The impact of influencer marketing as a new strategy for brands: A survey on consumers

In today's business environment, brands are associated not only with the products or services, but they are also associated with perceived quality, consumer life style, and social status/class. This thesis aims to understand the impact of influencer marketing as a new strategy for brands from the consumer's perspective. The main research question of this thesis is; whether influencers have a positive role on purchase intention of the consumers, regarding the brands that are promoted using influencer marketing. In addition, it is aimed to investigate, if influencers affect consumer's opinion on certain brands. The approach used in this study is, to perform a survey analysis of 120 respondents using convenience sampling in Turkey, Morocco, and France and then analyzing the gathered data using a quantitative methodology. The key results of this research indicate that; influencers do not directly affect consumer's purchasing buyer behavior but consumers' brand awareness, brand perception and knowledge on new products are found to be indirectly influenced. In some cases, influencers might find themselves in a bad situation like being in a scandal in their personal lives or improper news, it is found that the opinion of the consumers about brands does not change and as well as consumer's buying decision is not affected after these situations related with the influencer.