Investigating the mediating role of influencers in the effect of social media marketing on customer satisfaction

In today's world where competition is intense, social media, which has emerged as a new area in marketing in response to customer expectations, is seen as an area that will provide significant power for all types of businesses to reach existing and potential customers. Social media, which is seen as a powerful area among digital marketing forms, is one of the most popularly used tools in reaching brand goals. It has a functional structure in order to create an effective strategy and measure it. Businesses that want to increase interaction with their brands as a target use social media as the most effective channel. Businesses want to constantly measure customer satisfaction, which is expressed as the measure of how much the product and service they offer meets the customer's expectations. Customer satisfaction is one of the best investments that businesses can make for the future. While customer satisfaction increases the income of the business on the one hand, it also spreads its awareness from all channels on the other. Influencers, who become famous by influencing those around them on the internet and gain a place for themselves with the follow-up of their works, are turning into phenomena from virtual areas such as social media. This group, which directs its followers on internet channels, also has a high follower potential. Living beings have a need to sustain their lives. This need is basically realized through food consumption. This study aims to investigate the impact of marketing activities carried out in the field of social media, where consumers can communicate more effectively with each other on the internet, on customer satisfaction, while examining the mediating role that influencers can create in this impact process in the context of the sector where they meet the food needs of consumers and where many businesses are located. In this context, the survey form created consists of 2 sections. In the first section, demographic variables and in the second section, data were collected from social media consumers using the internet by creating a form aimed at determining social media marketing, customer satisfaction and influencer effect. Data were collected in a period of two months. The data collection process was terminated after reaching the data of 428 people. The data obtained in the study were analyzed using the SPSS statistical program. ANOVA and t-test were applied in the analysis process and necessary tests were performed. It was concluded that all three hypotheses developed based on the model were accepted.