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Title of Project: Imitation of Social Media Influencers (SMIs) among youths in Singapore

Keywords:

Social Media Influencers (SMIs), Micro-celebrity, Self-branding, Self-marketing, Social

Media, Social Media Marketing and Advertising, Influence

Introduction:

The social media and digital environment, enabled by mobile devices, have impacted how

we communicate, consume, learn, live, work and play. According to Tan (2017), internet

penetration has reached half of the world’s population. Globally, social media usage

increased by 21% and social media usage on-the-go increased by 30% (Tan, 2017).

The Asian culture in general is said to be collective when compared with the Western

culture hence, it is expected that social influences play an important role in the

establishment of social media consumption values. Cultural and language differences have

created a diverse social media climate with unique localized or regional usage and

consumption patterns (King, 2010). The global web index survey (as cited in Singh, Lehnert

& Bostick, 2012, p.684) found that Asia is now the leading region relating to consumer

publishing and sharing information online and attributes it to Asians’ willingness to share

information and openness to online brand involvement. According to recent estimates (as

cited in Singh, Lehnert & Bostick, 2012, p.684), China dominates the blogosphere globally,

with 162 million Chinese SMIs. According to Walsh (2008), blogging in China is not just a

hobby for opinion leaders but a form of collective behaviour trait that emphasizes the

imbedded cultural need for togetherness in Chinese society.

Generation Y or millennials and Generation Z, the succeeding generation, are the two

generations most exposed to social media and digital technologies and hence, social

influences of social media marketing and advertising. According to Chitty, et al. (2017),

Generation Y or millennials form the first generation of the digital natives who have been

inducted socially and connected digitally since their births. According to GlobalWebIndex

(2014), based on social media platforms which includes Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube,

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Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn and Facebook, 54% to 71% of active social media users

worldwide as of third quarter of 2014 are aged between 16 to 34.

SMIs and social media marketing represent the current social media and digital

technological marketing landscape as the former are engaged by brands and marketers to

market their products to their large following of audiences (Benedic & Granjon, 2017).

There has been little research on youths’ perception of SMIs and the latter’s interplay with

self-branding, facilitated by social media advertising and marketing. Hence, this study seeks

to address this gap in the literature. With the prevalence of social media marketing and

advertising through the SMIs and the high exposure and, youths’ predisposition to social

media and digital technology, this study seeks to determine the efficacy of the efficacy of

SMIs on impressionable Singaporean youths between the ages of 15 to 35. Particularly, their

responses to marketing communications as well as social influences of SMIs on their

perception and imitation of SMIs.

Specifically, the following research questions are presented to guide the study.

(1) How do Singaporean youths perceive social influences of SMIs, facilitated by social

media marketing and advertising?

(2) How are responses to levels of social influence and social media marketing and

advertising determining the imitation of of SMIs?

Literature Review

Singapore

Singaporeans rank third worldwide in consumption of social media (Loh, 2017). In

Singapore, more than three in four Singaporeans now use social media. (Tan, 2017). The

“Digital in 2017 Report” (as cited in Tan, 2017), a report on social media and digital trends

around the world, showed that 70% of Singaporeans are active social media users on-the-

go. Singapore youths are defined to be between the ages of 15 to 35 (Ministry of Culture,

Community and Youth, n.d.). This age bracket includes both the Generation Y or millennials,

and Generation Z.

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In Singapore, 97.2% of youths between 15 to 24 years old and 99.4% of youths between 25

to 34 years old use social networking services (SNSs) (Info-communications Media

Development Authority (Singapore), 2018). From the same report, youths between 15 to 24

years old spend an average of 7.3 hours on SNSs and 25 to 34 years old spend an average of

4.3 hours on SNSs. These figures surpass regional average of less than 3 hours per visitor

and youths belonging in the lower bracket surpass global average of 5.7 hours per visitor.

Social media advertising and marketing

With the growth and prevalence of SNSs, the marketing industry needs to manage the

increase in consumerism via social media (Chatzigeorgiou, 2017). Brand-related interactions

and exposure to marketing campaigns increasingly take place within social media. This new

marketing communication reality presents new challenges and opportunities for companies

as purchase decisions are increasingly influenced by social media interactions (Dennhardt,

2012). Pete Spande, senior vice president of Federated Media (as cited in Corcoran, 2010,

p.1) state that brands need to engage consumers in conversations and be more engaging as

the advertising platform becomes more social and media vehicles such as blogs are ideal

facilitators for these dialogic conversations. The Social Media Report revealed that social

media consumption has strong influence on consumer behaviour, both online and offline

(Casey, 2017).

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has emerged with the prevalence of social media and digital

technologies facilitated by mobile devices and, consumerism becoming increasingly social.

Traditional word-of-mouth (WOM) has turned into electronic WOM and succeeded by

influencer marketing (Chatzigeorgiou 2017). According to Woods (as cited in Chatzigeorgiou,

2017, p.26), recent studies revealed that consumers tend to believe recommendations from

peers above other forms of advertising and according to Kirkpatrick (as cited in

Chatzigeorgiou, 2017, p.26), it is proven to effect more return on investment than other

forms of advertising.

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Influencer marketing facilitates dialogic conversations where people-to-people driven

information is becoming an important way to create personal outreach, individual unique

selling point, establish credibility and engage with prospects in enduring relationships that

can be turned into commercially viable new business (Vitberg, 2010). Influencer marketing

is a strain of marketing where advertising is facilitated by influential individuals with a large

following (Chatzigeorgiou, 2017). According to Chatzigeorgiou (2017), social media

facilitates the building of an audience and following, to anyone capable of influencing them.

SMI marketing is an opportunity identified by Info-communications Media Development

Authority (Singapore), (2018) to gain social capital by engaging SMIs as an expansion beyond

the organisation.

SMIs

Social Media Influencers (SMIs) represents an independent actor who shape consumers’

attitudes and behaviours through the use of social media and digital technologies (Freberg,

Graham, McGaughey, & Freberg, 2011). Opinion leaders are traditionally defined as

individuals who were able to influence the attitudes, behaviours, beliefs, motivations and

opinions of others (Burt, 1999). In the social media sphere, opinion leaders are synonymous

with SMIs (García, Daly, & Sánchez-Cabezudo, 2016). By the definition of the

aforementioned, this also includes mainstream artistes and celebrities, media personalities,

politicians and ‘micro-celebrities’, who can boast substantial comments, fan base, followers,

likes, retweets, shares on social media channels.

SMIs enjoy a popularity which provides credibility and market value on the content they

create on the SNSs and thus, with this online social influence becomes a social currency

which marketers can harvest for social media marketing and advertising, or the SMIs can

glean for their own profits (Info-communications Media Development Authority

(Singapore), 2018). According to the same report as consumers expand their online

presence, specific individuals stand out and gain a large following, in particular domains

which they are most vested in.

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‘Micro-celebrity’ can be inferred to as a mental construct in which the ‘celebrity’ refers to

the viewers as fans and he continuously engages with them to sustain his popularity index

by strategically curating how this image is presented to others (Marwick & Boyd, 2011).

Micro-celebrity is defined as the orchestrated and strategic cultivation of an audience

facilitated by social media with the aim of attaining a celebrity status (Khamis, Ang, &

Welling, 2016).

Self-branding & self-marketing

Self-branding and self-marketing underpins influencer marketing. The same branding and

marketing principles originally developed for commercial products and services are applied

to individuals in the era of self-branding and self-marketing (Shepherd, 2005). The inventor

of personal branding, Tom Peters (1997), claims that everyone has a personal brand.

Individuals are brands and the creation and, self-marketing of this brand can lead individuals

to success (Peters, 1997). Self-marketing comprises of a myriad of marketing activities or

practices adopted by individuals to gain recognition in the marketplace (Shepherd, 2005).

Personal branding can differentiate an individual in an increasingly cluttered and noisy

marketplace (Shepherd, 2005).

The prevalence of social media and today’s consumerist economy mental construct have

contributed to the popularity of self-branding (Khamis et al., 2016). Their study showed that

self-branding plays an important role in the development of ordinary commoners into

commercially profitable SMIs especially in the era of prevalent social media use where

barrier to entry is low and potential outreach is exceedingly high. Twitter demonstrates how

this mental construct is practiced in this social media and digital age (Marwick & Boyd,

2011). However, the study focuses on the analysis of selected mainstream celebrities on

Twitter who have already achieved fame and commercial success. Marwick and Boyd (2011)

posited that practitioners of ‘micro-celebrity’ rarely achieve financial success. However,

Khamis et al. (2016) showed that two of Australia’s most famous food SMIs, Jess Anscough

and Belle Gibson, demonstrated their transformation from ordinary commoners to

commercially profitable SMIs by practicing self-branding and ‘micro-celebrity’. Although the

SMIs were ordinary people, Khamis et al. (2016) claims that their primary goals were fame

and media exposure. Hence, in assessing the appropriateness of the shortlisted SMIs in our

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research would have to be concerned with ordinary commoners who did not set out to seek

fame and media exposure but were accidental social media icons.

Hence, we put forth the first of the three main motivations for the imitation of SMIs:

(1) The commercial profitability of SMIs is a result of successful self-branding and self-

marketing.

Opinion Leaders

SMIs were perceived as articulate, collected, dynamic, intellectual and efficient go-getters

who were trusted for advice and their reliability (Freberg, Graham, McGaughey, & Freberg,

Who are the social media influencers? A study of public perceptions of personality, 2011).

The study chose four target SMIs who were of high-ranking executive backgrounds that

were introduced to a sample size of only 32 university students. It is argued that neither the

selection of the SMIs nor the sample size are representative of the public population and

thus the findings cannot be generalized to global audiences. This is due to differences in

familiarity with social media and digital technologies, age, geographical and cultural

demographics.

However, the findings were corroborated in a research article by La Ferle & Chan (2008). A

survey was conducted among 190 students aged between 13 to 18 by means of a structured

questionnaire. It was found that young people may intend to copy the role models that are

featured in the advertising media in terms of their fashion style and their purchases. Martin

& Bush (2000) and Chan et al. (2013) confirm these findings. However, the researches

focused on adolescents between 13 to 18 in China and USA.

With increasing use of social media and digital technologies to engage consumers of

different demographics directly and the prevalence of SMIs, social media advertising may

now play a different role in influencing attitudes among youths in Singapore and hence,

perceptions of SMIs in this day and age. In addition, the studies used mainstream celebrities

as compared to ‘micro-celebrity’ which our study concerns with.

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In a research by Yue & Cheung (2000), it was cited and supported by research that Chinese

young people look to identify with unique individuals or communities as their role models in

life. However, the study does not address the extent of identification and thus imitation.

Limitations of the study included age of respondents, geographical and thus cultural

differences between Chinese and Singapore youths.

Hence, we put forth the second of the three main motivations for the imitation of SMIs:

(2) According to García et al. (2016), these SMIs can be regarded as opinion leaders who

are influential in the social media arena. In addition, it is found that although not limited

to social media, the popularity of SMIs are escalated due to mounting social media

platforms (Khamis, Ang, & Welling, 2016).

Commercial Viability

For prominent SMIs, sponsorships can be more effective than traditional advertising as

payments may stretch into the thousands for a multi-faceted campaign which stretches over

weeks or months (Corcoran, 2010).

Ordinary commoners’ public presentation of personal fashion style can lead to monetary

rewards and access to resources and networks of relations (Delisle & Parmentier, 2016). The

study identified nine active and influential female bloggers between ages 18 and 34 and

conducted netnography, including observations of blog posts and interviews with the

bloggers. However, it is argued that SMIs embark on deliberate self-branding as defined by

Hochschild & Garrett (2011) that the modern-day branding mentality invites us to feel that

what is important about us is what is visible to the outside-or, at its extreme, that we only

exist in the eyes of others, much as a commodity does. Hence, the trustworthiness or

credibility of the observations and interview findings might be skewed.

Hence, we put forth the last of the three main motivations for the imitation of SMIs:

(3) The commercial profitability of SMIs is a result of successful self-branding and self-

marketing.

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