Social Media Influencer Influence on Customer Purchase Decision for Beauty Products

Abstract

Social media influencers have given the consumer a new means of communication as they can interact, seek, share and benefit from other’s experience. Today, the consumers especially the beauty consumers do not spontaneously choose a product; they spend time in getting the information of the product/brand, benefit and usability to make sure that it can give them the value that they desire. Therefore, this research will help in understanding why influencer marketing is important in beauty industry; how it helps consumers in making their purchase decision and what attributes of the influencer consumers consider the most while making a purchase decision. It will also help in understanding the role of beauty influencers in shaping the purchase decision of the consumers. A total of 200 responses were collected through convenience sampling technique. Women and men who are active on the social media and who follow influencers on more than one platform of social media like WhatsApp and Instagram were the target segment. A questionnaire was designed with 15 questions. Chi square test and Multiple Linear Regression were used to analyze the objectives. It was found that there is no noteworthy relationship between the demographic- age and purchase decision, there is noteworthy relationship between demographic- gender and purchase decision, i.e. influencers do have an influence on the purchase decision of different gender but not on different age groups are the important outcomes of the study. The attributes of influencers like emotional association and likeability have a noteworthy positive influence on the purchase decision, while the other attributes like trustworthiness, authenticity, expertise and popularity do not have a significant effect on the purchase decision of the people.