How do influencer marketing agencies work with sustainability as intermediaries? : A multiple case study on influencer marketing agencies presented as a strategy

ABSTRACT Level: Master thesis in Business Administration, 15 cr Institution: School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University Authors: Alma Hamulic & Lovisa Nilsson Eskesen Title: How do influencer marketing agencies work with sustainability as intermediaries? Keywords: Influencer Marketing, Sustainability, Sustainable Marketing, Future of Influencer Marketing, Intermediaries Research question: “How do influencer marketing agencies work and promote sustainability to their influencers?” Purpose: The authors aim to investigate how the agencies work with the influencers in terms of sustainability, whether the influencer marketing agency has a given strategy for the influencer to communicate sustainably or not. Method: The interpretivist research paradigm was chosen as the most suitable one in this qualitative study. The interpretivist research philosophy tends to lead to an Inductive approach and the research method is exploratory. For this research, a multiple case study has been chosen, carried by four semi-structured interviews chosen by the purposive sampling method. Conclusion: The results show thee main findings where none of the participating agencies for this research has a given strategy for promoting sustainability to their influencers even though they agree that it is of great importance to include in their work. Another finding is to be selective with the companies the agencies choose to work with and the fact that they can affect what is being communicated in terms of sustainability. A sustainability action plan has been created that illustrates how a new strategy can be brought in to create a sustainability strategy for intermediaries