How Millennials perceive influencers and its impact on purchase intentions

• Autor(a) principal: Calçada, Manuel Maria Padrão Caetano de Paula
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/26995
• topic: Influencer marketing; Millennials; Source Credibility Model; Endorsement campaigns; Social proximity; Purchase intentions; Hedonic products; Marketing de influenciadores; Modelo de credibilidade; Campanhas de endossador; Proximidade social; Intenções de compra; Produtos hedónicos; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Marketeers face an increasingly complex task of pleasing a population that is evolving digitally. The new typical consumer is an individual that is extremely tech-savvy and critical of any campaign created by his/her favourite brands, therefore, companies are adopting new advertising practises to stand out from competition, but also to be closer to their consumers. In recent years, a new marketing approach has been gaining popularity due to the growth of social media channels, and also because it is considered to be socially closer to people and able to trigger stronger emotional responses: Influencer marketing. This dissertation was developed with the purpose of understanding how Millennials, a truly digital generation of consumers, perceive Influencers as endorsers through the lens of the Source Credibility Model. Via both descriptive and exploratory research approaches, an extensive literature review and an online questionnaire were conducted which enabled the enrichment of the existing academic literature and the development of recommendations that will assist marketing professional in creating better Influencer endorsement campaigns. Also, the psychological phenomenon of Social Proximity was studied in the context of endorsement marketing, which was yet to be done in existing literature. The main conclusions taken from this study indicate that Influencers are the best form of endorsement marketing for hedonic products. Also, it was possible to conclude that Social Proximity positively affected consumers’ purchase intentions. Finally, and as a recommendation for marketeers, Influencers are capable of generating high purchase intentions whenever perceived as highly expert and trustworthy.