INFLUENCE MARKETING IN SOCIAL NETWORKS: IMPACT ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN RUSSIAN MARKET

Аннотация
Introduction 7
Chapter 1. Opinion Leaders as a Marketing communication tool 11
1.1 Promotion through opinion leaders as one of the main directions of social media marketing 11
1.2 Definition of opinion leaders 13
1.3 Influence of opinion leaders on brand awareness, brand engagement and purchase intent ....21
1.4 The overview of social networks in Russian Federation 25
1.5 Conclusions on Chapter 1 28
Chapter 2. Factors influencing the perception of influencers and purchasing behavior 29
2.1 Influence of personal characteristics of the influencer 29
2.2 Influence of trust on purchasing behavior 31
2.3 The value of the popularity of the influencer 32
2.4 Content and channel as factors of influence 33
2.5. Conclusions on Chapter 2 35
Chapter 3. Research methodology 37
3.1 Research design 37
3.2 Research method 38
3.3 Data collection method 38
3.4 Data Collection Process 40
3.5 Sample base 41
Chapter 4. Results of the analysis and discussion 42
4.1 Research findings 42
4.1.1 The usage of social networks 43
4.1.2 Users’ attitude to advertisement by influencers in social networks 44
4.1.3 The purchase decision making process concerns the products or services recommended by
influencers 45
4.1.4 Factors that impact on users’ level of trust to influencers 46
4.1.4 Attitude to the number of influencers’ followers 47
4.2 Discussion 48
4.3 Theoretical contribution 50
4.4 Managerial implications 50
4.5 Limitations and potential for the further research 52
Conclusion 53
References 55
Appendix 64
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The development of technology brings tremendous changes to a person's life. According to the Digital 2021 global report, at the beginning of 2021, almost 4.66 billion people around the world used the Internet. The audience of social networks consists of 4.20 billion social media users in the world. Over the past 12 months, this figure has grown by 490 million, which means an increase of more than 13% year-on-year. 53.6% of the world's population uses social networks in 2021 (Sergeeva, 2021).
The last fact is vitally important in the context of writing this paper, since social networks have become a very important strategic tool for companies planning to promote their products and services in the digital space. Consumer behavior also undergoes certain transformations due to the number of messages received through frequent stay in the "online" status.
In modern society, consumers are increasingly making a purchase decision based on the recommendations of so-called opinion leaders. In addition, new channels of communication with consumers are emerging. Companies are clearly aware of the importance of marketing in the effectiveness of their activities and increase marketing budgets. All this contributes to the development of such a direction as influence marketing.
The emergence of Influencer marketing has become a product of the widespread digitalization of society, and, in particular, the active development of social networks. It can be argued that this trend in marketing is a direct reflection of the theory of two-stage information flow (otherwise Lazarsfeld model). Anyone can become a content creator within influencer marketing.
According to EpicStars estimates, the demand for advertising in the influencer marketing format has become greater than classic social media marketing. For instance, from $1.7 billion in 2016, influencer marketing is estimated to have grown to have a market size of $16.4 billion in 2022 (Geyser, 2022) and it's expected to reach $84.89 billion in 2028 (Santora, 2022). Mian trends reflect growing popularity of establishing partnerships with micro and nano influencers, promotion on different platforms, more creativity-based deals.
Despite the growing trend of using influencer marketing, there are a number of contradictions. For example, according to GlobalWebIndex, a large percentage of people (30%) still do not trust the opinion of influencers (Young, 2018), this tool lacks generally accepted and used metrics for evaluating effectiveness, cases of fraud on the part of the influencers themselves are not uncommon (for example, cheating the number of subscribers). The problem of research logically follows from the above.
A research gap of the situation: despite the fact that 67.8% (Exlibris, 2021) of the total population of the country has social media accounts in Russia and a huge number of brands are engaged in various ways of promoting themselves in them, the influence of opinion leaders in social networks on the perception of brands by Russian consumers has not been studied enough. Earlier, this aspect in the local market was considered in the works "Models of influence in social networks" (Gubanov, Novikov, 2009), "Social networks: models of information influence, management and confrontation" (Gubanov, Novikov, 2010), "The Problem of opinion leaders in public communication" (Vitvinchuk, Fotieva, 2017), "The Age of marketing Influence: How Opinion Leaders shape Demand" (Dikhanova, 2019), "Promotion of services in social networks" (Khristoforov, 2010). At the same time, the market understands the potential of the new marketing tool, however, it does not fully realize what ways to promote through opinion leaders in social networks to use to achieve the necessary results. Also, in terms of new spring 2022 realities towards government restrictions to a social media availability changed and this situation is growing a new field for research. The problem of the study is the active development of influencer marketing and insufficient knowledge of the consumers attitude to influencers and their attitude to unavailability of common social network in terms of new social network restrictions and of switching costs which are the most critical and difficult to overcome for customers.
From the information above the main goal can be formed: to study the customer’s attitude to influencers, factors of the impact, which will allow to offer companies new approaches in promotion through influencers.
Research objectives:
1. To study approaches to determining influencers, their specifics in social networks and potential impact on consumers.
2. Identify the key factors influencing the purchasing choice through opinion leaders as the main tool of brand marketing communications.
3. To study the perception of customers on influencers, an advertisement by influencers.
4. To offer companies new approaches in promotion through influencers....
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