The effect of social media influencers on consumers' brand preference: A study on cosmetic brands

The emergence and propagation of the Internet bring forward the concept of social media. The increase in the population of social media and its popularity has caused both consumers and brands to turn towards this new field day by day. Brand communication can be managed via their corporate account that is created by the brand itself. On the other hand, it has brought forward the idea of the social media user's playing an active role in the brand communication along with social media's activating everybody about content production. Social media provides all users to create their own profiles, come together with the people of same interest and form an interaction. It also provides other people who are indirectly connected to carry out brand communication. Nowadays, the social media influencers have come into prominence in brand communication that is carried out as users-centered apart from the brand itself. In recent years, social media influencers, who have a large number of followers in social media having been able to influence the evaluations of other social media users with their opinions, suggestions and comments, and to shape their opinions, have shared contents for brands. In this study, it is aimed to determine whether the social media influencers affect the brand preferences of the individuals who follow them or not. For this purpose, a survey was carried out with the participation of 519 people using quantitative research methods. Before the research, a preliminary test was conducted with the participation of 30 people between April 8th and April 14th, 2019, and the questionnaire was revised and finalised in accordance with the results of the pre-test. The questionnaire form which was made online between 18 April - 03 May 2019 was answered by 520 participants and 519 of these forms were analyzed. Data obtained from research have analyzed and interpreted by SPSS program. Findings indicate that the social media influencers do not have a positive effect on the cosmetic brand preference of consumers, findings shows that audiences don't find the sharings of social media influencers about cosmetic brands reliable. In addition, according to the demographic characteristics of the participants, the use of social media in the search for information about the cosmetic brands, the effect of social media influencers on the cosmetic brand preference and whether the content shared by the social media influencers are reliable by the followers revealed that there is a statistically significant difference between the groups. The findings are interpreted within the scope of the study. Key Words: Brand, Brand Communication, Brand Preference, Social Media, Social Media Influencers