The impact of credibility of influencers recommendations on social media on consumers behavior towards brands

Abstract

Companies are becoming increasingly aware of the importance and opportunities provided by social media in order to communicate faster and more efficiently with their consumers. In order to convey the message about the value of their brands to their target market, organizations hire influential people who are considered to be the creators of public opinion in a virtual environ-ment. Nowadays, social media are crowded with micro and macro influencers, or at least those who present themselves as such. Their main job is to represent and recommend brands to other users (their followers) and thus influence con-sumer attitudes about brands and possibly strengthen their purchasing decisions. Very of-ten, influencers on social media are hired by companies to promote their brands for a fee. In order to have more control over their communi-cation activities, companies provide them, in ad-vance, with the content they want to be conveyed to consumers, but also the time frame when the message should be launched. In this way, organ-izations try to reduce the risk of turning elec-tronic word-of-mouth (EWOM) communication into a negative one. In order for consumers to trust the recommendations of influencers on social media, these people need to have signifi-cant expertise in a certain area, charisma and re-spect from other users, so that their credibility af-fects the value of content and recommendations they place in the online environment. The aim of this paper is to present the attitudes of respond-ents who use social media websites about the im-pact of the credibility of influencers' recommen-dations on social media, and their opinion on whether and in what way their credibility influ-ences consumer attitudes towards brands.