The online influencers strategies and their impact on consumers decision process

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

SKEMA Business School

The online influencers strategies and their impact on consumers decision process

M. Leparoux

P. Minier

A. Anand

Annotation

Social media influencers have emerged on social networks over the past few decades. It is significant that they have increased and now play a crucial role in shaping the process of consumer decision-making. This research aims to understand and investigate how customers react and how influencers shape their approaches in order to achieve the demands and needs of their followers. The methodology adopted is both quantitative and qualitative. Key findings reveal that influencers have an impact through their recommendations in the followers' purchase intention process. Additionally, the research indicates that the trust driven by influencers is increasingly questioned by followers who feel “unauthenticity” and believe their influence can lead to our society's becoming “standardized”. This research that includes two methods is useful as we have analyzed the relationship between followers and influencers. Even though the influencers phenomena are quite recent, this research is valuable for firms as it clearly demonstrates how and why influencers impact consumers' behavior. It can also inform society about this current trend and how it could influence the consumers' decision-making process.

Keywords: influencers, social media, social media influencers, consumer behavior, influencer marketing, lifestyle, society.

Стратегии онлайн-инфлюенсеров и их влияние на принятие решений потребителями

М. Лепару, П. Миньер, А. Ананд

Школа бизнеса SKEMA, Франция

Аннотация

В последнее десятилетие в социальных сетях появилась категория пользователей, которую можно отнести к инфлюенсерам -- лидерам мнений. Их количество возросло, и сейчас они играют исключительно важную роль в процессе принятия решений потребителями. Настоящее исследование направлено на изучение данного феномена и объяснение того, как инфлюенсеры формируют свои подходы для удовлетворения запросов и потребностей подписчиков. Основные результаты, полученные в результате качественных и количественных методов анализа, свидетельствуют о том, что мнения инфлюенсеров оказывают влияние на подписчиков при принятии ими решений о покупке. В то же время подписчики все чаще ставят под сомнение достоверность методов, используемых инфлюенсерами. Они не чувствуют аутентичности последних и полагают, что их мнение может привести к стандартизации общества. Несмотря на то, что феномен инфлюенсеров возник относительно недавно, проведенное исследование полезно для фирм, поскольку оно четко демонстрирует, как и почему инфлюенсеры воздействуют на поведение потребителей, и также может информировать общество о текущей тенденции и о способах влияния на процесс принятия решений потребителями.

Ключевые слова: инфлюенсер, социальные медиа, инфлюенсер социальных медиа, поведение потребителя, продвижение товаров и услуг через инфлюенсеров, образ жизни, общество.

Introduction

influencer consumer need subscriber

In recent years, consumers have been conscious about taking advice from people about the products or service that they purchase. On the one hand, the recommendations provided on online platforms, websites, by friends, colleagues, or even strangers are believed to be a trustful source of information for consumers and have a profound influence on their decision-making process [Duhan et al., 1997]. On the other hand, the recent digital transformation has laid the path to changing consumer behavior and purchasing and consumption [Pine, Gilmore, 2013]. Due to increased globalization, there is standardization across globe on our behaviors, lifestyles and the way we consume. Many decades ago consumption was influenced by media and cinema [Mouren, 2002], and in the last few years, it is flourishing due to Internet and social media. Furthermore, social networks have given even more importance to social influencers and individualism in the society. Hence, the new wave of social networks has revolutionized and profoundly changed our society and the world we live in and allow us to connect, interact from anywhere, at any time [Zafarani, Abbasi, Liu, 2014]. Additionally, this has impacted the firms to transform from traditional to more engaged brand-consumer relationship and respond to their concerns, questions, discussions, etc. [Kietzmann et al., 2011].

In this context, some individuals have emerged on online platforms and have invaded the social networks by influencing on consumers. These individuals are called influencers who include, sports person, celebrities, politicians or even common people. The recommendations provided by these individuals through social media trend is making consumer to freely choose bonding and connecting with influencers. J. Melzer and B. Zech [Melzer, Zech, 2018] emphasized that, influencers are a value exchange for marketers and are usually seen as ambassadors for brands. Influencers increase the required knowledge on product they promote. However, even if influencers are powerful endorsers, brands must choose carefully the influencers to perfectly fit with brands values and identity. Although consumer's purchasing decision is evolving, and they are now interacting with brands through the prism of social media. But influencers are found to have shaped the consumer decision-making through confidence, reliability and reassurance [Todisco, 2017].

Scholars have focused on how and why people shop and what influences them. For instance, brand image influences the consumer's purchase decision [Kumaravel, Kan- dasamy, 2012] and the recommendation of a product given by tweets by influencers can increase value and help in consumption decision process [Bokunewicz, Shulman, 2017]. Therefore, marketers and brands are adapting to the latest trend of social media and are partnering with influencers for creating a value exchange. On the other hand, many studies emerged in literature to understand this intervention of technology using twitters, Facebook etc. on consumers purchasing decisions. Furthermore, to understand to what extent influencers drive consumer purchase engagement on social media platforms. For instance, Porter Novelli, a social marketing and public relations firm, studied consumers' attitudes on their purchase decisions through influencers. C. Lou and S. Yuan [Lou, Yuan, 2019] showed that influencers convey trust and lead to a positive brand awareness and a significant increase of purchase intentions. The study by the Influencer Marketing Hub (2017) found that marketers and brands are truly believing in the efficiency of influencer marketing because companies increased by 67% their influencer marketing budget. H. Conick [Conick, 2018] suggests that influencers have a competitive advantage and are nowadays essentials to all marketing business as they build brand equity, brand engagement and increase sales. M. Goodman, N. Booth, and J. Matic [Goodman, Booth, Matic, 2011] highlight that influencers are driving engagement and targeting perfectly the “right” customers.

The recent emergence of social media may not provide a clear overview of people and influencers habits and opinions. Indeed, taking a step back, there is a need to analyze from a long-term vision on what are the factors that influence consumer's purchase decision process. Hence, the aim of this paper is to understand this new phenomenon of influencers and to explore their impact on consumers' purchase decision process. Our study is set in France and the results of this study provide a clear overview of how consumers react to influencers, and how influencers shape their strategies to meet their followers' expectations.

This paper is structured as follows. First, we provide the literature review on influencer impact on economy and society, influencer statistics in France, theoretical context of influencers' impact, emerging trends of influencers, individuals role as influencers, factors encouraging following influencers, including a conceptual framework for this study. Second, we show the methodology adopted to investigate the relationship between influencers and followers. Third, the results are presented and followed by analysis in consecutive chapters. Finally, in conclusion, we summarize our findings with limitations and outline directions for further research.

Literature review

The conceptual origins of influencers. E. Katz and P. Lazarsfeld [Katz, Lazarsfeld, 1955] analyzed the influence of the media in the context of elections and discussed a two-stage communication theory. This theory first suggested that the media transmits certain information that is absorbed by opinion leaders and secondly, these leaders convey the ideas of the media to those around them. Thereby, the evolution of technologies over time has brought new means of communication. In consequence, young people aged 18 to 25 began to use and even overuse social networks which contributed to the growth and bloom of the digital influencers. Indeed, with the creation of social networks, profiles were created that advocate a certain lifestyle attracted followers who were trying to live a lifestyle similar to theirs. Arising from this popularity that some people have gained on social networks the concept that we know now of “influencer” was born.

Influencer impact on economy and society. According to [Fromm, Read, 2018], influencers can settle in a sustainable way in the future as Millennials and Generation Z. In recent years, teens spend up to nine hours a day on social platforms, they are the most dominant users of social media. The Millennials now represent 25% of the world's population; also known as Generation Y they are people born between 1977-1994. This generation is the first digital natives and were raised in a digitally growing world. They use massively all social networks channels to search, share and connect with friends and people all around the world, there are no more boundaries for them. But today, there are also new potential customers for the brands: Generation Z, young people born after 1994. Unlike Millennials, members of the Generation Z are not anymore using social media as a way to connect with people, they use it as a source of entertainment. It is important to notice that by 2020 the new generation should represent 40% of all consumers, representing a huge market share for companies [Perlstein, 2017]. As Generation Z members grew up in a digitalized world they have been used to daily companies' advertising and they are tired of being overwhelmed every time of the day. They want authentic and personalized content shared by real people they can identify them with, and which can reflect their own lives. This new social media consumption by the Generation Z can explain the growth of influencers. Additionally, to use it differently, this generation is also consuming much more social media than the Generation Y, they are mainly engaging on image-led and video sharing social media. Therefore, the most popular platforms for the Generation Z are Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube on which influencers are more and more flourishing.

Influencer statistics in France. An investigation driven by IPSOS (a French survey company and an international opinion marketing company) in 2017 disclosed that 33% of French users of social networks are following at least one influencer. 48% of French users following influencers are looking for good advices and recommendations to consume better and one in three people wants to find coupons. 89% of French users have already discovered a brand or a product thanks to an influencer and 75% of them have been influenced to the point of buying the promoted product. While 83% of social media users following an influencer declared to be exposed to sponsored contents and 72% have a positive judgment on these contents, it appears that influencers represent a strong potential for brands and marketers [Dusseaux, 2017].

Theoretical context of influencers' impact. The impact of influencers relies also on social explanations. According to Makgosa [Makgosa, 2010], in the paper Social learning theory of A. Bandura and R. Walters [Bandura, Walters, 1977]: the impact of influencers on consumption behaviors is a contextual foundation justifying why and how they can shape decision-making and attitudes of audiences. This social learning theory relies on the fact that people usually learn from other people through observation, imitation, and modelling. In this theory they highlighted the three different ways of assimilation, having their origin in the entourage of the individual. The first way is through “cognitive factors”, also called “personal factors” which encompass knowledge, expectations and attitudes; the second way is related to “behavioral factors” which include skills, practice and self-efficiency; and the third way relies on “environmental factors” which concern the social norms, the access in community, and the ability to change our own environment. So, through these three complementary ways of assimilations, consumers see their purchase decision indirectly influenced. Indeed, expectations of “cognitive factors” place consumers in a “waiter” position for an innovative or tendency products. “behavioural factors” confirms the necessity for them to buy the product and make customers feeling reassured and confident concerning the product quality. Eventually, “environmental factors” entice consumers to change their habits, follow influencers' advices and to evolve along their environment.

Another theory called mere exposure effect by social psychologist [Zajonc, 1968] can be applied to influencers. For instance, with the emergence of stories on Instagram and Snapchat, influencers now have to take them into account in their strategies. Indeed, stories about their private life convey strong emotions and allow the influencer to strengthen his connection with his followers. B. Pine and J. Gilmore [Pine, Gilmore, 2013] point out the fact that we are living in an “experience economy” and that now, with social media and influencers, it is much easier to share experiences. They demonstrate that nowadays, when a consumer buys a product or a service, he is also buying the right to share his experience with it, which bring in even more value.

Emerging trends of influencers. Influencers are leading a new trends and tendencies by increasing product desirability. Indeed, they act now as central players in consumer decision making segment and the trend seems to be growing year by year [Lou, Yuan, 2019]. Recently, the Influencers Marketing Hub pointed out that, “in 2015, there were 3,6 million sponsored influencer posts; by the end of 2018, the number reached to 24,2 million influencer posts” [Influencer MarketinHub, 2018]. Being the voice of a brand, and as a strength and opportunity for marketers to create awareness, influencers increase the popularity and the desirability of a product. Influencers have a significant positive relationship with purchase purposes, because the more attractive and trustworthy they are, the stronger the purchase intention. Furthermore, according to the Influencers Marketing Hub, influencers are the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition method; from 2016 to 2017, “influencer marketing” as a search term on Google Trends increased by 325%. In recent days, the value of a product is given through tweets and recommendations made by influencers [Bokunewicz, Shulman, 2017].

Therefore, marketers and brands adjust themselves to this new tendency and see them as partners. Influencers are now shaping to redefine our way to consume, to “think consumption” and to position ourselves towards brands. Moreover, research on influencers seems to be only growing in recent years, as more and more companies started to see the value influencers bring in social media and raise awareness, rather than promoting products, influencers can also lead social movements, and have a strong impact on a social and cultural side. Indeed, some influencers act as spokesperson and embody claims for social improvements. Thus, followers seeking references and marks tend to identify themselves with influencers; our social identity in challenged and transformed. So, influencers are a mark of social and cultural changes within the current society. The recent emergence of social media does not provide a clear overview of people and influencers habits and opinions. Moreover, given that social networks are constantly changing in addition to the recent phenomenon of influencers, we needed to drive an exploratory research.

Individuals role as influencers. With a better understanding of who these influencers are, where they come from and why they are growing in the online and social media platforms, we can ask ourselves how, in this constantly changing environment, do influencers respond to keep their followers and get them growing. We try to understand what their strategies are and how they keep growing in the digital world. First, it is essential for influencers to keep in constant relationship with their followers, they need to have a strong online presence in order to be more credible and to give the feeling they are an integral part of their followers' life. Influencers can be persuasive in different ways, they can win followers and their loyalty by being kind, funny, authoritarian or by showing reciprocity. Reciprocity is an effective influencing strategy; an example of reciprocity lies in influencers offering promotion code. Using this strategy, influencers show that they are concerned about their followers and that they want to share with them. Influencers have sometimes to be repetitive in the content they share in order to gain credibility and remain in the minds of their followers. In fact, people have a tendency to believe that a thing which is familiar is trustworthy.

Factors encouraging following influencers. Lou and Yuan [Lou, Yuan, 2019] showed that trust will lead to a positive brand awareness and a significant increase of purchase intentions. They suggest that trust and credibility of an endorser can be due to different reasons such as expertise, attractiveness, trustworthiness and similarities of influencers with followers. Therefore, influencers need to include all these criteria in order to develop a pertinent strategy. Trustworthiness and expertise depend on the degree of persuasion and the power the influencer exercises on the follower. According to [French, Raven, 1960] an influencer will gain power if he focuses on a particular subject. For instance, if an influencer is specialized in fitness, he will have more credibility and will be considered more expert than a regular influencer. Many followers, likes, retweets and shares will have an important impact on the credibility of an influencer. Indeed, for people, the fact that others follow an influencer testifies that a majority value his opinion and adhere to his judgments; it provides him a form of social proof. This is the reason why we can say that all these strategies to increase the number of their followers is kind of a virtuous circle for influencers if they succeed.

As previously explained, there are clearly four factors that build-up the credibility of the influencer -- “trustworthiness, expertise, attractiveness, and similarity” [Lai, 2017, p. 17]. So, the degree of influence of the influencer depends mainly on “his degree of perceived power”. This perceived power is often based on the expertise: the influencer will have more authority in the subject he claims himself as an expert. His followers will instinctively follow his advices and then buy the product. Attractiveness bias lies also on instincts: subconsciously, we feel someone is attractive or charismatic. All these positives associations are linked to our unconscious stereotypes. That attractiveness belongs to our individualistic cultures and our way of life and thinking.

When a person is often exposed to television, its own way of perceiving the world and society is changing. Indeed, the perception of reality is moved and changed. This paradigm works for influencers too: by seeing and being exposed to the luxurious and dream life of influencers followers could think that this “virtual” life is the norm. Followers might believe that “acting” life could be authentic/real and then change their perception of the outside world. There is a certain risk of showing sponsored photos of an unreal but dream and incredible life. Mostly young people could feel inferior and then depressed because they do not experience this kind of life on their own. So influencers do not only drive our purchase consumption, but they also transform our perception of social reality. And even worst, they can bring trouble or depression to young persons who would believe in those illusions: it would then trigger unreal expectations that cannot be fulfilled and provoke feeling of inferiority.

The above literature review allowed us to get an overview of the emerging trends of influencers, detailing the conceptual origins of Influencers, providing influencer statistics in France and factors encouraging following influencers. It also provides information concerning the influencer impact on economy and society, a theoretical context of influencers' impact, etc. However, as influencers are quite a new phenomenon in the mainstream consumer behavior literature there are not a lot of literature existing on this topic. Indeed, during the literature review we noticed that they were no data on consumers to study their reaction facing influencers and there are also no studies on influencers strategies and how they grow. Hence to address these gaps, this research intends to answer the following questions: 1) are consumers' behaviors influenced by influencers; 2) what strategies do influencers adopt to meet their followers' expectations?

Methodology

A research paradigm is “the set of common beliefs and agreements shared between scientists about how problems should be understood and addressed” [Kuhn, 1962, p. 45]. Under this pattern, we adopt pragmatism, which means that we believe reality is constantly debated, interpreted, and therefore different suitable methods and techniques can be adopted to solve the problem. By adopting the pragmatic design, we use both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The data was collected during April to June 2019 and intend to understand the impact of influencers on consumers and to identify their strategies.

Part 1: The qualitative method. The aim of qualitative research was to understand the influencers economy from the inside. Their emergence is quite new, and there are not many studies on them to understand their perspective and strategies to grow. By interviewing influencers, we wanted to learn about their motivations, their relationship with their followers and their strategies.

Procedure and Participants. Qualitative approach provides opportunity to explore and useful when researchers do not know the important variables to examine [Creswell, 1998; 2003]. According to N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln, a qualitative approach is “concerned in capturing the individual's point of view” and in the need for “securing rich descriptions” [Denzin, Lincoln, 2000, p. 10]. For the qualitative study, data was collected in France distributed across various cities. We drew up a very eclectic and non-exhaustive list of over 50 French influencers (Appendix 1) with their contact to approach them for the interview. They were carefully selected based on their consent, request and interest to provide information to be used in our study. The participants have different communities, backgrounds, followers and areas of influence. This heterogeneity allows us to have the views of different influencers and their opinions. Finally, we interviewed five respondents who provided us the opportunity to interview then in depth (Table 1).

Table 1. Influencers community and area

The in-depth interviews that may lead to multi-faceted and spontaneous answers, allowing us to collect qualitative data from influencers such as their experiences, opinion, strategies, etc. (Appendix 2). All influencers are asked the same questions so that the answers could be compared. For qualitative research, we established a list of almost fifty influencers with different communities, backgrounds, interests, and level of influence. Based on the fact that most influencers we contacted have huge communities and did not really have the time or will to respond to our interview, this heterogeneity may have created a wider range of diverse responses to understand fully all types of influencers. In order to evaluate a qualitative research, we used the thematic coding analysis with a descriptive- exploratory approach. According to [Gibbs, 2007] this method is about data reduction and analysis by grouping answers into categories of thematic ideas in order to keep all the important concepts and information. Our interview samples are mentioned below.

Part 2: Quantitative method. The aim of quantitative method was to understand how consumers behave with influencers, their opinions about the impact influencers can have on their consumption and more generally on society. For the quantitative research, a survey questionnaire was designed to understand the consumers/followers influence through social media (Appendix 3). We specifically investigated the different factors and reasons that make them become a follower. In addition, the qualitative approach was undertaken through a semi-structured interview dedicated to influencers, which intends to understand their opinions on the how they grow so fast, and the reasons that make people following them. Four distinct influencers who have distinct interests, different communities and not the same level of influence were interviewed. This research strategy is based on the combination of methodologies in order to study the same phenomenon. It is defined as a convergent methodology [Campbell, Fiske, 1959] and can be called “triangulation” [Webb et al., 1966]. This notion is demonstrating that quantitative and qualitative methods should be seen as complementary. In this study, these two methods enable to understand the ecosystem of both influencers and consumers and then to better analyze their intentions and perceptions.

Data are based on precise measurements starting with general questions and then going toward more specific details. A simple random sampling was used. However, younger groups of people between 20 and 35 years old were targeted as they are more aware of influencers marketing. In order to determine outcomes and for these to be relevant, 150 responses were collected. The survey questionnaire was submitted on social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, in order to reach prospects accustomed with social media. After collecting the data, we started to code the qualitative data turning into a meaningful insight. For the quantitative analysis we choose to use descriptive and inferential techniques to convert raw data of the survey into interpretive and inferential insight. The descriptive technique is aimed to summarize the data in order to describe what occurred in the survey. By contrast, the inferential technique helps determine the relationships between various variables to generalize results and make predictions.

Results

In the following section we show the interpretation of both qualitative and quantitative data, followed by relevant conclusions.

Qualitative analysis. In this section, we performed thematic examination of the method previously explained the answers of the four influencers interviewed. We analyzed the content to understand how people become influencers (Appendix 4), what kind of relationship do they have with their followers, if influencers can be influence, and how are they promoting products and services. The fact that the interviewees have different communities, origins and areas was important as it allows us to have a broader vision of influencers, more specificities and points of view. As a reminder, the Table 2 below recap the name, number of followers and field of the influencers interviewed.

Table 2. Instagrammers specialties and beginning

Motivation to become an influencer. Most of the influencers become influencers by accident. At the beginning they were only trying to convey their beliefs, passion, everyday life pictures, etc. We could say that most of them became influencers “by chance”. Sometimes, it can begin through a mimetic behavior but for some of them it is the opposite they want to make a difference by sharing different content. For example, Larevuedekathleen began because she wanted to write a blog different from others. According her, in 2016, blogs were mostly redundant, and she wanted to give another vision more personal. She began with her first travel to Canada, then she carried on and became more and more followed. Mathilde Gaunoux also became an influencer as she went, she had more and more followers, and then she managed to have partnerships with brands. She also created her own style, she makes color-themed photos and that's when we started to define her as an influencer.

Revealyourbeautyblog started on Instagram five years ago, at first, she posted “regular” pictures and one day she decided to share better content and to create her blog. Her community grew from 1 K to 10 K followers in only one year, which allowed her to collaborate with brands; she now has 26,9 K followers. However, some influencers become so following a gain of popularity, this is the case of Sebastien, AKA Sebydaddy. Sebastien participated to a reality show and then became very popular, this popularity lead to him becoming an influencer as many people following him on social networks. Mybeauty- fuelfood also benefit for her popularity as she was an actress not very well-known but enough to have a certain community. However, it is only when she started her blog that she became a real influencer. To understand their motivations and purpose to become an influencer (Table 3).

Table 3. Influencers purpose

The relationship influencers/followers and influencers' strategies. Most of them are claiming that their main strategy is authenticity: partnerships, tips and discoveries. They all believe in products they promote and are engaging themselves into the reliability. According to Mybeautyfuelfood (6 K followers) and Revealyourbeautyblog (27 K followers), they do not have a special strategy in order to be attractive, only being themselves. Larevuedekathleen (45 K followers) claims that she aimed to create a trustful relation with her followers and always respond to their messages. With this strategy, she benefits from an image of an accessible and simple person which is, in general, really appreciate by followers.

Mathilde Gaunoux's strategy is to be ubiquitous on social networks which give her more visibility. She follows and loves a maximum of posts among influencers who have the same universe as her: lifestyle and fashion. Most of the interviewees explained us that it was essential on social networks to use good hashtags and to try to have an animated community. To keep and increase their followers they often organize contests collaborating with brands, post quality photos on Instagram feed and challenge their communities by posting photos often. Influencers want to be attractive that is why they want to create content. Larevuedekathleen says that she does not have a precise strategy to be attractive, but as Instagram is a visual platform, she always pays attention on the quality of photos, videos, content, etc. She diversifies her video and photo content on all her social networks (Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter) in order to gain visibility. To understand the profile of followers and their motivations (Table 4).

Table 4. Consumers preferences

Can influencers be influenced? Influencers of all background and community admit that they could be -- consciously or not -- influenced by other influencers. For instance, Revealyourbeautyblog is mostly influenced by other travel and cosmetic influencers, however, she knows this sector very well and revealed that most of the posts are sponsored and “sometimes not sincere”. Sebydaddy has also revealed that he is influenced by everyone and that it does not depend on the number of followers. According to him, being an influencer does not mean having the best advice, he is often influenced by his friends or acquaintances.

Larevuedekathleen thinks that of course influencers unite society, because people tend to copy one from each other. She claims that this is a circle: there are pioneers, creative persons and there are followers. According to her it is important to be innovate and to be different. Sharing the same opinion on the conformism of influencers, Mathilde Gaunoux explained that sometimes, influencers can be influenced to try product but also to not promote them as they have been over-promoted on social networks. Indeed, to overcome this problem brands and influencers must constantly stand out and find partnerships that value them.

Influencers promoting products and services. All our samples refute the promotional side of their position and say that they only give tips and advices about products they have tested before. Moreover, they promote but also convey “attitudes” and “feelings” and admit that the content of their feed may change with time and their own moods. For example, Mybeautyfuelfood shares a “state of mind”, “wellness” and “mindful” in the daily life of her followers. She wants to have a positive impact and influence on their daily routine. According to Larevuedekathleen, she spreads a philosophy: “keep dreaming”. She wants her community to fulfil their dreams and keep moving in their life by spreading a positive state of mind and happiness. Moreover, she feels responsible regarding her community (mostly 13 to 18 years old girls) because she also helps teenage girls to lighten up. She does an “educational work” and explains them that they do not have to be in the “beauty norms” but just love themselves. She does some sponsored partnership but only with brands that convey her values. She tests products for several weeks before promoting them to be sure about their quality.

Mathilde Gaunoux chooses the brands she works with; she is usually in partnership always with the same brands that she likes very much. She also claims to test all her products because she feels she has a responsibility towards her followers. However, she explained that does not accept every partnership because she does not want her account to become an advertising page. She also reveals that when an Instagram user has 10 K followers, it is even automatic for brands to send emails to propose partnerships.

Sebydaddy taught us a lot about partnerships. First of all, he claims that his promoted products and services are the ones he uses and in general are qualitative. He also reveals that a new “trend” of partnerships has emerged over the past year. According to him some small influencers make believe that they have partnerships, even if they don't, in order to gain credibility. From his experience, nowadays it has become a trend to make product placements. Concerning the standardization of the products promoted on the social networks he explains us that some agencies are using packaging of influencers. This means that brands may pay not only for one influencer to promote their products but for many of them in order to reach even more consumers.

From the qualitative analysis, this research investigated about the influencer's strategies. Indeed, during the literature review we noticed that they were no studies on influencers strategies and how they grow. Interviews conducted on influencers taught us more about all these unknown aspects. The first thing that every influencer taught us is that one is not born an influencer, one becomes one. As we have explained in the literature review, authenticity is a key factor in the strategy of influencers. Most of the influencers interviewed confirmed that their main strategy is always to be authentic to win followers trust. This, once again, highlight the fact that authenticity is one of the main issues for influencers. These interviews also confirmed that influencers tend to uniformize the society. Indeed, they also admitted that they could be -- consciously or not -- influenced by other influencers, which explain the mimetic behavior of influencers. The uniformization and similarities of influencers beginning to be an issue and to discredit influencers. However, some of them want to thwart this issue by making a difference by sharing different content.

Quantitative analysis. This part deals with the analysis of the relationship between followers and influencers and the judgement they have on it. From the 150 responses from people with different backgrounds, age, way of life and wealth.

Demographics data. In this part, we will analyze and discuss the demographics criteria of the sample. The purpose of the demographics data analysis is to understand how followers perceive influencers given their age and their gender. We will focus on educational qualification, and general information regarding the habits and opinions of consumers on influencers and their impact in the society. Women seem to have dominated the (73%) and are more pronounced for influencers and social media participants

versus men (27%). Furthermore, the major part (73,2%) of our sample is young: they belong to the age group of 20 years old to 25 years old. It can be determined by our scholarly environment but also because young persons are more interested in social media influencers.

Figure 1. Gender distribution

Preferred social media platform by consumers. It was found that most of our sample respondents prefer Instagram (91,5%) and Facebook (92,9%) as social media platforms. In fact, Instagram and Facebook are making consumers decision-making processes more effective as described in a study driven by Facebook IQ [Facebook IQ, 2019]. They found that consumers view brands on Instagram as more popular (78%), relevant (74%), creative (77%), entertaining (76%) and committed to building community (72%). Instagram plays a key role in every step of the buying process. People use the platform to discover the latest trends, through the explore page, hashtags, or influencer profiles and search for products before buying [Facebook IQ, 2019]. C. Hildebrand and T. Schlager [Hildebrand, Schlager, 2018] demonstrate that Facebook influences consumers that is even more subtle and powerful than we might think. Their study reveals that Facebook has a significant indirect impact on consumers and their decision-making process. Our literature confirms this evidence as the emergence of stories on Instagram and Facebook enable consumers to experience the product. Indeed, stories about their private lives convey strong emotions and allow the influencer to strengthen his connection with followers. B. Pine and J. Gilmore [Pine, Gilmore, 2013] point out that the fact that we are living in an “experience economy” and that now, with social media and influencers it is much easier to share experiences. Most of respondents (92,9%) use Facebook. Instagram is still more used than Snapchat because Instagram is perceived as conveying more “qualitative” content. The respondents are using Snapchat (80,9%) and Twitter (42,6%). Thus, most of followers are using Instagram and Facebook (Figure 2) in order to be informed and follow their favorite influencers.

Figure 2. Social media preferences (answer to the question: Which social media do you use the most?)

We also found that the highest proportion (34,6%) of our sample is following between 5 and 20 influencers followed by 26,5% of the sample who is following between 20 and 50 influencers.

What is expected from an influencer? The questionnaire used helped us to understand the criteria of selection of an influencer. Most of the sample (64,3%) expect entertainment from influencers. This is followed by lifestyle (58%), fashion advices (42%), and cultural information (41,1%). Most of the respondents have particular expectations from influencers. Many participants in our sample also mentioned these expectations: “inspiration”, “news”, “curiosity” and “style”.

Frequency and influencer's perception. 30,4% of respondents are looking at the influencer's profile once a day. It shows that as we saw it before, followers are mostly driven by “curiosity”. However, 9,8% of respondents are looking their profile once a month and 15% of respondents are saying that they never look at the influencer's profile. Most of respondents (88%) do not believe in what influencers are selling. The respondents were asked about the question of influencer's authenticity. Notably 54% consider them as sincere and 38% don't. However, 45% of the respondents think that the products influencers promote are not trustworthy product enough. Moreover, 90% of the respondents think that the influencer's content is repetitive.

Influencer's drive follower's purchase decision. The respondents were asked if they have already purchased a product recommended by an influencer; 43,8% of them confess that they have already bought one and 56,3% of respondents haven't (Figure 3). So, followers tend to believe the advices of influencers and tend to test the products they recommend. A. Martensen, S. Brockenhuus-Schack, and A. Zahid [Martensen, Brockenhuus-Schack, Zahid, 2018] confirm this tendency as they highlight in their study that some influencers are highly persuasive and that followers tend to follow their advices and consume the products promoted. Moreover, N. Neustadt [Neustadt, 2015] in his study The New Age of Influencer Marketing shows that the more attractive the influencer, the stronger the purchase intention. As a matter of facts, the purchase intention model of customers is strongly influenced according to the popularity of influencers.

Figure 3. Influencer's driving on follower's purchase decision (answer to the question: Have you ever made any purchase after the influencer's endorsed any product?)

Perception of consumers on influencer's influence on society. Many respondents (50,4%) think that influencers contribute to the standardization of our society. However, some respondents think that it depends of the importance given to the advices of the influencer. The majority of respondents think that the impact of influencers in society depends on the type of content they publish. Many say that they have to be careful because they “impose beauty and behavior diktats” as others say that “until you keep control on the information they can act as a friend giving advice” but most of them say that “it really depends on the influencers: some are negative because they do it for money and other are willing to give trustworthy advices and are positive for society”. Although for a few respondents, they have neither a good nor negative impact on society but simply represent “a new way of communication and marketing”.

Furthermore, respondents were asked to qualify the impact of influencers on their way of life. Most of them think that they encourage the compulsive purchase and overconsumption because followers identify themselves to their influencers. According to these respondents this identification is mostly due to the tone influencer's use that creates a faithful relationship. A majority think also that they influence the way and life and opinions on society. Others denounce the fact that they give unreal expectations and create physical complexes or inferiority feelings. However, a minority think that they are inspirational and help them discover new tendencies, trends and good deals.

From the quantitative analysis, this research identified the gender preferences, frequency, habits and influencer's influence on purchase consumption. First, the female gender predominance for using social media networks is quite dominating. Then, Instagram and Facebook are the preferred social media for buying and browsing and we notice a positive correlation between influencer's authenticity and follower's purchase intention. Indeed, we demonstrated that influencers mainly drive follower's purchase consumption through their advices and recommendations on Instagram. As 90% of interviewees admit to follow it really proves that influencers have taken an important part on social networks and in people's daily life. Even though the majority of interviewees follow influencers, motivated mainly driven by the desire to be entertained, they admit to not trust them completely. Although half of the interviewees think that influencers have a negative effect on society and that 80% of them find that their promoted products are not trustworthy, still 45% of them have already made a purchase following an influencer publication. These data disclose that despite a collective conscience on the drifts of the influencers, they still have an important power and impact on the consumption decision process.

Discussions and implications

Results show the existence of a relationship between influencers and consumers in consumption decision processes. Our research is based on qualitative and quantitative research that helped us understand through which what criteria consumer's decision were affected. The data collected through the qualitative research helped us defined influencer's promotion strategies to convince their followers and strengthen their relationships with them. Additionally, we studied the effect of influencers on society: the perception of millennials on reality versus social networks and the construction of themselves in the “real life” with these influencers. Analyzing both influencers and consumers allowed us to have a global overview on this actual trend. The results obtained in this research can draw on the implications of influencers' strategy and commitment shaping consumers' behavior in his consumption but also in his daily lifestyle. In terms of these results, we can state that influencers are tremendously valuable for brands as marketing tools in order to strategically position their products.

The literature review provides a theoretical approach and provided the definition of all key notions. During the qualitative phase, we were able to transform these theoretical notions into personal opinions and drive a theory on influencer's strategies. We could understand the influencer's perspective regarding their promotions and sponsored partnerships while measuring their effects on society. In fact, we interviewed five influencers and asked them to what extent they acknowledge their influence on followers. We specially choose to question several influencers with different backgrounds, specialized in several domains (beauty, lifestyle, TV shows, etc.) to have a larger panel of responses. Combining their responses to our theoretical approach we were able to achieve a general understanding of their influence, reach and power. Then, we completed this qualitative research with a quantitative one. We asked 150 individuals about their daily habits, the frequency with which they are visiting influencers' profile, what attract them the most, and their analysis of influencers effect on society. We established through this survey that followers mostly think that influencers are not authentic but play a part in a “standardization” of our society.

Our main findings from the survey and the interviews demonstrate that influencers have a real impact on the consumption decision process. Indeed, even if there is a real tendency from consumers to not trust influencers and to find their promoted products not trustworthy, consumers still follow them and buy promoted products. The interviews confirmed us the importance of authenticity of influencers, it is a key factor in the strategy of influencers in order to win trust. It really proves that there is a problem of trust towards the influencers, as shown by the questionnaire and the interviews of the influencers. The quantitative and qualitative research also demonstrate that influencers tend to uniformize the society as most of them have mimetic behaviors, promote the same products and lifestyles. Ultimately, our research would be useful for small companies who want to promote themselves with new marketing tools and establish a more precise target. This study enables also bigger companies to measure the influencer's effect on their promoted product. Then, this study also provides a general understanding of the real revolution that are influencers and how, in addition to impacting consumer behavior, they are changing and shaping our current and future society.