Förtroende i samband med influencer marketing : En kvalitativ studie om konsumenters förtroende gentemot influencers och företag

Sammanfattning: The purpose with this study is to increase the understanding behind consumers trust towards influencers and companies while these two collaborate with each other. Two questions were developed to investigate the purpose. The first question investigates how different factors, developed in purpose of the study, affects the trust towards a company and an influencer. The second question focuses on the difference between the company and the influencer considering the effect of the consumers trust. In order to gather empirical material, eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted with consumers between the age of 18 to 30 and who followed some influencers. The respondents were selected through a non-probability sample. From the collected material, conclusions could be drawn about the various factors and the company versus the influencer. As for the factors, the trust seemed to be affected both in positive and negative manners considering the situation and the specific factor. When it comes to the factor paid collaborations, the trust seems to decrease, but increase when the involvement of money is announced. The influencer falling into a scandal has a negative impact on the trust, depending on the specific situation. When the influencer is advertising something unexpected, the trust is most likely going to decrease. In the case of continuous advertising of a product, consumers suspect surreptitious advertising if they are highly involved and this affects the trust negatively due to dishonesty. It can be stated that how the trust is affected differs between the company and the influencer in conjunction with influencer marketing. This seems partly due to the fact that the expectations towards a company is not as high as for an influencer, which means that the trust is not affected to the same extent. An influencer on the other hand, is perceived to be more relatable which has a positive effect on the trust.