Ta det personligt! En kvantitativ studie om konsument- och varumärkeseffekterna av ett personligt budskap i influencermarknadsföring

Sammanfattning: Marketing in social media and the use of influencers has grown dramatically during the last years. A relatively new phenomena is that brands pay influencers to market their products or services - often done in a personal way by recommendations combined with updates about their everyday lives. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate if a personal appeal is an effective advertising appeal in sponsored posts on Instagram. The study looked at brand attitude, purchase intention, parasocial interaction, credibility and attitude to the ad. A quantitative study has been conducted with 113 respondents in two different groups, one group which saw a personal appeal in a sponsored Instagram post and one group which saw a non- personal appeal. In this study a personal appeal was built on the theories; eWOM, Storytelling and Emotional marketing. The results indicate that a personal appeal in sponsored posts is more effective than a non-personal appeal to influence the brand attitude of consumers. The results also found that parasocial interaction and credibility of the influencer had a mediating role between the personal appeal and the attitude to the ad, which in turn had a positive effect on brand attitude. No significant results were found for the purchase intention. Therefore, the authors suggest that a personal appeal is an effective marketing strategy to use in influencer marketing.