chapter. In conclusion, this research specifies two independent variables in attitude influencers and credibility influencers having significant impact towards purchase of skincare product influence by social media influencers. However, the other independent variables, social attractiveness have no positive significance. Eventually, this study could be helpful to several parties, especially the marketers and future researchers