INFLUENCERS - DEN NYA MARKNADSFÖRINGSKANALEN? : En kvalitativ studie om huruvida unga kvinnors intentioner och konsumtionspreferenser påverkas av att influencers rekommenderar produkter

The research area of ​​the essay highlights the development of digital media and its importance for consumers today. Furthermore, the communication has been through a change and it is now possible for everyone to spread information and communicate with people in an easy way through social media. Since social media’s grand emergence has thereby a new profession risen, influencers. Moreover, the essay aim to study how young women get influenced by influencers’ recommendations of various products. Furthermore, three theories are presented. The first one is the Two-step hypothesis that describe how an opinion leader more easily can reach out to other people. The second theory is Parasocial Interaction, which also highlights opinion leaders and describes how a person can feel a friendly bond to another person they never have met. The third theory is Identity creation and consumption which describes how an individual can consume products to get a desired identity. In order to answer our questions, we have used two focus groups in two different age groups, consisting only women. Furthermore, we have done a thematic analysis on these two focus groups discussions to find similarities themes. In addition, we compared these groups to each other in order to reach a conclusion. Our results indicate that influencers has an impact on consumers and their behaviour in some level. The results also showed that age has a significant part of how much an individual is being influenced