Status symbols and influencers : A quantitative study on the relationship between influencers marketing and Swedish high school girls habits of consumption

Research shows that adolescents are major users of various social media, and adolescent girls who use social media are more likely than adolescent boys to come into contact with so-called Influencer marketing, i.e. a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole. Influencers tend to effect their audience’s consumption habits, and their main audience often tend to be adolescent girls. This caught our attention since influencers are a quite new phenomenon and not much research on has been done on it. The main object of the study is to examine if there any correlations in what extent influencers affect adolescent girls consumption of ”status symbols” given their social class. The second object of the study builds on identifying and explaining differences in adolescent girls and their definitions of status symbols and how this affects their consumption of status symbols given their social class. To do this, we constructed a survey which we posted on the social media Facebook. The survey was only open to persons belonging to so-called ”girl groups”, consisting of girls only. Our respondents consist of adolescent girls at attending at swedish high schools. Our study draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of; habitus, capital and field. We conclude that adolescent girls of a lower social class are more likely to consume status symbols recommended by influencers on social medias. Other conclusions are that adolescent girls regardless of their social class consume the same type of status symbols But also that there are no differences’ in adolescent girls and their definitions of which status symbols they consider to be highly valued