The Perceived Credibility of Instagram Influencer and The Impact of Beauty Products Unboxing Videos on UTAR Students
Norlis Ismail1*, Chu Hui Xuan1, Ho Kah Yee1, Leong Zhi Kang1
1 Faculty Arts & Social Science, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Kampar, Perak, Malaysia
*Corresponding Author: [email protected]
Accepted: 15 April 2022 | Published: 1 May 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.55057/ijbtm.2022.4.1.12
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Abstract: On social media, brands and businesses are increasingly experimenting with using popular figures to promote their product, those popular figures are not necessarily famous singers, actors or athletes, but as brand ambassadors on social media (Sokolova and Kefi,2021). However, Instagram is one of the most popular influencer marketing social media platforms with over 600 million active users as of December 2016 (Evans, Phua, Lim & Jun 2017). Recently, marketers hiring some social media influencer to promote their company’s product or services because certain company cannot satisfy consumer demand on the company website and their social media content (Cooley & Parks-Yancy, 2019). The study is to determine that perceived credibility of Instagram influencer and the impact on beauty products unboxing videos among UTAR students. The aim for this study is to understand how perceived credibility of Instagram influencer will impact on the beauty product unboxing video that they posted on Instagram. Qualitative method will be used in this study, and focus group interview was conducted on Microsoft Team. From this study, marketers will be able to understand the impacts of Instagram influencers unboxing videos on UTAR students and do they have a greater impact on the students when compared to other forms of advertisement.
Keywords: Perceived Credibility, Influencer Credibility, Instagram, Instagram Influencer, Social Media Influencer, Influencer Marketing, Beauty Products. Unboxing Videos, Purchase Intention
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1. Introduction
According to Walters (2016), researchers found that 83 percent of U.S. adults use social media, and 48 percent of U.S. adults interact with brands and businesses on at least one social media site. In the age of the Internet, brands have begun to use social media as an important advertising platform as it allows them to reach consumers online in recent years. On social media, brands and businesses are increasingly experimenting with using popular figures to promote their product, those popular figures are not necessarily famous singers, actors or athletes, but as brand ambassadors on social media (Sokolova and Kefi, 2020). Nowadays, brands and businesses are interested by using Instagram influencers whose interests are aligned with their target audience to promote their products, and these influencers in turn post brand- related posts to their legions of followers, thereby forming a mutually beneficial relationship between the brand and the influencer. There are several ways that brands collaboration with influencers, which are sharing sponsored content in their post and product placement; record events or experiences; organize an event; and attending events (Evans et al., 2017).
Instagram, a social media application that include many functions such as allowed users to follow the profile based on their interest, or get followers by posting their photos. It also help consumers connect with different brands and entities, and promote social interaction between consumers (Blight et al., 2017). Due to it contains visual aesthetics and filter images, Instagram has produced an ecosystem suitable for promoting many beauty products, or certain body images as well as advocating luxury lifestyles and well-known luxury brands. (Djafarova and Rushworth, 2017). Currently, Instagram is one of the most popular influencer marketing social media platforms with over 600 million active users as of December 2016 (Evans et al., 2017).
The main activity of top fashion bloggers and beauty influencer is on Instagram, where they have millions of followers, interact with these fans every day and actively interact with consumers (Jin and Ryu, 2020). A phenomenon called Instafamous has been developed on this platform, which represents the unique characteristics of individuals in Instagram, the ability to interact with social media and the ability to show personal aesthetics. This phenomenon establishes personal narration and displays their identity for users, which leads to its attraction to audiences (Abidin, 2016). Many Instagram users almost know “Instafamous” and they are very familiar with them. Prior to this, research called online celebrities as "micro-celebrities"
(Khamis et al., 2017).
According to Veirman et al. (2017), the research found that brand choose to collaboration with social media influencers to promote their products will have a profound impact and viral growth potential. Social media influencers are ordinary people who become online celebrities by creating and publishing content on social media, which is different from celebrities or public figures who become famous through traditional media (Lou and Yuan, 2019). Instead of using traditional celebrities like actor supermodels and athletes to add brand value, companies are turning to social media influencers like bloggers and Instagram influencer to promote their brands, although the academic research has verified that celebrity endorsements are able to significantly increase the effect of advertising (Marwick, 2015; Bergkvist and Zhou, 2016).
Compare to traditional celebrities who have been recognized by the public because of their professional talents, social media influencers have made a name for themselves on social media platforms by portraying themselves as experts (Khamis et al., 2017).
Instagram users, they don't list their behavior as an advertising, they give positive comments to the celebrities. Instead of promoting the products in a purposefully aggressive technique, Instagram users prefer those celebrities to share their opinions of the products with their followers (Djafarova & Trofimenko, 2019).
Unboxing video, it seems unique but it's not weird, it has nothing to do with anything in our culture and it gets a certain amount of scrutiny and criticism from the mass media, because it is a genre for this generations (Mowlabocus, 2020). Unboxing video refers to YouTube users sharing one or more specific products during the unboxing process (Owadenko, 2018). Several items are popular topics for unboxing video, such as games, toys, audio-visual technology, beauty products, smartphones, and other consumer technologies (Mowlabocus, 2020). The phenomenon of unboxing has become an important method for cosmetics and beauty products marketing strategies. Most of the views of cosmetics videos on YouTube are not from the YouTube channels of cosmetics brands, but from beauty vloggers. When the major brands noticed this trend, they began to use various ways to interact with those influencers.
(Owadenko, 2018). Since unboxing video is successful in YouTube channel, we are going to investigate whether this method of unboxing video in Instagram platform work for beauty product.
Purpose of Research
The main purpose of this research is to determine the perceived credibility of Instagram influencer and the impact of the beauty product unboxing video that they posted on Instagram.
University students are defined as the first generation that engage with high technology and the batch of millennials (Lissitsa & Kol, 2016). Compared to retail stores, they are more likely to spend money in online stores, even though they earn less than others. Thus, this makes us choses UTAR students as our research target as they are the important consumer’s age group for online merchants (Smith, 2015). Specifically, this research is to examine what kind of Instagram influencers are the criteria that UTAR students believe the product that they sell can be trustfulness and at the same time, research whether the unboxing video marketing method works for a beauty company.
Problem Statement
According to Cooley & Parks-Yancy (2019), certain company cannot satisfy consumer demand on the company website and their social media content. The action taken by the company is hiring some social media influencer to promote their company’s product or services. The credibility in individual relationship will directly translate the credibility of the social media influencers’ opinions about the product or services that promoting, therefore it can influence consumer purchase decisions (Cooley & Parks-Yancy, 2019). Social media influencers are also considered to have greater influence than regular advertising campaigns because certain target groups, especially young, are increasingly difficult to attract through traditional media (Pick, 2020).
However, although endorsement has been established that can drive consumer aware to the product or services, but it is not clear whether celebrities or social media influencers have the greater impact on consumer purchase decisions. According to Veirman et al. (2017), Instagram personalities that are highly followed are more popular, even though they cannot decisively conclude that their number of followers has a positive impact on product or brand evaluation.
Furthermore, it is confused to the consumer who obtain product information from social media sites. Consumer might unclear to which sites are more credibility and which sites are related to the type of product (Cooley & Parks-Yancy, 2019).
Moreover, based on Lee and Kim (2020), consumer is limited understanding to the sponsorship disclosure. When consumer watch the video that post by the social media influencer, but they cannot recognize that video is an advertisement because consumer lack of the sponsorship disclosure’s knowledge. According to Ab Kadir et al. (2017), the problem arises when social media information seekers such as young people blindly accept the information provided and do not hesitate to question credibility.
To identify and select the suitable social media influencer who have greater impact on their target audience is a challenge for the marketers (De Veirman et al., 2017). Marketers cannot make sure those influencers can influence their target audience to try and adopt the particular product or services and help them boost their brand by the influencer’s social network.
According to Lin et al. (2019), some companies blindly invest in influencer marketing, but they don't know whether these influencers can bring their company benefits and sales.
Research Objective
1) To understand the credibility of Instagram influencer of beauty products unboxing videos on UTAR students
2) To understand social media influencer or celebrities have the greater impact on the beauty products unboxing videos on UTAR students
3) To analyze whether social media influencer can influence their audience and adopt the beauty products from the unboxing videos on UTAR students
Research Questions
1) How the credibility of Instagram influencer and the impact of beauty products unboxing videos on UTAR students?
2) Does social media influencer or celebrities have the greater impact on the beauty products unboxing videos on UTAR students?
3) How social media influencer can influence their audience to try and adopt the beauty products from the unboxing videos on UTAR students?
Research Significance
With the majority of the people are trying to avoid advertisements or ignoring the advertisements, the effectiveness of social media advertisements become seemingly less and less effective thus making the wasting the potential of social media advertisements and because of this the companies do not get much return on investments (DeVeirman, 2017). So marketers are now trying to turn to alternative ways to market their products, and influencers on social media platforms like Instagram are one of the ways to promote their products. These people- the Instagram influencers are seen as a way to reach to large audiences because they are credible and are sources that are easily related to (De Veirman et al., 2017).
According to de Vries et al (2012), the social media Influencer method is a very effective method when comparing to traditional advertising methods because of credibility of the influencers and in the end will lead to a much more lower resistance to the messages sent. It has been considered that Instagram is one the most vital platform for social influencers to market on (Linqia, 2018). As such, marketers would usually choose Instagram influencers to market their brands to be able to reach a large audience due to how important Instagram is to the influencers.
It is important to understand how the Instagram influencers develop and circulate their content and what the impacts on the influencers and audience are. As Adweek (2015) has stated that social media influencers have become “the next big thing” when it comes to advertising and marketing. By understanding this study, marketers will be able to understand the impacts of Instagram influencers unboxing videos on UTAR students and do they have a greater impact on the students when compared to other forms of advertisement.
Research design
In this research, we aim to examine how the credibility of Instagram influencer and the impact of beauty products unboxing videos on UTAR students. Qualitative research will be using as our research method to describe and explain this research. Focus group will be applied as our qualitative research method during our selection of participants. Focus groups has different data collection technique compare to in-depth interviews, which will give researchers information that depends upon the interaction of the group members to formulate answers to the researcher's questions (Austin and Sutton, 2014). According to Dilshad and Latif (2013), Interview defined as a particular type of correspondence between individuals for a particular reason related with some concurred topic. When contrasted with different methods of collecting data, for example, questionnaire, observation, and so on, interview may fill in as a rich hotspot for investigating individuals' inward emotions and perspectives. In this research,
UTAR Kampar students will be our focus group. There are three groups of six students in each group, which means that eighteen students will be selected as focus group in this research. The interview session will be conducted in the venue of P006 at Block P in UTAR Kampar. Due to Covid-19 pandemic, we prepare other plan which is an online face-to-face interview for this session and the online software that we use is Microsoft Team. Their information will be kept confidential and will only be used for this research only.
Data Analysis
Thematic Analysis will be applied in this study. Thematic analysis is a type of qualitative analysis that is able to illustrate the data collected in detail and through the use of interpretations it can also deal with more diverse subjects (Boyatzis 1998). According to Marks and Yardley (2004), because of the use of interpretations, thematic analysis is the most suitable for qualitative studies as qualitative studies require understanding and gathering diverse data. This analysis uses the coding and analyzing of qualitative data which will be linked to expand the conceptual and or theoretical issues. After the interview the data is collected which will then be transcribed from verbal to text and will be coded.
Data Collection Method
The method used to collect the data was through the use of an interview in the form of a focus group. The focus group was done through an online video call via Microsoft Teams. In the interview the respondents were encouraged to open their cameras so we could see their expressions, feelings and opinions towards the questions asked. The test has a total of 8 questions and each respondent will take turns to answer the questions. The interview had no time limit as we do not want to rush the respondents but instead to give them a more relaxed environment to allow them to express their thoughts and opinions. The respondents are free to share their thoughts and ask questions if needed. As this is a focus group any answers or discussion is allowed as long as it is
Limitations of the study
The population sample is the major limitation of the research. Since the researchers focused entirely on UTAR respondents, the data collection and findings will only be applicable to the fields described above. Researchers are unable to gather more information on respondents of various ages, industries, or identities, which will limit the data for the entire research. As there will be different feedbacks from different perspectives and in other fields, researchers will be able to collect more data in order to create a more complete effect for this research. The bias in the results will be impacted if the user sample is generalized.
The race of the respondents is the second limitation of this research. Consumer dynamics, demography, and behaviour are all viewed differently by people of diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Malaysia is a multiracial country, with Malays, Chinese, and Indians as the three major races, as well as numerous other ethnic groups. As a result of colonization, Malaysia has a wide range of linguistic and cultural variations (Siew-Eng & Muuk, 2015). However, there may be some racial regulations that will cause some content to be restricted and unable to provide research data.
Next, the third limitation of this research lengthy procedure. The biggest disadvantage of qualitative research is that it takes a long time to complete. Another issue is the restricted number of interpretations available. As the target of positioning, personal experience and knowledge will affect observations and conclusions. In addition, since qualitative surveys are usually open-ended, participants have more control over the content of the collected data
(Choy, 2014).As a result, a qualitative study could take several weeks or months to complete.
Furthermore, as this procedure necessitates personal engagement in order to collect data, talks are necessary.
In this research, the number of sample sizes we used was relatively small, all of them were students from UTAR. It is possible that the final data we get will have a bias problem based on the data collected by these interviews. For instance, the responsiveness of researchers to information providers and consumers; the selection biases include sampling of dates, locations, activities, individuals, problems, and questions, as well as a balance of dramatic and ordinary content; and the various sources or data for availability and reliability, whether general or their availability to different researchers (Norris, 1997). As a result, we are unable to evaluate whether data from sources other than students is consistent with our finding.
Summary of research
This research is doing about the perceived credibility of Instagram influencer and the impact of the beauty products unboxing videos on the UTAR students. The problem statement of this research is because certain companies cannot satisfy consumer demand for their websites and their social media content, and consumers have limited understanding of the sponsorship disclosure. Therefore, the research significance is that the effectiveness of social media advertisements has become less effective and companies do not get much return on investments. Therefore, this research was conducted.
This research data collection method that uses was an interview in the form of a focus group. Microsoft Teams serves as our interview medium. The interview is divided into three sections, each of which contains four questions. The interview is divided into two slots with five responders in each slot. There are two videos which introduce Laneige Neo Cushion Matte by an Instagram influencer and a celebrity. The research adopts thematic analysis and is divided into four phases, namely coding themes, generating the initial codes, searching for a theme, and reviewing the themes. Next, after defining and naming themes, the themes from phase three have been narrowed down and changed to:
attractiveness and informativeness of the unboxing video, trustworthiness and reliability of the influencer based on followers, unboxing videos are more credible compared to traditional methods, the effects of influencers or celebrities with a bad reputation, and social media influencers are more credible compared to celebrities.
From this research, the limitations found were the population sample, the race of the respondents, and the lengthy procedure. Because the number of sample sizes was relatively small, it is possible that the data collected has a bias problem in the final data.
To improve in the future, conducting interviews in a face-to-face and online synchronization manner and equalizing the number of individuals from each race when looking for respondents have been recommended in the research to avoid the limitations that may occur in future research. The entire interview session is recorded down in Microsoft Teams which then be used as a means to transcribe the entire interview session into a text-based document.
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