Digital transformation of the marketing: A research on influencer marketing applications

As a result of our life in the age of technology, marketing has moved away from traditional techniques and has undergone a digital transformation. In this period of rapidly increasing competition, businesses have needed new methods. In this context, word-of-mouth marketing, which is frequently utilized in the traditional marketing approach, has evolved into viral marketing within the framework of digital marketing and has taken its place in practice. Considering that consumers are affected more by their environment and their trusted people during the purchasing decision process, Influencer Marketing applications in digital marketing have started to become widespread in this process. Thus, Influencer Marketing applications that occur when influencers naturally present their product or service experiences from their social media accounts have gained importance as a derivative of viral marketing. Within this scope, the study aims to determine the development process of Influencer Marketing applications, and which tools applications are widespread and used, and the extent to which consumers are influenced by influencers in their purchasing decisions for products or services. Semi-structured interviews, one of the qualitative research methods, and the questionnaire technique, one of the quantitative research methods, are used to obtain the research findings in question. As a result of the study, it has found that with digitalization, changes and transformation have taken place in the marketing channels of businesses, social media channels have preferred more than traditional marketing channels, and consumers have been influenced by influencers in their purchasing decision for the product/brand.