How is the consumer influenced by social media influencers? : A qualitative exploratory study of how the consumers' buyer decision process is influenced by social media influencers.

Sammanfattning: Background: Social media influencers (SMI’s) can influence the consumers’ decisions by sending out social signals through social functions which social media platforms enable. These social functions SMI’s as well as consumers use, could be for example through sharing content; having a conversation; developing relationships with like-minded individuals; or it could also be used for sending out social signals, such as identity, presence or reputation. SMI’s can play a significant role when it comes to consumers' buying decision process, thus makes it important to research on how the consumers’ buyer decision process potentially could be influenced and therefore shaped, as the staticity of the buyer decision process, hence the five stages, might change depending upon what it is combined with and in regards to what consumer audience. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how the consumers’ buyer decision process is influenced by social media influencers from the consumers’ perspective. Methodology: This research has been taking advantage of the qualitative research approach in an explanatory nature. As the empirical material had to become thick, subjective and from a consumer's point of view, this research included unstructured interviews allowing the interviews to become conversational-like, thus giving the respondents the chance to control and steer the topics within the scope. Aide-mémoaire’s were used if the interviews developed a complete wrong direction, steering the conversation back. The unstructured interviews included 6 females between the ages of 20-30 years old, this selection were made with purposive sampling method. Findings: This bachelor thesis identified four different factors that were influencing the consumer's buyer decision process, namely, characteristics, trust, risk and drivers. Conclusion: Concluding the thesis, four different factors were found having an influence upon the consumers buyer decision process while being exposed to an SMI. These four factors further played different roles in different stages of the buyer decision process, which is important for companies, brands, marketers and SMIs to observe. Keywords: Buyer Decision Process, SMI’s, Social Media Influencers, Influence