How to convert Millennial consumers to brand evangelists through social media micro-influencers

  • Received March 21, 2021;
    Accepted April 21, 2021;
    Published April 27, 2021
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/im.17(2).2021.03
  • Article Info
    Volume 17 2021, Issue #2, pp. 18-32
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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.

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    • Figure 1. Conceptual framework
    • Figure 2. Structural model analysis results
    • Table 1. Respondent ’s profile
    • Table 2. Discriminant validity assessment
    • Table A1. Confirmatory factor analysis of the final model
    • Conceptualization
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Data curation
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Formal Analysis
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Funding acquisition
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Investigation
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Methodology
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Project administration
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Resources
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Validation
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Visualization
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Writing – original draft
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate
    • Writing – review & editing
      Kanyawee Pornsrimate, Anon Khamwon
    • Supervision
      Anon Khamwon