Impact of Social Media Influencers on Social Brand Communication for Kenyan Tech Brands on Instagram

Abstract

Kenya has recently witnessed a thriving digital culture with social media emerging as a destination for brands to leverage engagement with consumers through the use of social media influencers (SMIs). This study which focused on Instagram as the main platform aimed at investigating the role of SMIs, the attributes that make SMIs increasingly influential thus assumed to have an impact on brand communication and whether there exists a relationship between SMIs and brand communication. The study was guided by the social network theory to explain the concept behind social media as a network backed up by the attribution theory to understand how social brand users attribute their behaviors to influencers view. Data was collected from 304 respondents by use of an online questionnaire designed using Google Forms and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical procedures. Findings of this study revealed that 81% of the respondents’ decision to interact or engage with the brands under study was not only affected by SMIs and their attributes but their follower count. The main attributes of SMIs that were found to have contributed to the influential potential of SMIs thus affecting the decisions of brand users were; trust (47%), authenticity (52%), persuasive power (45%), expertise (38%), and knowledge (45%). A one way ANOVA test conducted shows that there was a statistically significant relationship between the independent variables (trust and persuasion) and the dependent variable (brand communication). The Pearson correlation model adopted revealed a statistically significant correlation between follower count and knowledge capacity of an SMI hence an increase or decrease in either follower count or knowledge capacity significantly related to an increase or decrease in a brand user’s decision to recognize, interact and engage with a brand. Safaricom was identified as the most followed brand with 183, 000 followers which supports statistics from Social Baker that rank it as the most influential brand and confirms literature as well from the study that revealed it as the brand that has used SMIs the most in 2017 and 2018. A mean comparison revealed that all attributes were equally important and in the quest to create content that will at the end of the day engage social brand users, Kenyan brands should consider all of the above attributes when looking for suitable influencers to interpret brand messages to brand users. However, policies that address oversight of influencer posts need to be set up to curb issues of fictitious influencer posts that may defame organizations. This study therefore presented the potential for help to other corporate brands hoping to use SMIs for brand communication in the future. One limitation of this study, however, was the high number of ‘I don’t know’ responses that were recorded when analyzing data thus presenting the use of SMIs by brands for brand communication as a possible area for future research.