Brand activism and millennials: an empirical investigation into the perception of millennials towards brand activism

Undoubtedly, in the modern age of digitalization, Millennials, who are considered digital natives, have become a massive target market for salespersons. Changes in the way Millennials think accompanied by an explosion of social media have led to an increased focus on social media influencer marketing in the company sector. To help establish a new marketing paradigm that accounts for these changes, this research aims to conceptualize and investigate the process of building consumer-brand relationships with Millennial consumers through social media micro-influencers. Findings based on structural equation modeling revealed that four core characteristics of social media micro-influencers (i.e., authenticity, the meaning of the influencer, specific content, and secret sharing) were a significant antecedent of brand engagement and brand love, which, in turn, mediated the pathway from social media micro-influencer characteristics to brand evangelism. Understanding what social media micro-influencers mean to Millennials offers the promise of improving brand evangelism through more precise market analysis and market strategy. In the discussion, the paper introduces a three-stage building method towards brand evangelism through social media micro-influencer, including: (1) the stage of selecting influencers; (2) the stage of constructing intense emotional responses to the brand (brand engagement and brand love); and ultimately (3) the stage of becoming a brand evangelist. Lastly, limitations and future directions were discussed.

This article is devoted to the study of insurance business development in Ukraine and Russia in the late XIX – early XXI centuries, generation and identification of special aspects of formation and use of sacred art elements in corporate identity of insurance companies.
The purpose of this article is to discuss the concept of management of visual communications in insurance companies, an important component of which is the formation and development of brands in the insurance market, which include elements of sacred art.
Corporate identity gives insurers a new methodology for managing marketing communications. The author proves the corporate identity of insurance companies and its place in the system of marketing communications. Due attention is paid to corporate identity of National Joint-Stock Insurance Company “Oranta” (Ukraine), Insurance LLC “Oranta” (Russia) and Insurance Company “Rossiya” (Russia). There are given examples of the use of Orans (Oranta) and the Burning Bush icons inscriptions in corporate identity of insurance companies. The author describes icons in corporate identity of insurance companies and definitely their role in the communication process. Conflict situations over the use of the Orans brand in Ukraine are analyzed. The need to be careful enough in using sacred symbols in the corporate style of insurance companies is emphasized. Evolution of the logo insurance companies is presented.
Examples of integrating corporate identity into the strategy and tactics of insurance companies are shown.

Nowadays, social media influencers are one of the most important assets of many businesses that originate purchase decisions. The relevance of this paper is determined by the fact that it tries to fill in the research gap of literature determining the factors that might influence the purchase decisions of millennial consumers based on the theories of the constructs. The purpose is to determine the impact of brand value on the credibility of influencers over the purchase decision. Therefore, 412 millennial consumers from the city of Arequipa, Peru, were surveyed through an online form provided by Google. Then, the validation and descriptive statistics were made on the program SPSS. Additionally, the inferential statistics using the software Smart PLS. The results show a positive, significant, and direct relationship between the credibility of influencers and customers’ purchase decisions. Moreover, this relationship increases through the brand value when incorporated into the model as a mediator variable, facilitating the decision of consumers. In conclusion, it was estimated that consumers feel even more confident when social media influencers transmit the message showing specific brand attributes.

Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Universidad Nacional de San Agustin de Arequipa for its support in developing this project.
The present study has been self-financed by the authors.