The Future of Online Influencers and Their Impact on Service Industries

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This report discusses the future of online influencers and their impact on service industries. It provides an overview of the service industry, information about online influencers, upcoming trends, and the impacts they have on service industries. The report highlights the positive effects of online influencers in building brand awareness, improving buying decisions, and strengthening relationships, as well as the negative impacts on companies.

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The future of online 'influencers'
and their impact on the service
industries

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ABSTRACT
Online influencer is the person who have devised credibility in particular industry as well
as persuades others for taking actions on the basis of recommendations. The popular influential
people on different internet websites that endorse products and services of brands are influencer
on online websites. Moreover, online influencers refers to people working in as well as
collaborating with specific industry. The present assessment is based on the topic that is “Future
of Online Influencers and their impacts on service industries”. The report highlights overview of
service industry, information about online influencers, upcoming trends of online influencers and
impacts that such influencers have on service industry.
Different industries separate kinds of influencers in numerous ways. Certain common
techniques are through follower numbers, level of influence and types of content. Service
industry is defined to any industry which produces values that are primarily intangible, for
example, advise, knowledge, experiences, customer and hence forth. Within the industry, online
influencers are categorised on the basis of customers or fan following that have trusted or loyal
base for promotions. While the concept of digital influencer in digital evolution is new, the
underlying drivers are concerned with fundamental human motives. In-House Influencer
Programs, emphasis towards micro influencers, organic influencer and rise of CGI Influencer are
certain possible expected future of online influencers in service industry. The online influencers
have direct impact on service industries. It helps the businesses in building brand awareness,
improving buying decisions of consumers with unbiased questions addition to strengthening
relationship that leads to increasing sales and reaching greater heights. Consumers trusts
recommendations provided by online influencers which impacts positively on brands of service
industries to build trusted relations and driving sales targets. However, it also impacts negatively
on the companies in wider manner.
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Table of Contents
ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................................
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................3
Overview of service industry.......................................................................................................3
Online Influencers........................................................................................................................3
Future on online influencers........................................................................................................3
Impact of online influencers on service industries......................................................................6
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11
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INTRODUCTION
Influencers are the people that have established relationships, credibility addition to trust
with their fans. The audience respects all types of their content and recommendation. With
increasing level of online consumption, industries' expenditure towards online promotional
activities is dynamically as well as constantly growing. Online influencers are characterised by
huge fan base of loyal together with dedicated social media followers. The concept of online
influencers is growing rapidly (Shen, Kuo and Minh Ly, 2017). Online influencers are the people
that impacts on buying decisions of others or relationship with audience. These are the aspects
which has acquired as well as developed a notability on Internet. Many time, online influencers
are also termed as instagrammers or social media influencer that performs role of encouraging
people towards trends in genres including technology, music, fashion, entertainment, beauty,
fashion and many more. Since online's content or information is easily digested, it entourages
wide number of peer to peer sharing that impacts on brand or industries to improve their target
population reach.
The beauty on online influencers is that it enhances brand awareness and generate new
leads of organisational sales funnel. They creates regular posts related to any topic on internet or
social media channels for generating large followings of engaged and enthusiastic population
that pays close attention towards the views (Ramos, 2017). The assessment focuses on impacts of
online influencers on service industry. Service industry refers to the sector of industry that
comprises provision of services to end consumers along with businesses. It produces values that
are primarily tangible, like management, design, customer service, data and experiences. It is a
kind of industry that do not produce any type of good rather emphasis towards production of
services. Online influences are changing entire landscape of service industries. The kind of
online influencers wonders to have lasting impacts on service industries as it devises an authentic
experiences of audiences.
Online influencers have long lasting impacts on service industries as these influencers are
the personalities or brands online which people trust. They sparks discussion as well as inspires
actions. Moreover, when brands go online, it seems like all are making huge efforts to sell
something to target audience. That is the main role of online influencers to engage the company
with target market in digital world. It also helps in building relationship with right kind of
influencers (Rodriguez, 2017). Furthermore, online influencer impacts service industries through
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assisting the companies to tap into digital world and engaging more deeply with people along
with online communities which stay relevant and keeps momentum going. Online influencers
have wide number of followers which trusts them blindly. The influencers motivates all the
service industries for taking actions on specific cause in which they believes in. Use of online
influencers to promote the business in service industries in best way to collect information about
clients and their needs. It is an approach which impacts on awareness of service industries in the
competitive market.
In the modern world, peer recommendations as well as work of mouth are major reliable
sources to customers for brands. The online influencers sway sentiments of online audience in
specific directions concerned with idea, person, brand and business. At same time, these
influencers also encourages their audience for having favourable attitude or behaviour towards
any trend or change. Nearby 74% of consumers of service industries rely on online influencers
for stimulating their buying decision (Boerman, 2020). For example, tourism industry is a part of
service industries in which online influencers impacts positively by creating heavy blog traffic
which amplifies communication. Moreover, influencers build effective networks for brands or
service industries. It is because their contacts engage in discussions together with conversations
on numerous subject that influencers post which leads to more brand building. Together with
increasing expenditures on online promotions, it is perceivers that influencers are carrying out
their activities to improve awareness and relationships with consumers in wider geographical
areas.
The assessment covers overview of service industry and online influencer. Further, it
includes discussion on future of online influencers and the impact they have on service industry.
Online or digital influencers are aware about latest or upcoming trends and tends to try al the
trends firstly so to discover new platforms in order to reach addition to engage wider audiences.
These days, marketers of service industry depends more on online influencers for building good
relations and strengthening advocacy as well as convincing target customer base to remain
connected with the brand (Magno and Cassia, 2018). Due to the trust of audiences, digital or
social media or online influencers are able to persuade their followers for making purchase of
services from the brand that is promoted by them. It is incredible way for reaching interested
consumers. It assist service industries to quickly build the brand online as well as raise awareness
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among its target population. A successful online or social media influencer required deep
understanding of target population and objectives of marketing.
MAIN BODY
Overview of service industry
Service industry is said to an economic segment which arranges and offers certain
intangible activity which meets specific needs of market (Lu and Seah, 2018). Entities operating
in the industry performs multiple tasks or activities which benefits their customers. The industry
comprises organisations which majorly earn revenues via providing intangible services. In
present era, service industry has achieved larger growth because of ongoing demand for human
intelligence. As per Gould, (2018), beauty, retail, fashion and apparel, technology, food and
beverage, travel and hospitality, fitness and many more are examples of service industry that
lend themselves more naturally for online influencing than others. Development in service
industry is outcome from larger promotions through online influencers.
Online Influencers
According to Hughes, Swaminathan and Brooks (2019), Online influencers are also
known as digital or social media influencers. These are the people who sway sentiments of
online audiences in specific direction related to business, idea or brand. For an influencer, it is
not possible to directly engage with multiple or innumerable potential customers. It is all
possible because of online influencers that plays important role in the dynamic marketplace. In
context to service industries, online influencers are the people who inspires actions and develop
symbiotic relationships with larger audiences in order to spread the messages.
As per Brooks (2014), online influencer is characterised as a person who is trustworthy
along with knowledgeable source on particular topic with extraordinary abilities for shaping
mindsets addition to decisions of others. The other characteristic of online influencer includes
desire for communicating effectively, ability to help interested parties, power of persuasion and
knack of good timings.
Future on online influencers
According to Barker (2020), Online influencers or social media influencers have
garnished huge interest in last couple of years. The number of people and platform have
enhanced by 1500% which states that the future of online influencers is ripe with multiple types
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of opportunities. In service industry, more number of brands are aware about benefits of online
influencer, they are able to make huge investment into it.
It is analysed that around 63% of marketers intends to improve their influence budget
each year. They are set to attain nearby $10 Million of service market by the end of 2020. Some
of the changes or future of online influencers that can be anticipates in future are as follows:
Focus towards micro influencers: Organisations in service industry have begun to
realise that sometimes little is more. It is seen that success of any online influencer do not solely
ride on multiple number of followers. There are many influencers which purchases fake
followers, so their rate of engagement is low (Duffy, 2020). However, micro influencers have
limited followers but these perform for maintaining personal bonds with target audiences. The
posts which online influencers posts achieves higher engagement. At same time, micro
influencers are reasonable prices that reflects that micro influencers have high chances to rule the
future of online influencers. In service industry, there are various brands which have adopted
online influencer concept for the purpose of promoting the company and generating awareness
about it in the competitive market. For example, The Dorchester is one brand of service industry
which have been using online influencer strategy for promoting the brand across the world. The
company has partnered with micro influencer for showcasing its services and merchandise on
worldly travel. The micro influencer shares its experience by uploading videos and photos of
staying in the hotel or enjoying its services that attracts larger audiences towards it.
Rise of CGI Influencer: Online influencer is buzzword which is used by 92% marketers
in service industries. From luxury brands to pop shops, almost all have desires to try their hands
on online influencers for promoting their offerings. CGI Influencer is future of online influencer
as these are created through computer generated imagery (Soares, Recuero and Zago, 2018). On
social media, CGI Influencer can be seen as posing at exotic places and will include the
programmers as well as designers that work for hours in order to create the scene from life of
influencers. There are various brands in service industries that have initiated collaborating with
such influencers to achieve great success of encouraging target audience and allow their
departments to control the way their services or commodities are advertised. It is believed that
online influencers will adopt CGI platform for creating their analogue avatars. Many
practitioners believes that the service industry will see digital models walk down on runway by
holograms as they dig path deeper into upcoming future.
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In-House Influencer programs: There are many brands which have realised
significance of collaborating with online influencers and now, they are looking towards new
ways for working with them. Similarly, companies have analyse that building long term relations
or associations with influencers is key for better decision making for future. That is the reason
that future of online influencer is in house influencer program that will focus more on building
and maintaining relationships with wider people in proper arrangement order. Moreover, the
arrangement will allow entities in the service industries to perform more closely with online
influencers (Xu and Pratt, 2018). For example, Macy is the company in service industries that
will have biggest in house influencer programs for its workforce. As part of the programs, the
style crew of the company will turn around 300 employees into own brand ambassador. In
future, online influencer will develop relations with organisational employees and gives rise to
incentives for making more money and come at workplace in more energized form. Furthermore,
In house influencers will bring sense of relatability addition to loyalty which online influencers
can not match. These are some of the characteristics which will shape future of online
influencers.
Organic influencers: At present, many people think that influencer is the person or
celebrity that are known for mass fan followings of channels of social media. Because of changes
in thinking of common people, it is expected that organic influencer is future of online
influencer. For service industries, marketers will promote the company without paid campaign
contract. This will give rise to organic influencers (Noonan, 2018). This helps in inviting wider
advocates into organic influencer community and doing this can lead to cultivating direct
connection with advocates as well as opening communication lines to assist them to tap on
organisational organic influencers. For example, Ritz London is a company in service industries
that uses content for promoting the brand. It cost the entity too much and to control the expenses,
it can adopt organic influencer that will generate along with gain rights to set of assets from
wider pool of authentic developers. Once an organisation will get permission for using content of
organic influencer, it have high chances to enhance its reach as well as impact of content through
introducing it in all of its promotional channels.
Whether the mentioned predictions come into existence or not, there are high chances
that the future of online influencer is ripe with multiple opportunities. Organisations in service
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industries are required to adapt to changing strategies as well as trends for staying relevant with
online influencers in coming couple of years (Wang, Huang and Davison, 2020).
Impact of online influencers on service industries
A service industry is called the tertiary sector of industries which provides services to
customers or businesses. Under this no product is produced rather services are offered which
produces value that is in intangible form to consumers (Goanta and Ranchordás, 2020). The
service industry may include hospitality, travel, consultancy, information technology, media,
entertainment, sports, etc.
Online influencers are the one who has developed and acquired the fame through internet.
They are the internet celebrities that has a power to influence the public. They are recruited by
the companies for influencer marketing so that the service is reached to large audience in short
span of time (Ronzio, 2017). These online influencers impact the service industry in many ways
which can be negative and positive.
The positive impact of online influencers on service industry are-
The internet has become an integral part of today's audience. The businesses use this
platform to take their brand to new audiences. The service industry uses these online
influencers for creating brand awareness as they are more accessible and effective for
achieving their organisational goals. The business can use them through sponsorship
where they can use influencers to endorse the brand and service.
As per Bailis (2020) the online influencers help the service industry in reaching new
audience which results in generating more sales as they can indulge in word of mouth
conversation about the service with their fans.
The hospitality industry can use the influencer marketing as a marketing tactic to gain
popularity and loyal customers. The online influencers offers the hotel to work in their
digital marketing team so as to modify their brand quality in the large social media world
by regularly posting about hotel services, staff, etc.
The communication with the audience through an authentic message generates trust and
allows a relationship to grow as people tend to trust the word of mouth message more
than the actual advertising which help businesses to create online referrals easily to which
people are easily influenced rather than through normal marketing (Wiedmann and von
Mettenheim, 2019).
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The traditional methods of promotions are not suitably executed for service industry
because it cannot promote its offered service in true sense through TV commercials or
radio. So online marketing helps in explaining the real experiences of influencers which
impact the audience more than the traditional marketing technique.
In case of tourism industry, the online vacation feedbacks acts as recommendation from
family and friends to plan a holiday and boost confidence of travellers in making decision
so that the tourism industry is given a spark (Goanta and Ranchordás, 2020).
In case of restaurants, people tend to trust the review of online influencers and does not
rely on websites reviews because they believe in online influencer's words more than
other person's review.
In many cases, the States appoint a brand ambassador who is a popular online influencer
to promote their tourism through video messages so that more and more tourists are
attracted to their place (Garbin Praničević, 2020). They also allow film and television
shooting of famous shows so that their tourism is highlighted and people can follow their
footprints to visit the place.
In hospitality industry, the hoteliers have started to save money on photographers as they
focus on offering the online influencers to create a short videos of hotel for their website.
This is a cost effective practice used by most of the hoteliers nowadays.
There are many goals set by the businesses for influencer marketing-
The foremost goal is to build brand awareness about the service being offered to large
audience. To drive sales to generate higher profits (de Aquino Carlsson, 2018).
Negative impact-
Apart from the positive, there are also many negative impact of online influencers on
service industry which make it difficult for them to run smoothly. Some of them are-
Sometimes the online influencers contact a hotel and ask for free or discounted stay in
exchange of a message or post on online platform regarding hotel and its amenities. This
may result in loss of return if the influencer does not take its post to large audience.
Online influencer can be costly for the service industry as the online influencer may
charge high amount for promoting the business or even ask for free services which can
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result in loss for the industry because service sector involves more cost than others sector
if it involves luxury services (Baker and Rojek, 2020).
There are many fraud influencers in the market which do not have real fan following
either because it shows fake likes and followers or a fake account which can result in loss
of fund for the business.
If the content for online influencer marketing not properly planned, aligned or executed,
then the company may continue to struggle in this channel due to lack of planning and
execution and rely only on traditional methods of advertising rather than digital or online
marketing.
The most effective way of involving the online influencer into the marketing of business
of hotel or travel is to create a safe, trusted and relevant data of influencers so that there is
no engagement of fraud influencers into the business and it will help business from losing
any fund on fake online influencer (Faulconbridge, 2020).
In this digital era, every day a new influencer is created by the audience and it can result
in confusion for the businesses as to whom it should hire for marketing their services.
There are many negative factors that affect the campaign of online influencer, some of them are-
When the company does not evaluate the target audience of influencer before hiring.
When it selects the wrong influencer who does not believe in the services offered by the
industry or is not aligned with the brand.
When the terms and conditions of agreement is vague and not clear.
When the company offers a rigid script to the influencer to which s/he feels damped in
front of their fans (Oliveira, Barbosa and Sousa, 2020).
The main threat in online influencer marketing is identity theft and scams which are
taking place in large number but an effective security solution can help in minimising it
for customer convenience.
CONCLUSION
From the assessment, it has been concluded that influencer is someone that comprises
power to impact buying decision because of unique characteristics and qualities. When a person
have ability, knowledge, passion, authenticity, brand persona fit and so on then they can
stimulate others for making particular decision about specific action. Online influencer is also
termed as social media or digital influencer is the user that have established credibility for
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persuading audiences for performing activities as per their recommendations. An online
influencer simplify capitalise on niche so to achieve wider credibility. The future of online
influencer is very wide. Some of them includes focus towards micro influencers, rise of CGI
Influencer, In-House Influencer programs and organic influencers. In industries, companies
prefers online influencers as it assist in creating trends addition to encourage their followers or
audience to make purchase of the products that are promoted by them.
The number of social media influencers are increasing day by day and enhances
recognition of product, service, idea and company. Moreover, online influence impacts
positively and negatively on service industries. The influence helps the service industry to
achieve access to new customers which results in enhancement of sales that is positive impact on
the industry. Furthermore, key impact of online influencer on the industry is that it creates solid
understanding of the channel or platform that is used by the company and builds brand
awareness, strengthen customer relationships, improve purchase decision with unbiased
questions and many more. As such, digital influencers is powerful mechanisms for
communicating with potential consumer as well as enhancing acquisition rate of target
population. However, online influencers have high chances to mislead target market because of
which a decline promotional outcomes are obtained that negatively impacts of service industries.
There are several things which needed to be avoided by such influencers, but, due to lack of
knowledge about them, brands faces wastage of time on unnecessary activities. When it is related
to connecting brand advocates, it is important for digital influencers to connect with wider
number of bloggers so to gain better reach despite of targeting only few top influencers of online
platforms.
Online influencers are much needed for brands to look for improvements in their image,
revive sales together with gaining visibility. Whatever is said by the online influencers about the
organisation impacts widely on the ways the company is perceived in the industrial circle along
with within fans. By emphasising towards power of influencing strategies, it is important for
service industries to understand that roping influencers for promoting the offerings ensures better
aspects to gain success. Online influencers are not restricted towards simplifying popular
networking sites along with straight-away promoting brands. Presently, businesses are paying
close attention for engaging with online influencers with huge patience and enthusiasm as the
industry is expert and have wide reach globally. Moreover, service industries believes that using
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online influencer is effective tactic to maximise investment values on various digital platforms.
Influencers have uncountable group of followers along with fans that immensely values that is
said and recommended in the content of different platforms.
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REFERENCES
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usage of persuasive speech acts.
Duffy, B. E., 2020. Social Media Influencers. The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media,
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Faulconbridge, J., 2020. ‘Business Code/Spaces’ in Digital Service Firms: The Case of Online
Multinational Fashion Retailing. Digital Service Firms: The Case of Online
Multinational Fashion Retailing (May 10, 2020). Geoforum.
Garbin Praničević, D., 2020. Impact of Influencers to the Selection of Certain Products and
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Conference, Virtual Conference, 10-12 September 2020 (Vol. 6, pp. 422-429). Zagreb:
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Goanta, C. and Ranchordás, S. eds., 2020. The Regulation of Social Media Influencers. Edward
Elgar Publishing.
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