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At a time where technology and digital is omnipresent, Influencer marketing became the new tool for digital marketing. Lately, social media, in particular Instagram, became as much as social network as a marketing platform for business. In this thesis, the author analyses the influence of Instagram product placement on consumers for the beauty industry. The purpose of this research is to understand how the different product placement types work and how different their influence on consumers can be. In this research, the author analyses the customer relationship with the beauty industry, Instagram, influencers and product placement in general, as well as the mechanism of product placement from a legal and business point of view. This work intends to highlight what are the best practices for product placement on Instagram with a special focus on disclosure languages. The three types of disclosure language analysed are “disclosure language” (use of hashtags such as #sponsored), “ambiguous disclosure language” (use of ambiguous hashtags such as #ad) and no disclosure language (no use of hashtags at all). The first step of this research is a customer engagement analysis. 60 Instagram posts were selected covering the three types of disclosure languages and analysed the comments. Comments were classified in several categories to assess the general reaction and customers’ engagement level regarding sponsored posts. The second step is a quantitative customer survey for Swiss French-speaking females, focusing on customer behaviour towards sponsored posts and assessing respondents’ reaction towards five practical cases. The third step of this analysis focuses on experts’ point of view. Five communication/influencers agencies were interviewed to understand their point of view about customers’ engagement towards product placement and the mechanisms of the industry. The last step is a qualitative customer survey for Swiss French-speaking females aiming at confirming and deepening the results of the three first analysis. This last step is focuses on consumer behaviour and reactions towards sponsored posts. The findings of this thesis show that consumers are not reluctant to sponsored posts. However, some critical key points can be improved to increase customer engagement towards sponsored posts on Instagram. Nowadays, the usual practices in the industry lead to a weak credibility of influencers, which considerably impact customer engagement. Plus, the trust-relationship between the influencer and its community is not yet optimal, even though it is one of the main key elements in sponsored posts, and is often underestimated. Then, subtlety, transparency and ethics are key elements in the process of engaging customers through sponsored posts but are often not taken into consideration. In fact, “ambiguous disclosure language” seems to be what works the best in terms of customer engagement as it allies subtlety, transparency and ethics. This research is relevant, especially in Switzerland, where influencers’ jobs is not yet well-recognized. Plus, Swiss brands are not comfortable with influencer marketing, not being aware of its mechanisms and how to maximize them. It gives concrete recommendations, key elements and tools to improve customer engagement. Plus, this research demonstrates that there is a potential market in French-speaking Switzerland for influencer marketing, especially on Instagram, as consumers are interested by influencers and the beauty industry and rather open-minded about sponsored posts. These recommendations can help improving influencers’ image in Switzerland. Finally, in the long term, brands, influencers and agencies could improve their strategy based on the findings of this research paper as it could help them reaching their own objectives, such as building a strong community, increasing customer loyalty and return on investment. |
