Readymade research proposal available

The Strategic Efficacy of Influencer Marketing: Organizational Imperatives, Authenticity Risks, and the Quest for Measurable Commercial Effectiveness

1. Introduction

1.1 Background context

Readymade Synopsis available-The Strategic Efficacy of Influencer Marketing. The concept of influencer marketing has emerged as a strong marketing promotional strategy across industry sectors. The digital economy has transformed the business environment which has reshaped the antecedent factors, which justifies the current research topic (Dean Hund, 2019). Firstly, there is decline in the effectiveness of the traditional advertising components visible in the society. Even though, there is consumer skepticism the environment around the individual daily life, advertising has brought in advertisement fatigue, that is pushing the brands to seek a more personalized content, uniqueness that generates trust effective engagement process (Guangul, 2024). In this context, the influencers have made their presence felt with the social media platforms like- YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, thereby, democratizing the content creation process in the advertisement world. Hence, the micro influencer and macro influencers have emerged, across industries using the platforms, to build niche audience for themselves creating like- minded engagement and altering the dynamics of marketing brand communication (Glenister, 2021). Thirdly, the traditional format of the advertisement from the company is unidirectional and hence, there is a growing demand for ‘authenticity’ and ‘relatability’ amongst the consumers (Orencia, 2023). The influencer acts as a bridge to close the gap during customer ‘information search process’ about the product or service (Markey, 2019).

The increase the credibility with influencer communication against the static advertisement from the organization have enhanced the brand trust and also have exposed the firm reputation against its product or service offerings. Lastly, the lack of standardized metrics to measure the commercial impact and return on investment of advertisement marketing campaign for the influencer campaigns have created an ambiguity for the organization (Vines et al. 2015). It has led to a difficult situation to understand the influencer effort against the achievement of the marketing objectives (Patel, 2024). The current research addresses the converging factors which underscores the need to critically assess the strategic dimension of efficacy of influencer marketing. It also tries to understand how the organizational balances the imperatives with the context of authenticity risk of influencer communication (Okonkwo & Namkoisse, 2023), and whether it is able to pursue and show a measurable outcome in the complex digital ecosystem (Bennett, 2024).

1.2 Importance and relevance of the research study

The research study on the above topic is crucial in today’s environment as the marketing landscape. The business environment is undergoing a tremendous transformation with digital advertising bypassing the traditional advertising process and practices (Pitafi, & Awan, 2024). As brands are increasingly allocating advertising budget in the beginning of the year, the fund allocation for social media advertising, influencer collaboration, cobranding strategies have started to be evaluated from a strategic value addition towards the advertisement campaign investments (Hamdan & Lee, 2022).

This research study, therefore, tries to understand the current knowledge gap and evaluate as to how the influencer marketing aligned with the organizational goal of positioning the brand engaging the consumer cohort and show a pathway to build a long term loyalty. This research also explores, why it is important for the organizations to create and adopt influencer marketing strategies, which (Moustakas et al. 2020) highlighted about their efficacy in broader existing marketing framework. This research outcomes would help the organisations, to experiment and delineate from the brand communication and coherence, thereby, emphasizing on the strategic imperative through experimentation metrics. It is evident that most of the organizations large-medium-small have moved beyond the traditional advertising metrics, towards online social media metrics, with –likes, shares and steadily building a customer base and final purchase decision (Fauser et al. 2023). Therefore, it is important to also reconsider the options of influencer marketing in the product genre or services, increase the conversion rates, add to customer lifetime value, thereby, building a brand equity responsibly. The current research therefore contributes towards the marketing decision makers with the outcomes of this research to be evidence based. Scholz, (2021) findings showed that it helps to understand how influencer partnerships help the marketing campaigns to be optimized, by resources and by funds. This efficiency in order to build resilient digital branding strategies in the competing business environment in India.

The research study is relevant as the evolving nature of consumer behavior the influx of social media platforms and the advertising marketing communication requiring more ‘relatability’, ‘authenticity’ that helps the end-users to place trust, before their final purchase decisions. In this context, the influencer marketing with the promise, needs to be assessed from its authenticity perspective, the influencer brand alignment-misalignment dimensions, and establish a standardized ROI metrics to test the influencer marketing risks.

The current study is relevant at as it is multidimensional in its approach, where the commercial effectiveness of influencer marketing and its impact on psychological ethical dimensions in the digital era needs to be evaluated constructed and perceived from marketing academic literature and also from business practice perspective. The outcome of this research can offer to provide recommendations that are of strategic intent to the organization, the brand, authenticity management and performance analytics in influencer marketing research, helping organizations to navigate the complex training of digital influence and consumer trust.

1.3 Scope of the project

The scope of the research project is dependent upon the primary research data that allows the research to capture real time context specific insights of the research phenomenon from the respondent group. The deployment of primary research method helped the research to identify the key decision making patterns the trust building mechanisms and the performance metrics of influencer marketing for a given product or service in the context of the research. It can also expand to understand the role of micro and macro influencers their contributions in B2B and B2C context, against the national-regional, or product/service category advertising campaign strategies. The primary research method, therefore, helps the respondent lived experiences and the current organizational practices to be captured in order to synthesize and assess the empirical dimensions which lead to actionable insights for the organizations and their brands seeking to optimize influencer marketing strategically in the digital environment advertisement system.

2. Objectives of the study

2.1 Goals of research

RO1.   To quantify the differential impact of Influencer Marketing on long-term metrics such  as Brand  Equity and Customer Lifetime  Value (CLV) compared to short-term engagement metrics ( e.g., likes, clicks).

RO2.   To develop a Strategic Risk Mitigation Framework for IM, specifically evaluating the  impact  of  organizational  structures and  controls  on reducing susceptibility to influencer fraud and optimizing content authenticity.

RO3.   To   examine the efficacy of IM   campaigns across  traditionally under-researched sectors (e.g., technology, niche markets) to provide reliable data for cross-industry strategic deployment.

2.2 Research Aims to achieve

The primary aim of this research, is to critically evaluate the strategic dimension of influencer marketing in organizations and how they align to meet the broader marketing objectives navigating through the authenticity related risks and passing measurable commercial outcomes.

“Readymade Synopsis available-The Strategic Efficacy of Influencer Marketing”

3.Problem statement:

The Indian advertising environment has been progressing steadily with digital economy bypassing the traditional advertising practices. The popularity of social media marketing and the influencer marketing, has emerged as the new strategies adopted by the organizations, which require alignment, authenticity and commercial impact to be assessed from strategic perspective. Across product sectors and services, it requires to be tested as a coherent framework, in order to understand whether, influencer marketing is a related to authenticity risks for the paid-endorsement, genuine advocacy and scripted promotions, which contributes in building the consumer trust or distrust. It also requires to understand the absence of standardized performance metrics and advertisement with online likes, shares and comments, which creates engagement by the end-users in relation to the influencer content. Additionally the research can focus on regional diversity, digital literacy platform preference end-user social demographics, to evaluate how the organizations navigate these complexities and the brand imperative balance with the influence of credibility which is measurable in the influenza driven campaign.

3.1 Research questions:

RQ1: What is the differential impact of influencer marketing on long-term brand metrics such as Brand Equity and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) compared to short-term engagement indicators like likes, clicks, and shares?

RQ2: How do organizational structures and internal controls influence the effectiveness of strategic risk mitigation in influencer marketing, particularly in reducing susceptibility to influencer fraud and enhancing content authenticity?

RQ3: How effective are influencer marketing campaigns in traditionally under-researched sectors such as technology and niche markets, and what insights can be drawn to inform cross-industry strategic deployment?

4. Methodology:

4.1 Research paradigm

The topic is complex and in order to generate a comprehensive and a better understanding about the strategic efficacy of influencer marketing the adoption of ‘sequential mixed method research’ design is ideal.

The research phenomenon adopts primary research method that adopts phase one which is qualitative where in depth interviews and/or focus group discussion with the marketing manager brand strategies advertising manager and influencer across sector is carried out. The agenda for collecting subjective interview qualitative data is to uncover the organizational imperatives risk perception and control mechanism in relation to how what when why where the influencer marketing is practiced and the firms are able to address authenticity risk, detect the influence of fraud, and align influencer strategy with their brand value. The thematic analysis of this subjective data helps to converge the practices in the environment and crystallise to understand the key dimensions using ‘exploratory research design’.

The Phase 2 is quantitative where large scale survey questionnaire administered online towards the end user helps to understand the influencer marketing practices and its consumption from customer lifetime value brand equity and campaign ROI perspective. This is a 360° approach and the statistical methods adopted would help to test the hypothesis in this ‘descriptive research design’, data collection. It will help the research study to add to the depth an address evidence based framework for marketing in the Indian digital ecosystem

4.2 Data types and collection methods:

Qualitative data is subjective in nature and the research instrument interviews conducted for the identified research respondent groups express their perception of opinion attitude about the research dimensions or research phenomenon. The data is collected through audio recording and transcribed into transcripts in Microsoft Word.

The quantitative data comprises of questions in a questionnaire that are multiple choice, closed ended, shared online with the respondent group, that captures specific descriptive of the demographic, variables in relation to the influencer marketing phenomenon.

4.3 Tools:

Research instrument – Interviews, open ended laddering type questions.

[explore organizational practices and metric preferences related to authenticity control and fraud prevention.]

Research instrument – Demographic and contextual closed ended laddering type questions.

[quantify relationships between campaign execution and commercial performance metrics.]

4.4 Sample size and sampling techniques

Qualitative- purposive sampling of interviews due to time constraint, availability of respondent (access  issues).

Quantitative- random sampling of survey respondents of end users opinion, perception captured through questionnaire.

4.5 Data analysis

4.5.1 Qualitative data analysis:

The interview subjective qualitative data will be analysed using ‘Braun and Clarke’s 6 step thematic analysis. It consists of the following steps – The first step is ‘familiarisation’, in which researcher examine the raw interview transcript data several times by reading, to become fully immersed in it. Creating initial codes and locating significant characteristics in the dataset constitute step two process for the research. Clustering these codes into more general patterns is the third step in the thematic research process. These patterns are honed for consistency and relevance in Step 4, which reviews the major and minor themes or topics. The substance of each topic will be expressed in step 5, which involves identifying and naming final themes. Lastly, Step 6 of creating the report incorporates topics into an engaging outcome that follows ‘inductive research approach’, general to specificity. Thematic analysis aimed at recognizing patterns in organizational control and the avoidance of strategic risks in IM.

4.5.2 Quantitative data analysis:

Quantify relationships between campaign execution and commercial performance metrics.

Campaign performance data from corporate partners, including sales, total campaign spending, and objective brand equity change measurements.

The findings from the qualitative data results and quantitative data results synthesis, allow the research to ‘triangulation’ and test the hypothesis research objectives linking the past academic research and address the gaps offering recommendations.

5. Expected outcomes

The research study is expected to point towards gaps that helped to build a strategic framework for organizations to optimize influence and marketing strategies helping them to build brand goals, with measurable commercial outcomes. The research will also contribute towards sector specific area and under researched industry or sectors like technology niche market and address how the perceived influencer marketing strategies impact to the end-users with costs industry benchmarking.

6. Limitations of the research study

The insights from interviews and capturing the subjective data based upon the respondent perception about the research phenomenon is personal opinion or maybe influenced by social desirability or even a selective recall of influencer marketing dimensions that severely impacts the research objectivity and its findings. Along with that the quantifying of metrics like brand equity customer lifetime value for the influencer marketing campaigns can involve assumptions approximate indicators which can reduce the precision calculation. Accessing the respondent is a constraint that can affect the sample size umm and as to how the campaign data and research phenomenon is analyzed from quality perspective.

References:

1. Bennett, N. (2024). B2B influencer marketing: work with creators to generate authentic and effective marketing. Kogan Page Publishers.
2. Dean Hund, E. (2019). The influencer industry: Constructing and commodifying authenticity on social media (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania).
3. Fauser, S., Schmäh, M., Chen, X., Michel, T., & Lee, S. (2023). Virtual influencer marketing and its impact on customer purchase behaviour. International journal of business and applied social science, 9(6), 29-36.
4. Glenister, G. (2021). Influencer Marketing Strategy: How to create successful influencer marketing. Kogan Page Publishers.
5. Guangul, S.M., 2024. Influencer marketing effectiveness: Metrics, risks, and best practices. Migration Letters, 21(S4), pp.472-481.
6. Hamdan, L., & Lee, S. H. (2022). Brand balance: the effect of influencer brand encroachment on interactivity. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 50(3), 303-316.
7. Markey, K. (2019). Online searching: A guide to finding quality information efficiently and effectively. Rowman & Littlefield.
8. Morillo-Garrido, A. P. (2024). ROI in the age of digital persuasion: An in-depth examination of profitability and key performance indicators in Influencer Marketing Strategies.
9. Moustakas, E., Lamba, N., Mahmoud, D., & Ranganathan, C. (2020, June). Blurring lines between fiction and reality: Perspectives of experts on marketing effectiveness of virtual influencers. In 2020 international conference on cyber security and protection of digital services (cyber security) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
10. Okonkwo, I., & Namkoisse, E. (2023). The role of influencer marketing in building authentic brand relationships online. Journal of Digital Marketing and Communication, 3(2), 81-90.
11. Orencia, A. J. (2023). Authenticity, relatability, and cultural influences in contemporary marketing strategies: A qualitative inquiry. Psychology and Education: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 15, 675-679.
12. Patel, R. (2024, November). Virtual and Human Influencers: Examining the Dimensions of Authenticity, Reliability, and Innovation in Consumer Perception. In Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction Design and Research (pp. 123-138). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
13. Pitafi, Z. R., & Awan, T. M. (2024). The rise of influencer culture: Marketing, monetization, and authenticity in the social sphere. In Social Media and Modern Society-How Social Media Are Changing the Way We Interact with the World Around. IntechOpen.
14. Scholz, J. (2021). How consumers consume social media influence. Journal of Advertising, 50(5), 510-527.
15. Vines, J., Wright, P. C., Silver, D., Winchcombe, M., & Olivier, P. (2015, February). Authenticity, relatability and collaborative approaches to sharing knowledge about assistive living technology. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (pp. 82-94).

 

“Readymade Synopsis available-The Strategic Efficacy of Influencer Marketing”

 

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