Consumer Perceptions of Influencer Marketing: Business Insights and Leadership from the Retail Sector

As the digital era evolves, businesses and organisations cannot help but notice its potential and risks. Influencer marketing provides brands with the unique ability to speak to their target audience meaningfully by utilising influencers' understanding of their followers’ preferences to create relevant content and shape consumer decision-making. Therefore, this study analysed consumers' perceptions of influencer marketing in the retail sector. A quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional study was adopted to gauge customers’ perceptions of influencer marketing. A simple random sample of 150 respondents from Kwazulu-Natal was utilised. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics using SPSS. The findings of this study show that customers’ decision-making is highly influenced by the influencer’s attractiveness, expertise, trustworthiness, personal connection, and homophily. Therefore, businesses and brands ought to invest in the influencer selection process by carrying out qualitative or quantitative surveys of the target market or outsourcing the services of an influencer marketing agency. The emphasis should be on identifying influencers that are value-aligned to the brand and who can influence support for the patronage of the brand’s products and sustainable customer loyalty. This study has contributed to the literature on influencer marketing in the developing world, specifically regarding South Africa. Furthermore, the study has implications for policy and management such that it can be used as a tool for benchmarking and altering policies and procedures, as well as facilitating the development of strategies that enhance consumer buying intentions.