Understanding Customers and the Impact of Influencers in the 21st Century

This essay explores the impact of influencers on customer behavior and brand awareness in the 21st century. It covers influencer marketing, product selection, and the future of influencers. Two travel influencers are analyzed in terms of their product selection and brand collaborations. The conclusion highlights the growing importance of influencers for brands and niche markets.

Understanding Customers

Contents
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Analysis of product selection and brands of influencer one........................................................2
Analysation of influencer two on the basis of product selection and brands..............................3
The future of influencers.............................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
A customer is a business or an individual that purchases goods and services from another
company's or organisation. Customers purchases the products according to their demand, taste
and preferences (Shin and Lee, 2021). Demand of an individual includes a need which satisfy
and motivates them to purchase services or product of an individual brand. A customer is the
main key towards achieving the success or companies goal, as they drive revenues by selling
more number of their goods and services to them. Without consumers, organisations cannot exist
for a long period of time. The purpose of this essay is to identifies the impact on consumers of
influencers in 21th century. Travelling and tourism is based on money and there is no income
without consumers (Asan, 2022). People will prefer services and products which are more
durable and fulfil their needs.
The present essay discussed about the areas of influencer marketing, influencers and how
they analyse the product selection and brands, along with this it includes future of influencers
and conclusion.
MAIN BODY
Areas of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is mainly a form of online marketing. In this, influencers do
marketing of different products and services. By sharing their experience or giving awareness
about the goods and services by telling their views to their readers, listener and followers
(Sweeney, Lawlor and Brady, 2022). It is the hybrid of new and old marketing tools. Influencers
can attract huge amount of customers so, brands collaborate with them to market their products
and services to massive number of people.
This will increase their sale and profitability. Influencing marketing includes social media
takeover, affiliate marketing, guest blogging, gifts and reviews and sponsored social media blog
post and content (Sundermann and Raabe, 2019). This type of marketing helps giant brands to
attract more number of customers and small companies to expand their business by getting more
visibility, which gives them higher return on investment as compared to other channels of
marketing. Objective of influencer marketing is to increase brand awareness of companies all
over the world to increase sales. Because large number of people are the followers of influencers.
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They can take decisions to purchase products and services according to their taste and
preferences (Srivastava, 2021). For example, traveller influencers are the internet or social media
celebrities which make content usually by sharing their experiences about tourism, travel and
culture. They influence their fans by giving them trusted source of knowledge like their
experiences, perception of places which affects the travel decision of readers and changes the
way of thinking of people about the world.
These influencers collaborate with different companies like airlines, travel agencies to
promote their services, brand and products with some reward, for example, free travel in return.
Their source of income is affiliate likes and brand co-operations and for most of the influencers
working on Instagram earn money from sponsorships (Shan, Chen and Lin, 2020). Half of the
marketers spent their budget on influencer posts to attract huge number of customers.
Analysis of product selection and brands of influencer one
Monica is a British travel blogger, influencer and founder of the travel hack, who lives in
North Wales along with her family. Influencer started her journey of travel blogging in 2009
while travelling around Asia and inspired when Monica hitch-hiked around Jamaica at the age of
19. Monica is now full time writer from London and writes about making lifestyle careers which
means working for living, not living for work. Monica influence their fans and followers by
sharing her experience of travelling and provide them travel hacks like travelling with kids, so
that people can find best deals on small budgets. Influencer posts various posts which helps their
followers and fans to travel in style and enjoy some luxuries while travelling with small budget.
Monica is a freelance social media specialist.
Influencer works on social media campaigns, strategy and management and works with
both emerging and established brands to enhance the online presence of the companies and helps
to increase their audience. So that more customers purchase their products and services which
directly increases their profits and sales (Leite and de Paula Baptista, 2021). Monica offers step
by step strategy, training programmes and full management of the social media channels,
accounts and sites to organisations.
This helps companies in giving awareness of their brand to giant number of customers and
attract them to purchase or use their product and services (Dinh and Lee, 2021). Monica analyse
what the brand wants to achieve, understand their need and helps them in marketing their
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products and services to their customers. Influencer collaborate with many companies to market
their product which includes Cedar Tree, Jury Inn, etc.
Analyses of influencer two on the basis of product selection and brands.
Vicky Philpott is a festival along with travel influencer who visits amazing destinations
through planning adventures (Bartels and Terstiege, 2020). The destination travel guides of
Vicky are stated as same as what is performed by the influencer in a place. Vicky was an
adventurer, travel writer and creator of vikyflipfloptravel.com.
The influencer is a trained journalist, been to numerous countries, and had a great
experience with some renounced travel brands across the globe. Passion for travelling started
from working at summer camp in USA for a university summer. According to the influencer,
travel offers you the opportunity to explore which the world gives, meet new people who have
different experiences to share (Burton, Mosteller and Hale, 2020). Vicky Philpott believes in
charity, to somehow save the world, decided to inspire right person to let them come out of their
comfort zones and see the beautiful world outside. They will be the ones to save world and for
which influencer is indirectly responsible.
Vicky started writing travel blogs in 2012 for a hostel booking company and realised that
how huge travel blogging has turned into. With a full time job the influencer manage to travel at
many beautiful places and stay in those cities which was not affordable (Braunstein-Minkove,
J.R., 2021). Usually, focuses on the festivals across the globe and recognised as the UK's first
festival blogger. The influencer has been to 22 countries for 59 different festivals and planning to
tap more new cities this year. Furthermore, uploads a lot of pictures on social media for
influencing people to at least visit that place for once, it can be the best experience one can get
(Held, 2021). Moreover, tries to put content which are different, crazy and helpful to people who
really wish to visit that specific place.
The future of influencers
The influencer marketing industry will be a big rise in the need for small influencers
(Jahnke, 2018). It is already a big very huge platform to become popular in the industry and
definitely will grow a lot. The future of influencers focuses on to explore the role of modern
technologies in showcasing tourism destinations and how it affects the potential visitors.
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Collaborations with influencers will be more preferred and they will become more
specialized (McMullan, Laurell and Pitt, 2021). For a broad reach to the customers, paid
advertising will be a key to it as everyone will be aware of the trend and will definitely think to
adapt it. The video content will increase and get more preference to the trends going on so as to
survive in today's world. Every year there is a new social media platform, new contents and new
ways brands can connect with their potential customers. Shopping live will become an important
part of campaigns of influencers.
Deals on the basis of performance will increase and instead of one- off projects brands will
go for ongoing partnerships (Morejon, 2019). Travel influencers can influence their targeted
audiences to go from the stage of thinking to executing it. They make sure to the audience that it
will be a safe and best travel one can experience also ensure that the guests are comfortable in
the things going on. These influencers make a professional environment when any interactive or
engagement content is created, that results not only in the awareness and good experience but
also engaging with them.
Marketing agencies and brands notice that collaborating or making good connections with
influencers will be very helpful for them in marketing (Nirschl and Steinberg, 2018). So they
find new ways to work with them for a long period. CGI influencer are growing more in this
industry as they are social media influencers who are made with computer- generated imagery
and artificial intelligence.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that in the near future, influencers will be in
a great demand for brands and niche markets who are planning to grow their business. Influencer
marketing is a form of online marketing where they share experiences to showcase in front of
customers to increase the brand awareness of that particular brand. It can be seen that people are
finding new techniques to make working relations with influencers for long term basis. Nano
influencers are also getting a chance to grow as people who cannot afford can contact them to
make awareness of their brands on a small level. From the above information, both the
influencers believe that travelling can change one’s perspective of thinking or decision making.
Exploring different cities, coming out of comfort zones and getting connected with different
people can make a person to change themselves in a good way.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Bartels, L. and Terstiege, M., 2020. Influencer-Marketing–Digitale Einflussnahme auf
Zielgruppen. In Digitales Marketing–Erfolgsmodelle aus der Praxis (pp. 61-78). Springer
Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Burton, J. L., Mosteller, J. R. and Hale, K. E., 2020. Using linguistics to inform influencer
marketing in services. Journal of Services Marketing.
Held, F., 2021. Influencer Marketing ist nicht nur Instagram. In Influencer Marketing (pp. 75-
93). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Braunstein-Minkove, J. R., 2021. Influencer marketing. In Encyclopedia of Sport
Management (pp. 248-250). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Jahnke, M., 2018. Ist Influencer-Marketing wirklich neu?. In Influencer Marketing (pp. 1-13).
Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
McMullan, K., Laurell, C. and Pitt, L., 2021. Managing the tensions in marketer influencer
relationships. Business Horizons.
Morejon, L., 2019. Influence Matters-An Overview of Influencer Marketing, Why it's Important,
and How to Succeed.
Nirschl, M. and Steinberg, L., 2018. Einstieg in das Influencer Marketing. Springer Fachmedien
Wiesbaden.
Asan, K., 2022. Measuring the impacts of travel influencers on bicycle travellers. Current Issues
in Tourism. 25(6). pp.978-994.
Dinh, T. C. T. and Lee, Y., 2021. “I want to be as trendy as influencers”–how “fear of missing
out” leads to buying intention for products endorsed by social media
influencers. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.
Leite, F. P. and de Paula Baptista, P., 2021. Influencers' intimate self-disclosure and its impact
on consumers' self-brand connections: scale development, validation, and
application. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.
Shan, Y., Chen, K. J. and Lin, J. S., 2020. When social media influencers endorse brands: The
effects of self-influencer congruence, parasocial identification, and perceived endorser
motive. International Journal of Advertising. 39(5). pp.590-610.
Shin, E. and Lee, J. E., 2021. What makes consumers purchase apparel products through social
shopping services that social media fashion influencers have worn?. Journal of Business
Research. 132. pp.416-428.
Srivastava, M., 2021. Mapping the influence of influencer marketing: a bibliometric
analysis. Marketing Intelligence & Planning.
Sundermann, G. and Raabe, T., 2019. Strategic communication through social media influencers:
Current state of research and desiderata. International Journal of Strategic
Communication. 13(4). pp.278-300.
Sweeney, E., Lawlor, M. A. and Brady, M., 2022. Teenagers’ moral advertising literacy in an
influencer marketing context. International Journal of Advertising. 41(1). pp.54-77.
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