Influencer Marketing in the Digital Age: Exploring the Influence of Social Media Influencers on Consumer

Influencer marketing is a modern marketing strategy where brands collaborate with social media influencers. The evolution of the digital age and the rise of social networking sites brought changes to the consumer behavior. This transformation has led to an increasing number of opportunities and challenges. Influencers are chosen by several companies today because of their ability to communicate their brand effectively with a more authentic and personal touch. They can recommend a product or service without being overly exaggerated, thus maintaining the trust of their followers to choose a particular product or service. Influencer marketing is also expected to be able to build brands, namely designing communications so that brands can have unique, positive and strong associations in the minds of customers. Influencer marketing for the past decade has proven to have a powerful voice for brands in the age of digital marketing. The role of influencers continues to have the ability to motivate social attitudes and behavior within their online community towards the brands by the influencer. The communities built by these social media influencers continue to gain social acceptance with their authentic voices and inspirational content. There has been much research on the effectiveness of social media influencers for brands the past decade, and in this research, we will look towards influencer marketing in the digital age, which are not human but are digital recreations with levels of human likeness.