The impact of social media influencers on brand performance

Abstract

The constant growth of Social Networked Media (SNM) is challenging for brands, which need to keep up with their development and stay relevant for users. Social Media Influencers (SMIs), people with high opinion leadership, influencing the attitudes and opinions of many users in social media, are hence becoming a major tool for marketers. This dissertation analyses the impact of SMIs on brand performance, focusing on their potential contribution to audience growth and engagement in branded pages of Social Networked Sites (SNSs). To this end, quantitative secondary data from two SMI campaigns of two German airlines, the low-cost airline Eurowings Aviation GmbH and Deutsche Lufthansa AG, the parent corporation of Eurowings, were collected and analysed. Results uncovered a short-term audience growth due to the SMI activities for both brands, Eurowings and Lufthansa, but only the parent brand Lufthansa could keep the new audience over a longer period. For Eurowings, existing users are on average more active on the brand’s Facebook page than new users are, while for Lufthansa the results were reversed. Therefore, there seems to be little impact of SMI campaigns, short- or long-term, on the engagement of existing users with a branded Facebook page. This dissertation contributes to the planning of the digital marketing activities involving SMIs by informing about the positive drivers and outcomes of their activities for brands wishing to improve their social media performance.

Date of Award	21 Jul 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Isabel de Almeida Costa (Supervisor)