Os líderes de opinião digitais na comunicação de acessórios de joalharia e relojoaria no Instagram

Abstract

Digital advances have made it possible for new opinion leaders to emerge, who are increasingly present on social networks and who can influence the way users think and act. As such, the present dissertation focuses on the impact of these influential figures on their followers, when communicating jewellery and watch brands on Instagram, to gauge the effectiveness of this strategy in the face of all the players in this process (brand, influencers and followers). For greater rigor and greater validity of the study, more specific objectives were defined to help the understanding of the theme, namely in terms of the impact on brand equity, with an assessment using three levels of persuasion (cognitive, perception and action) and also a verification of the measurement of influence according to three categories of influencers. The methodological path is based on data collection techniques such as structured and semi-structured interviews with four representatives of brands in the sector in question and also with three digital influencers, as well as questionnaire surveys to users of the Instagram social network and followers of influencers on this platform. The analysis and treatment of the data referring to the interviews focused on thematic analysis and as for the questionnaire surveys, it was undertaken by descriptive statistics. Although the literature referring to this area is extensive, due to the importance of exploring themes that are increasingly current and present in our daily lives, there are few studies that use the interpretation of the facts by all the elements that make up this issue, as well as a number that presents the evaluation of this strategy by companies. The data obtained demonstrated that the study brands clearly benefit from this strategy and it reinforces several favorable aspects highly valued in the set of digital marketing techniques to be adopted; as for the influencers, they revealed that they receive feedback from their followers and show the positive role they have in their way of thinking and acting in relation to certain fashion accessories (and not only); and with regard to users / followers, there was a higher impact at the cognitive and perceptual level, and not so much in terms of direct action, however the number of followers of the influencer did not seem to be so important to the point of influencing or affecting them measuring your credibility.

Date of Award	23 Feb 2021
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Patrícia Dias (Supervisor)