DIFFERENCES IN CONSUMERS’ BRAND AWARENESS BASED ON LEVEL OF INVOLVEMENT IN INFLUENCER FOLLOWING

Abstract

MOTIVATION Companies use influencer marketing by targeting key individuals, i.e., "influencers" with similar values as the brands they collaborate with and that help companies in reaching their potential consumers (More & Lingam, 2017). Influencers significantly influence consumer attitudes and behavior (Liu et al., 2015; Grafström et al., 2018). This study is based on Consumer Involvement Theory, proposed by O’Cass (2000) that explains the existence of different types of consumer involvement.

RESEARCH QUESTION Having in mind the value of influencers as opinion leaders and shapers of consumers’ perceptions and behavior related to brands (Castillo & Fernández, 2019), the purpose of this study is to determine whether Instagram users differ in brand awareness based on their level of involvement in Instagram influencer following. We base our study on the assumption that the level of involvement influences consumers’ brand awareness.

METHODOLOGY An online questionnaire was sent on a purposive sample of active Instagram users in North Macedonia, and we analyzed the responses from 76 respondents that follow influencers. ANOVA test was used to prove that social media users with different level of involvement differ regarding their awareness of the brand being advertised by influencers. To assess construct validity, we used EFA. Principal component analysis with Varimax rotation confirmed factors as conceptualized in the literature.

RESULTS The p-value less than the significance level p<0.05 proves that there are statistically significant differences in consumers’ brand awareness between Instagram users with different level of involvement in influencer following.

CONTRIBUTION We add great value to scientific community and marketing practitioners since this study is the first, as known by the authors, to focus on consumers’ involvement in influencer following as a cause for differences in consumers’ brand awareness, with a focus on a single social network, Instagram. Most of previous studies have focused on the effect of consumers’ involvement on advertising effectiveness (Petty & Schumann, 1983) or consumers’ brand trust (Delgado-Ballester & Munuera-Alemán, 1999).