The Impact of Social Networks on the Beauty Sphere

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FEDERAL STATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

OF HIGHER EDUCATION

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Saint Petersburg School of Economics and Management

Department of Management

The Impact of Social Networks on the Beauty Sphere

Bachelor's thesis

In the field 38.03.02 `Management'

Educational programme `Management'

Baryschnikova Kseniia Fedorovna and

Veshnyakova Polina Sergeevna

Saint Petersburg 2020

ABSTRACT

Nowadays social media marketing (SMM) is an integral part of any business. Despite this, background on SMM is still either too generalized or fragmented enough. At the moment, in Russia, the topic of the influence of social networks on the beauty industry has never been subjected to in-depth study. Therefore, the purpose of the work is to determine how cosmetic brands affect consumers through social networks and how effective this influence is. To research the topic, an electronic survey was distributed among users who visit social networks on a regular basis in order to study in detail the attitude of consumers of beauty brands to advertising on social networks. The collected data of 267 respondents were analyzed in Excel and SPSS using several types of analysis. In-depth interviews were used to find out the opinions of beauty brand manufacturers on how to promote their companies. This study uses a qualitative approach to develop a strategic framework that will become a real fundamental basis for further in-depth study of this burning topic. In addition, heads of beauty companies will be able to use this system to promote their brand and increase customer loyalty.

Keywords: Digital marketing, social networks, advertising, marketing, influence maximization



TABLE OF CONTENTS

social media content business

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Thesis structure

1.2 Theoretical basis

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Determining the place of social media in modern business

2.2 Levers of influence on the consumer with the help of Internet resources

2.3 Advertising with bloggers to attract consumers

2.4 Motivation for the consumption of media content from the audience

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 Statement of the research question

3.2 Goal and stages of the thesis

3.3 Description of the hypotheses

3.4 Methodology of questionnaire

3.5 Methodology of semi-structured interview

3.6 Data Analysis Strategy

4. RESULTS

4.1 Survey Results

4.2 Results of in-depth interviews

5. CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

Appendices



1. INTRODUCTION

Modern processes taking place around us are changing the media space that has formed over the past few years and continues to be “updated”, changing modern processes, including our lives. Today, it is digitalization that explains the transformation of interaction between producer and consumer. Due to digitalization in the job market, a huge number of jobs offers in the field of SMM-Social Media Marketing have appeared. For example, over the past two years there have been quite a few studies whose authors explain their relevance by the fact that the digital sphere has firmly entered our daily lives, thereby opening up new professions in the job market. For example, a brand manager is a specialist whose competencies include analysis of the market and its segments, analysis of competitors, brand development in social networks. A PR manager is someone who is involved in attracting traffic or attention to a brand or product through social media.

The topic selected in this study, “The Impact of Social Media on the Beauty Sphere,” is very relevant today. Despite the fact that over the past few years, works have been published that examined the issue of the impact of social networks on entrepreneurship. The issue of the impact of SMM on the beauty industry in Russia has not been raised. The market of beauty services in Russia is very young relative to many other countries; it has existed for about 15 years. But thanks to active development, the market grows by 25% annually. Over the past 5 years, it has been established that the Russian beauty services market is the fastest growing in the world: the growth rate of the volume of services sold (hairdressing, manicure / pedicure, beauty services, etc.) is 10-15% faster than the growth rate in Western countries (Sergeeva, 2007). The significance of the work is also due to the fact that, despite the prospects for the market that were revealed to the public, the question remains still unsolved about how social media can influence the beauty industry and how it can change the trajectory of the “fashion” that used to be the task of designers and television.

It is worth noting that in the West in 2019 there was an article which considered the impact of collaboration of well-known cosmetics brands (Bobbi Brown) with YouTubers (Genз ans Цksьz, 2019). The study mentioned above was conducted in Turkey in 2019. Today is 2020 and so far there are no scientific works in Russia that would consider the similar impact of the collaboration, and also obtain results that would establish a vector for the development of Russian cosmetic companies in order to increase popularity, increase sales and improve marketing activities. What can the lack of a daily update of online content lead to today, without blogging, implementing interactive and without feedback? Thanks to this study, a connection will be established between the above actions and the popularity of beauty brands on social online platforms in Russia.

The main barrier to development, faced by all those who produce a product for consumption (in this case, it is about beauty brands) - feedback. How can it be predicted to become popular before the product is introduced to the masses? What needs to be done so that the dialogue with the masses is redesigned into a one-on-one conversation? And most importantly, is it possible to get feedback instantly, and if so, how?

Social networks today are a reliable tool that, when reasonably handled, can become an intermediary for instant feedback. With this tool, brands can build dialogue with the masses, increase demand for their products, as well as earn a reputation and build an image. Such opportunities have never existed before, so the marketing environment has used other, less effective methods of advertising. But today, the main mechanism for building relations between producer and consumer is social platforms. The current generation is “visuals”, which means that for people the “picture” is becoming as important as the quality. Collectively, it is a color ful advertisement with popular personalities, an unusual packaging of goods, decorated in a single style profile of the company in social networks. It is logical to assume that social media has become a powerful tool in the field of SMM due to mass involvement. Millions of people are registered on Instagram, according to official data in 2020, there were 1,200,000,000 users who were online at least once a month. According to one recent statistic, 41% of Instagram users do not watch television daily at all.Iqbal (2020). Instagram Revenue and Usage Statistics. Date of the application 30.04.2020. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/instagram-statistics/

Thus, the relevance of our study can be determined by the emergence and rapid development of the importance of social networks, both in entrepreneurship in general and in the beauty industry in particular. Today, the online advertising market is one of the main levers of influence on the consumer in the beauty sphere, since it is this leverage that is better than the others to present numerical information in a form convenient for spectator observation in the visual. The need for a transition from a monologue to a dialogue with the consumer, as well as in obtaining instant feedback provoked this trend. The Internet today is one of the fastest growing marketing communications tools.

In this study, various methods of data collection will be used, both qualitative and quantitative: in-depth interviews, secondary data and survey, respectively. Literary sources will help to make sure that the topic we have chosen is relevant and has not been studied in Russia before, thanks to the articles read, a “base” will appear, which will be supported by additional information collected and not previously studied. Survey and in-depth interviews will allow us to confirm or refute our hypotheses. Thanks to the data obtained, it will become known what is the relationship between users, social media and the beauty industry in the Russian market. It will also be established what “levers” of demand management are used by beauty brands and what needs to be done to remain at the peak of popularity and demand. It will be found out what specific methods of influencing the masses are used by representatives of beauty brands - employees of various beauty companies with competencies in SMM. Expected results from the study: the hypotheses put forward in the study regarding the assumption that today the influence of social networks on the development of the beauty industry in Russia is enormous will be confirmed. And cosmetic brands will be able to use this work as a guide and a “guidebook,” which can help any company to gain popularity and relevance.

The object of this work is the influence of the media, the subject - how the media influence the perception of the brand by the client.

The aim of the study is to determine how cosmetic brands affect consumers through social networks and how effective this influence is.

The main issues of research-What does the customer think about cosmetic brands that use social networks to attract attention to the brand? How are cosmetic brands able to influence purchasing habits, for example: what do companies do to expand their audience and make customers a regular consumer of products?

Since there are several research questions in this paper, it would be useful to clarify which section of the methodology each of them relates to. The first question allows us to evaluate the problem from the point of view of consumers. How they relate to the manufacturer of beauty products, which uses social networks to attract attention to their products. To do this, a quantitative data collection method, survey, will be implemented in the methodology. The second research question relates to manufacturers of cosmetic brands. The second part of the methodology will relate to 2 research questions. In this part, a qualitative method of data collection will be used - interviews in which representatives of cosmetic companies will be interviewed.

In accordance with the purpose of the work, the following tasks were set:

1) Learn literature about the interaction between social media and beauty brands;

2) Develop a design study that will include research proposals, key elements and expected results;

3) To study examples of Russian companies that have integrated advertising in social networks;

4) Select the target audience of the respondents, as well as find ways for employees of cosmetic companies who will agree to be interviewed;

5) Collect consumer and manufacturing data through survey and in-depth interviews, respectively;

6) Identify the impact of cosmetic brands on customers through social networks;

7) Assess customer attitudes to this type of influence;

8) Analyze the data, recode it for further work in a specialized SPSS program;

9) Explore trends in successful marketing of cosmetic representations on social networks;

10) Highlight the importance of SMM in Internet marketing.

The results of the study will be useful for marketers of Russian cosmetic companies. This knowledge can be used to increase efficiency and significantly increase the profit of any cosmetic company, which is beneficial for employees and attractive for consumers. In addition, this study will be of academic value for future research and will help fill the gap in the literature on this topic. New articles may focus on the impact of certain types of advertising management in the Russian beauty industry to get more specific and accurate results.

1.1 Thesis structure

This study includes the following sections: a literature review, which analyzed the most relevant and fundamental preliminary studies. Despite the large number of existing sources related to the topic in this paper, most of them were found by keywords: entrepreneurship and social networks. It follows from this that despite the growing importance of social networks in society, so far, their influence is most often analyzed only as a whole. However, some studies served as the fundamental basis for the development of the theme “the impact of social networks on entrepreneurship”. In one article on the impact of business on entrepreneurship in general, the researcher demonstrated the fundamental importance of the impact of social media on business (Dwivedi, Kapoor and Chen, 2015). SMM has been shown to SMM outperform marketing and that social networks, when used correctly, become not just a tool for online communication between people, but also one of the easiest ways to promote their business, search for professional information and openly explore their competitors. The following article (Hang and Weezel, 2007) is a study of the structure of the impact of media space on entrepreneurship. Researcher at the end of his research concludes that the development of social networking and digitalization have fundamentally changed the brand management algorithm. The authors interpret this conclusion as follows: today the brand's history is created not by the manufacturer, but by the consumer, shaping it through social networks using instant feedback. And beauty companies, in turn, must instantly respond to consumer reviews, otherwise the brand's popularity will plummet, and sales will decrease accordingly. Understanding this change is critical, as it can significantly affect brand performance and development. Other articles analyze specific cases that examine leverage and the role of the media space in the beauty industry. However, the literature found does not answer the key questions posed in our work; the analyzed articles serve as a reliable fundamental basis for conducting our own research, mainly in order to fill current gaps. This section has a volume of words 7738.

The next section is the methodology, the structure and content of which sections follow a theoretical basis. The first thing that will be announced is research questions. In our case, there will be two research questions. Since the influence of social networks on the beauty industry implies an influence on both consumers and producers, it would be useful to consider the problem from both sides. Also, in this section it is necessary to discuss a number of issues related to our topic. The first is what we need to achieve the goal and objectives of the thesis. Of course, so that all stages of the work are completed. To collect the "foundation" of literature, which will serve as a vector that determines the direction in our study. Competently select the questions for the survey so that in the future, when analyzing the collected data, there is no difficulty in comparing the regressor and the regressant to test hypotheses. At the next stage of work, it is necessary to find representatives of beauty brands who agree to answer a number of questions. This phase of the work will be dedicated to in-depth interviews. Since there are two research questions in our work, the reason for which such a choice was made to be explained earlier, there is a firm belief that the methods we selected for data collection will be sufficient. One of them, the method of quantitative data collection-survey, is intended to survey consumers, in order to look at the situation from the point of view of the “creator of brand history”. A high-quality method of data collection - in-depth interviews is intended for the manufacturer, in order to understand the psychology of behavior of beauty brands now and their opinion on how firmly social networks have entered our lives. The last, that is, the final stage of the work will be devoted to summing up, in which various conclusions will be made, including whether the hypotheses we have proposed are confirmed. This section has a volume of words 4771.

The results will describe the data analyzed. The volume of this section contains words 8296.

In conclusion, conclusions will be drawn about whether our hypotheses were confirmed or some of them were refuted. Results will be summarized on whether it was possible to complete all the tasks established at the beginning of the work. This section has a volume of words 1919.

58 sources quoted in the documents were used in the work.

The theoretical foundation

At this stage of the work, sources were analyzed, which include clippings from scientific articles and journals, as well as materials from scientific studies that played the role of the “foundation” during the writing of the study.

After studying the collected literature, the following conclusions were drawn: firstly, the amount of existing literature related to the influence of social media on entrepreneurship as a whole allows us to understand the current role of social networks in the world and how they can influence society as a whole; secondly, the authors of the articles presented in the study draw similar conclusions related to the enormous influence of the media space on the daily life of society; thirdly, despite a significant number of published works both in the world and in Russia in particular, the role of the influence of social networks in the aggregate on the beauty market was ignored. Previous researchers analyzed the interest of users in various social networks, provided statistics in percentages in which engagement was expressed, and also mentioned the types of people who have the greatest influence in social networks (celebrities, influencers, bloggers). One of the articles (Genз ans Цksьz, 2019) examined a specific case about the collaboration of YouTube bloggers with the well-known cosmetic company Bobbi Brown. However, all the articles analyzed had one common gap, and one of them did not answer the questions that were identified by key (RQ) in this paper:

What does the customer think about cosmetic brands that use social networks to attract attention to the brand?

How are cosmetic brands able to influence purchasing habits, for example: what do companies do to expand their audience and make customers a regular consumer of products?

Based on the theory that was studied while reading various literature, the basis for empirical analysis in this work was developed (empirical analysis means interviews of representatives of various cosmetic brands and a public survey about their attitude to the influence of social networks on the beauty industry). Consecrated questions in existing studies served as the starting point from which the study was based on when drawing up the questions for the survey. For example, after reading the conclusions of the author of the studyMediaScience and Fullscreen (2016). Date of the application 28.03.2020. https://prexplore.ru/news/research-about-importance-audience-for-brands/ about the importance of audience segments for brands that the greatest amount of content from the interaction between well-known media personalities and beauty brands is distributed on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, a number of questions were created that complement the gaps that were highlighted but not developed in the study .

A scale was created in the survey (Likert scale) (Nemoto and Beglar, 2014), by which it was necessary to evaluate from “1” to “5” the frequency of shopping after viewing the brand page on social networks. A question was also created in which it was necessary to choose the reason why a user of social networks subscribed to beauty bloggers. The following question was asked about the reason for making a purchase on the Internet, where the answers were: friend's recommendations, recommendations of a beauty blogger, beautifully designed website / profile / page on social networks, recommendations of a famous person. A number of questions were also created in which it was necessary to choose only one from a list of several cosmetics stores. Obviously in these lists companies with opposite ways of advertising their products were presented. So, the Gold Apple and L'etual cosmetic store were compared with each other, where in the first case, the main levers of promoting your brand are collaborations with media personalities, active updating of content on social networks, holding open house days where buyers could meet famous makeup artists and influencers in the field of beauty. In the second case, such levers are advertising on television and on billboards, SMS mailing, in which various promotions were reported. Thus, after answering the question and choosing 267 respondents to one of the two above-mentioned stores, we can conclude why one of the stores most often selected by users has the greatest popularity.

1.2 Theoretical basis

The preliminary study, which was taken as the basis for the study of the issue in this paper, reveals the essence of modern trends in the promotion of beauty brands on social networks (Khmelevskaya, 2019). In this work, the author describes social networks as one of the most effective mechanisms that can sell, attract an audience, build a dialogue with them, be competitive, and also manage the brand image and reputation. The author of the article claims that today one of the most “working” tools for attracting customers on social networks is visual content. This tool, when handled properly, creates an opportunity for the manufacturer to use social platforms to promote their brand inexpensively, practically and conveniently. However, it must be borne in mind that precisely because of its ease of use and low-cost operation, competition among companies in this field is high. In this research work, questions for which answers have not been previously found will be examined in depth. Such as: what should be taken into account when promoting content on social networks in order to overcome high competition and be in demand? What do users of social networks expect from those manufacturers of beauty products that, in their opinion, do not meet the behind the scenes criteria that must be taken into account in order for a potential buyer to decide on a purchase.

Throughout the study, special terms will appear, various concepts related to the field of beauty that need to be explained for further understanding.

1) Beauty industry - a branch of cosmetic services (beauty salons, hairdressers, spas, as well as manufacturers of cosmetics and stores where these products can be purchased);

2) Beauty-brand - trademark of companies doing business in the field of beauty industry;

3) Beauty bloggers - people who have gained popularity through social networks, reviewing cosmetic products and educating the audience on how to use cosmetics, correct their imperfections and take care of themselves;

4) SMM - marketing through online platforms, which for many companies is the main channel of promotion;

5) Influencer - an influential person in social networks, to whose opinion the audience listens (blogger, famous person);

6) Content on social networks - published material on social networks with informative content (texts, graphic, sound information, etc.);

7) Profile - a page on social networks, which is the hallmark of an influencer or brand, which helps to create the brand's face and establish communication with customers;

8) Video hosting - a service for posting, sharing and viewing video content;

9) Audience coverage - one of the key parameters in Internet marketing, showing the number of unique users who somehow interact with a profile or content;

10) Interactive - content that involves interaction with the audience and is aimed at ensuring that the user reacts to the publication in a certain way (for example: contests, polls, live broadcasts, etc.);

11) Live on Instagram - live video that is broadcast directly to viewers, “here and now”;

12) Stories - an Instagram feature that allows you to upload photos and short videos 15 seconds long, add text marks, locations, pictures, emojis, etc. to them. A key feature of story content is only 24 hours and is on top of the entire tape;

13) Digitalization - a deep business transformation, involving the use of digital technologies to optimize business processes, increase company productivity and improve customer experience;

14) Likes - “I like” marks, a function in social networks that is used to express a positive attitude of users to published content.



2. LITERATURE REVIEW

In order to review the current state of existing literary sources on the topic chosen in this study, we carried out a detailed analysis of publications in academic and management journals for the period 2012-2020. Search keywords were related to the beauty industry, SMM, entrepreneurship, marketing, social media and social networks. However, as a result of the work done, it turned out that a detailed search is able to find only a limited number of articles, most likely not directly related to the topic of this study. There are not many publications in Russia that would study a similar issue. Existing scientific works investigate the impact of social media on entrepreneurship in general, but studies have also been conducted in some foreign sources on how social networks influence the beauty industry. This study was conducted in 2019 in Turkey, in which the authors describe several specific levers that can influence consumers through social media, using YouTube as an example. This video hosting was created in 2005 and since its inception has become the most successful among those sites that were created to exchange short videos. Today, the number of users of video hosting has exceeded one billion people, but this is far from the limit. Every day the number of registered in this network is growing (Cheng,Dale and Liu, 2008).

The following article (Qiutong and Rahman, 2019) is about consumer perceptions of video blogs. The last article summarizes that profitable campaigns, relevant content, daily information updates and a variety of applications and social platforms are all positively connected with the loyalty of college students to cosmetic brands. In the course of the study, articles were grouped that were identified on four topics covered by the conceptual framework on:

1) Determining the place of social media in modern business;

2) Levers of influence on the consumer with the help of Internet resources;

3) Advertising with bloggers to attract consumers;

4) Motivation for the consumption of media content from the audience.

2.1 Determining the place of social media in modern business

The first article (Olanrewaju et al.,2018) examines previously written research conducted in the area of ??social networking and entrepreneurship. The growing importance of social networks has led to changes in the way entrepreneurs perform their daily activities. Research in the field of social networks and entrepreneurship is relatively new in its focus (Mostafa, 2013). However, there is a growing interest on the part of academia and practitioners in further research in this area. This work examines research conducted in the area of ??social networking and entrepreneurship. A total of 160 works was published between 2002 and 2018 to determine the critical theories and research methods used in this field (Olanrewaju et al.,2020). Despite the fact that most of the works investigated the factors that stimulate the adoption of social networks in the work of entrepreneurs, it was found that the use of social networks has surpassed marketing, and now it is used in business networks and finding information for their business. The conclusions made in this article deepen the understanding of the role of social media in the modern world and research in the field of entrepreneurship, providing a useful basis for future research and provide information on practice in this area. In recent years, both scientists and practitioners have studied social networks. Entrepreneurs use social networks for several reasons and purposes, which is vital for their business activity. Openness and the ability to connect to social networks overcome the inability or difficulty that entrepreneurs face in identifying and seeking advice from a specialist (Kuhn et al., 2016). This is especially important in the early stages of business development, when there is a need for information and support to create and maintain a new project, which is important for its survival. In addition, entrepreneurs use social networks mainly to promote their goods / services. The ability to interact and communicate with other users is another vital factor.

The importance of social networks for businessmen and the advantages they offer them have attracted attention from various areas of the discipline, including the beauty industry. However, this article discusses purely general concepts and problems of the impact of social networks on business.

The following article presents the structure of the influence of social networks on entrepreneurship. The authors of the publication speak about its relevance, which is that due to the continuous dynamics of interaction with social networks radically changes the landscape of brand management(Gensler et al., 2013). Understanding this change is crucial because it can have a significant impact on brand performance and development. The authors of the article argue that consumers are no longer just those who "buy", they create a history of brands (which is understood as something that can help increase awareness, understanding, empathy, recognition, recall and give meaning to the brand), forming it through social networks. In order to ensure the success of their brand, firms must start interacting with their audience at the very beginning - on social networks.

After reading the article of Singh and Sonnenburg (2012), it concludes that while the literature on the impact of social media on brands is in the process of development, it lacks a systematic definition of the key problems associated with brand management in this new environment.

Brands that use social media as a marketing communications tool need to take into account their key features in order to build a positive relationship with their target audience. Interactivity of communication is one of the main advantages of social networks, it has become easier for companies to communicate directly with the audience and quickly receive feedback. In the vastness of social networks, companies and their target audience become equal partners. The author of the article Shilina (2011) argues that due to the transformation of the media space, the communication company - the consumer is modified from a hierarchical model into a subject-subject, that is, thanks to social networks, the classic source-message-receiver model has begun to change. The author believes that thanks to these changes, any person from the brand's audience can now create content on their own or participate and distribute existing ones. The following article (Kostetsky and Malkova, 2013) confirms this statement and believes that with the development of the media space, horizontal relationships between consumers and companies only increase. The paper discusses new development trends in social online platforms and virtual socialization of users. Researchers conclude that SMM is an essential tool for managing online brand popularity and building customer loyalty. To strengthen consumer confidence, brands need to monitor indicators such as: the content and tone of the message, as well as the speed of response to the request.

A long lack of response, harsh remarks and a negative reaction from company representatives contribute to negative perception among consumers. This statement is obvious, but some brand representatives sometimes make these unforgivable mistakes, causing customer frustration.

In terms of flexibility, communication with consumers on social online platforms differs from standard marketing tools.

Internet users themselves decide who, through which social network and when they want to receive or send a message.

However, despite this advantage, there are rather big risks that the recipient will not read, and also will not respond to the received message.In this regard, it is very important to correctly build a trusting communication process. This process includes 3 important points:

1) The existence of the company in various social networks;

2) Building trust between the target audience and the brand;

3) The formation of common values (Taplau, 2014).

The main phase of communication through marketing tools is the presence of the brand in the Internet environment. Today, four main patterns of brand behavior in social networks are defined:

1) Creating an official brand profile on social media that publishes different content that is related to the company's activities;

2) Identify a brand representative who will engage in disputes in professional communities, build communication with the target audience and try to attract more consumers;

3) Creating a profile with a common theme, which contains content based on the organization's activities, but without direct advertising of services and products;

4) Creating a fictional character who leads a profile on behalf of the company and talks about its products and services (Bryksina, 2014).

Building long-term relationships happens as a result of two-way communication between the consumer and the brand. Moreover, both sides at this stage begin acquaintance and exchange of necessary information with each other. The formation of common values is one of the most important steps in communication between the consumer and the brand. In this context, the role of the consumer ceases to be passive, he becomes a co-creator of the company's values, taking part in the production of content (Taplau, 2014).

To attract the interest of more users to the profile, the organization comes up with various creative solutions, contests and interesting posts. Creative approaches in social media may include various variations of the product demonstration or directly of the company itself or other events in one way or another in contact with the brand (Killian and MCManus, 2015).

2.2 Levers of influence on the consumer with the help of Internet resources

This research study (Choi and Behm-Morawitz, 2017) examines consumer leverage through online resources, using YouTube content creators as an example. Today, beauty videos are one of the most popular channel categories. They collect millions of subscribers, as well as profitable sponsorship opportunities. The creators of such videos - “Beauty Guru” on YouTube are compared by the authors of the article with computer literacy teachers. This comparison is due to the fact that while watching a video, a person always sees a different interactive appearance that inspires him to create his own videos and makes him want to follow the channel in the future. It can be a “pull up” arrow, when you click on it, you go to a specific site created by the creator of the video. Or it can be a photograph or a picture in order to distract the viewer from the monotony. Thus, the “Beauty Gurus” are able not only to entertain, but also to inform their viewers about cosmetics, prompting them to make purchases of similar products that they use in their videos. But this article focuses more on the fact that, in addition to entertainment and shopping, their content is capable of transmitting technical information and skills, they can also represent the field of technology and educate viewers on the use of technologies related to video production. The authors of the work performed two studies to find out what the creators of YouTube content are doing in order to interest people, and what is pushing the audience to buy cosmetics. Study 1 was a content analysis of 102 YouTube beauty guru videos. The analysis showed that YouTube's observed “Beauty Gurus” used various methods (for example, adding text and social links to videos) and included positive educational messages in their videos (for example, telling others about cultures). In study 2, an online experiment showed that watching beauty bloggers video on YouTube can motivate viewers to create a video that depends on the attractiveness of the source.

Thus, the article turned out to be very informative in general, but the specific ways of interaction between beauty brands and consumers were not covered. In another article of Khmelevskaya (2019), social networks are considered as one of the most effective mechanisms, where the main tool for attracting an audience is visual content. Nevertheless, in addition to the advantages of this tool, which consists in simplifying building contact with the target audience, it has its drawbacks. Such as high competition among various companies in the same field, where cosmetic brands need to keep users active on their pages every day through publications, colorful informative posts, various interactivity, and constant two-way contact with the consumer. One of the trends that has become the most popular in recent years is advertising with opinion leaders. This trend is given more attention in the next article. The second trend that is relevant for Russian users in the first place is the Vkontakte community mailing list. This trend works by analogy with email newsletters, only letters do not come in the mail, but in private messages. Statistics show that 90% of users read such messages, while 60% read by mail. Directly for beauty brands, the use of HighlightsStories (“Key Points”) is relevant. The social network Instagram, created for the exchange of photos and videos, quite often introduces new tools and adjusts existing ones. So, in the interests of users, the “story” format (stories) has been repeatedly changed and supplemented. From the content “in the moment” they switched to a static format with the ability to divide them into categories and pin them to the page. Now the user can immediately find what he is interested in, for example, by going to the page of a beauty salon, you can immediately go to the price list or to examples of work, without turning over all the photos, looking for the right ones.

And the owner of the page can see a list of all those who interacted with a particular publication and enter into a dialogue with them, thereby increasing the likelihood of acquiring new loyal customers. Moreover, users can sometimes see advertisements of what they've recently searched for on Instagram. Another article (Ismail, 2017), which is devoted to the study of the social network Instagram, discusses its influence on the circulation of strategies in the fashion world. The author of the article argues that the Instagram community has announced new relevant topics, for example, body positive, gender equality - it does not matter what gender you are, if you like makeup and experiment with different make-ups or if you like to wear heels and underwear even if you are a man - do it. Today, it is thanks to the visualization of the content that the boundaries between female and male are blurred, what was the standard of beauty several years ago: slender and toned bodies, smooth skin, and the absence of wrinkles are no longer such today. Beautiful is that which is natural. Many well-known brands abandoned the retouching of photographs that was so relevant recently: velvety skin, model parameters 90-60-90, and the absence of cellulite. Now people want to see in advertising not ideal people, but the same as they themselves are - not perfect (Ivanova, 2018). The Instagram community has demanded that the fashion industry change its model selection policy. The demand for cultural diversity led to the appearance on the catwalks of representatives of different races. Now there is a tendency to change the parameters of beauty. On the catwalks often perform girls and men of non-standard sizes. In 2019, for the first time in the history of the brand's existence, Victoria's Secret (25 years) canceled the annual underwear show - Angels Show. After analyzing the financial statements, the company's management concluded that, despite the spectacular nature of the event and distinguished guests, the financial indicators have been declining for the third year in a row. “We will continue to communicate with customers, but there will be nothing similar in scale to the fashion show,” said Burgdorfer, director of L Brands, the parent company of Victoria's Secret retailer, to investors, commenting on the company's financial results for the third quarter. He acknowledged that annual fashion shows were the brand's “outstanding marketing achievement,” but in recent years they have had virtually no effect on Victoria Secrets Secret lingerie sales.Zlobin (2019). Date of the application 05.03.2020. https://forbes-ru.turbopages.org/s/forbes.ru/newsroom/biznes/387981-victorias-secret-otmenila-svoy-ezhegodnyy-pokaz-vpervye-za-25-let. There are several reasons for the decline in demand for world famous lingerie. Firstly, these are rather high prices (a set of linen from a new collection can cost 10-12 thousand rubles, but this is not the main reason). The second and most important thing is that in pursuit of the standard of beauty, the company management has ceased to calculate all the steps. Of course, the models went through a rigorous selection process to become Victoria's Secret angels, and the underwear was created by the mind-blowing designers. However, it did not take into account that with digitalization, the public became an agent of social change in the world of the fashion industry. People wanted to see in the advertisements, on the catwalk, not ideal models, when they looked at them their self-esteem would drop. Today, the public wants to see such an advertisement, where in models it could see itself.

Thus, Instagram became an agent of social changes in the world of the fashion industry and provoked a movement towards communication with the public and the destruction of exclusivity in the fashion world.



2.3 Advertising with bloggers to attract consumers

The authors of the article study how YouTubers with millions of subscribers, being a channel of interaction between cosmetic brands and customers, are able to influence the increase in sales of cosmetics (Genз and Цksьz, 2019). First of all, due to its "power" and huge audience reach, YouTubers become a channel for beauty brands to interact with their potential customers. Talking about clothes and cosmetics in their videos: good products that are worth their money and products that are worth passing by, they motivate their subscribers to spend money. Cosmetic brands both in many countries of the world, and in Turkey in particular, monitor such influencers. So, in the modern world, it is this category of people that is able to bring to the masses directly or indirectly advertisements for a product, following from their own preferences, without pursuing commercial goals. In this case, advertising of various goods becomes more effective than advertising on TV or on billboards. Therefore, cosmetic brands strive to be more visible, strengthen their reputation and influence purchasing power, using love and trust in YouTube.

Providing barriers to influencers with various cosmetics, they provide themselves with effective advertising and increased sales. In this article, the authors conclude that collaboration with YouTubers is fundamental. However, this is not the only platform that can serve as a channel of interaction between the brand and customers. There are a lot of such platforms, for example: Vkontakte, Instagram, Facebook. The article does not analyze the various levers of the interaction of cosmetic brands on potential buyers. The only way to increase sales through YouTube video hosting is described. Before the advent and active development of online platforms, in order to “promote” their product, that is, to make it popular and demand to grow, companies needed years to develop brand recognition. But now, with the advent of bloggers, it has become much easier to attract the public to their product by building trusting relationships with the audience through social authorities, companies that have resorted to advertising with the blogger receive the following output: brand loyalty as a whole, increased demand, increased sales, product recognition, increase the reputation of the goods. But there are a few but: you need to understand that it's not enough to find on the Internet on one of the social platforms (the most popular for advertising beauty bloggers Instagram, YouTube) a beauty blogger. You need to carefully look at how he maintains a profile: how often he interacts with advertisers: does he agree to any advertisement or does he choose the product that he has to advertise carefully, how often does he publish new posts or shoot videos? Even a million subscribers cannot guarantee a high audience reach during advertising and, consequently, high returns. If you take into account all the above “buts,” you can achieve what you want and make a product promotion. Word of mouth turned out to be more effective than the messages of marketers, because consumers consider it more reliable and trustworthy (Lee and Youn, 2009). The author justifiably believes that human-to-human contact is the best way to build a long-term, trusting relationship with a brand than advertising on television, on billboards, in glossy magazines from marketers unknown to consumers.

Communicating with other people, the desire to listen to authorities and trust is inherent in every person, that's why advertising with beauty bloggers has become so popular today: ordinary people who daily observe the life of famous personalities often listen to their recommendations and take their point of view as their own . In the next article (Wu, 2011), the author analyzes reviews on social networks and comes to the conclusion that, thanks to the growth of Internet technologies, every day an increasing number of consumers begin to resort to his help as a tool for finding true and accurate information about a product or organization. And also, that the development of Internet platforms, the popularity of online commerce and the rapid growth and development of platforms for social networks have led to the emergence of eWOM (electronic word of mouth). Electronic word of mouth is a powerful tool for introducing information to the masses, as it is publicly available and therefore has great coverage. Announcing information or making reviews in their beauty blogs, authorities work as the initial stage of safari radio, which launches goods for further public announcement among consumers. The authors Lee and Youn (2009) also concludes: “The more the consumer ascribes the communicator's review about the actual performance of this product, the more consumers will understand that the communicator is trustworthy and the more consumers will be confident in the accuracy of the review, the stronger will be the consumer's conviction that the product has attributes mentioned in the review». The author in his conclusion expresses the main value of bloggers among brands today, using their reviews of beauty gurus themselves determine the description and characteristics of the product, subject to an already well-deserved reputation and trust among the masses. That is, the audience trusts all the words spoken by the blogger and does not even doubt their accuracy, and bloggers, in turn, can improve the quality and use of the product for better advertising promotion. It is for these qualities that companies around the world began to use the services of well-known social personalities and thus attract consumers to purchase and brand recognition, and therefore the number of bloggers also began to grow. In the following article, the author states: “Bloggers consider blogging to be a personal means of self-expression, communication with the public and exchange of views” (Smith, 2010). Popular leaders on social networks, supporting this opinion and communicating with their subscribers at the same level, look like trustworthy people, mentors, which helps them become the main advisers and specialists for buyers looking for product information. A personal blog, although it is a personal means of self-expression, but also due to its popularity among the audience, it has become a channel of public relations for representing the interests of the organization. This study explores bloggers' thoughts on public relations in such a personal arena as online platforms and blogs. The results of the study show that as bloggers go through the evolutionary process and development of introduction to online blogs, community membership and autonomy, this greatly affects the content of their channels, the development of content and their willingness to work with public relations specialists. The purpose of the next article (Gillin, 2008) was to study social networks and their influence, as well as measure this influence. The author also conducted a study of how the ways of influencing the audience are changing and how communication specialists react to these changes by introducing social networks. The author found that marketers and public relations specialists today are faced with an amazing set of communication channels. Internet tools for social networks, such as blogs, online videos and social networks, allow you to summarize and express the opinions of millions. While the mainstream media continues to play a vital role in disseminating information, even these traditional channels are increasingly influenced by online conversations. Marketers are alarmed by the prospect of transferring control of their posts to the community of unknown bloggers on social networks. The study used a network survey. The interviewed audience was communication specialists with extensive knowledge and intensive use of social media tools, including blogs, podcasts, online videos, social networks and other new and emerging tools and technologies in the field of communication. Of these organizations surveyed, 78% use blogs, 63% use online video, 56% use social networks, and 49% use podcasts in their organization's communication initiatives. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that social media tools are becoming more valuable for their activities, the more customers and influential people use them. 27% of respondents said that social platforms are a key element of their communication strategy.

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