What Drives Consumers To Engage with Influencers?

Abstract

Recent years have seen a significant increase in influencer advertising, a strategy applied to drive brand awareness and purchase by leveraging everyday opinion leaders on social media. Although a growing body of research focuses on what makes influencers effective, the authors took a step back to determine what drives consumers to follow influencers. To address two research questions, the authors explored consumer heterogeneity to understand how consumers derive value from the influencers they follow. Following a large-scale survey of consumers across five social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and Twitter), the authors used latent class segmentation to uncover six consumer segments. These segments differ in why people follow, and how they react to, influencers. The findings provide both brands and influencers with insights that can guide better management of influencer–consumer relationships.