Impact of Influencers on Consumer Behaviour: empirical study

Abstract

Digital marketing is a very well established and commonly used form of marketing in this generation. Influencer marketing, out of all the other marketing types, is one of the most popular digital marketing tools that almost all companies, brands or services use for their promotional activities since the past few years. The author of this paper had completed a digital internship as a community influencer at Unschool Company. The main task was to create sales by introducing the courses offered at uncool influencing students and other individuals who wanted to learn and upskill to join the courses. The author was not able to complete her target sales of five and thus wanted to find the reason behind it resulting in the creation of this paper. This research concentrates on finding out the impact of influencer marketing on consumers buying decision and what were the reasons behind decreased sales obtained by influencers are by conducting a research using research methodology and data analysis based on the data collected with the help of the author's marketing internship experience and other sources. Review of literature was done gathering data from related sources to find out what influencer marketing really is and the influencers impact on consumers buying decision behavior. The research study was done using primary data obtained from a sample size of 20 with survey questionnaires, a quantitative method, to identify the impact of influencers on consumers buying behavior and decision making by determining what causes decreased sales for an influencer. The data acquired revealed the foremost causes for decreased sales and how it affects the buying decision made by consumers. This study also shows that influencer marketing can have both its own advantages and disadvantages. Results from the study showed that if steps are taken to resolve the disadvantages then impressive amounts of profits can be produced through influencer marketing.