INFLUENCER’s MARKETING AND ITS EFFECT ON PURCHASE INTENTION

Abstract

The use of influencers as a marketing strategy has arisen as an
effective method for brands to communicate and interact with the
customers they are trying to reach in this digital era. Due to the
perception that they are genuine and the high level of engagement
they have with their followers, social media influencers have a
significant impact on consumer behavior (Freberg et al., 2011;
Lou & Yuan, 2019). In this article, we examine the ways in which
influencer marketing affects the purchasing intentions of
consumers. As part of this analysis, we will explore the many
approaches that influencers use to establish trust, increase
engagement, and influence purchasing decisions (Djafarova &
Rushworth, 2017). Organizations are able to tailor their
marketing tactics in order to efficiently transform followers into
consumers if they have an understanding of this relationship
(Casaló et al., 2020). This research is being conducted in Chennai
in order to determine the extent to which influencer marketing
affects consumers' intentions to buy products. The study, which
is descriptive in nature, gathered a sample of 155 respondents
who are actively involved with social media in Chennai. The
questionnaire is used as the tool for gathering data, and a
convenience sample method was used to select the people who
would reply (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). The statistical methods
that were used in this investigation were multiple regression
analysis and one-way ANOVA. The dependability of the study was
confirmed at 83.9% by Cronbach's alpha, which had a value of
0.834 (George & Mallery, 2019). Data analysis is performed using
SPSS version 25. The results of the study indicate that customers'
intents to make a purchase are significantly impacted by reach,
engagement metrics, and relevance, with reach having the most
significant impact. This highlights the importance of an
influencer's exposure and the size of their audience (Jin et al.,
2019). On the other hand, the credibility of the influencer and the
style of content do not have a statistically significant impact on
purchase intention in this scenario. Furthermore, age and
occupation have a significant impact on influencer marketing,
with younger respondents, especially students, being more
vulnerable to its impacts (De Veirman et al., 2017).