The role of influencers in developing marketing strategy in the field of beauty and fashion spheres based on the example of the Russian market

Talking about the survey and descriptive statistics results, they had shown that despite the fact that Russia met the tendency of opinion leadership and influence marketing a bit later than other countries, the Instagram sphere and influencer marketing sector is rapidly developing in Russia. Descriptive statistics based on Russian Instagram users depicted that the visual content on Instagram and YouTube has a strong response among both genders and most of the age categories. While hypotheses proved that influencers have no unconditional power in the matter of purchase decision of users, therefore influence marketing strategy needs to be elaborative and adaptable to a specific market situation and particular consumers.

Summarize the resultsof in-depth interviews, based on the results of secondary data analysis and descriptive statistics,it is equally important that influencers are a channel aimed at a target audience of the product or brand. This channel can pinpoint the core of the target audience and introduce subscribers to the product or brand most effectively. Especially if it is an opinion leader with a small and active audience. Gone are the days when brand awareness was directed only to millennials because today a new generation Z consumer is entering the market. It is obvious that adapting content marketing strategies to the characteristics of a new generation of consumers can increase the company's customer base by millions of people, and therefore it is not surprising that most marketers are engaged in such work today. Targeting millennials and generation Z audiences is not a task for the weak. It is extremely difficult to keep their attention for a long time, and they cannot be called loyal to brands, according to respondents. They can easily move on to another, more interesting offer as soon as the opportunity presents itself. It is best to connect with this demographic group through online platforms, especially those that are primarily or completely accessible only on mobile devices. Customer reviews and honest product reviews are a good way to convince the generation Z and millennials audience of the authenticity of the product.

Influence marketing can be used by businesses of any scale. Therefore, the advantage of this channel is the availability to everyone. Previously, only large organizations could attract well-known influencers to advertise their products. This was due to the fact that previously they were performed exclusively by celebrities (artists, singers, politicians), who requested high payments for their services. Now even a small company can negotiate with the owner of a blog to advertise its products among subscribers. Also, influencers are one of the few ways to demonstrate the experience of using a product to a large audience. Impulse sales are a good complement to marketing influence. The consumer will be more willing to buy the customer's products if they are impressed with the blogger's experience or want to be like him. Probably, in other circumstances, he would not have made an impulsive purchase. According to marketing experts, influencers help increase sales of beauty and fashion brands. But, unfortunately, it is not always possible to predict whether sales will really grow.

If a brand competently chooses an opinion leader, cooperation with this person onbarter and commercial basis will give a tangible effect. This strategy can not only increase salesbut also increase brand awareness and consumer confidence in the company, which will benefit it in the long term. From insights could be understandable that influencers are brand messengers who convey their value to the audience.

It is important to understand the portrait of the ideal user and take into account the specifics of the local markets where the product will be advertised. The company should not overpay for the names of top bloggers, because millions of coverage do not guarantee getting into the target audience.

From the perspective of traditional marketing, opinion leaders are often perceived only as an image tool. Russia, according to one of the experts, lags behind the countries of Europe and America in marketing solutions, including cooperation with bloggers. Advertising strategies inevitably adapt to new technologies and user habits in order to take into account all sources and use them with the greatest impact.

One of the most important advantages of influencer marketing is the almost complete absence of fraud. And if it appears, then it is not difficult to identify the "twisted" indicators. Today, YouTube's internal analytics provides data about the audience and views of each of the channels. This makes it possible not only to control the quality of trafficbut also greatly simplifies the procedure for selecting an influencer.

The research team would also like to point out that in the era of the coronavirus pandemic, influencers have become one of the most popular channels of promotion. Despite the fact that purchasing power has fallen, many people stay at home and spend a lot of time scrolling social networks. This gives brands a lot of opportunities to connect with consumers. But brands should not allow even a hint that they want to make money from the crisis. Advertising has to be native. Through influencers, brands must deliver important and timely information, maintain connections, and create new ones. Brands can tell customers about store closures, changes to terms, and measures they are taking to protect employees and customers from the COVID-19. Many brands began to produce antiseptics, masks, and other protective products. Influencers can tell the story of a brand. But to do this, the story must be good and sincere. The audience feels when the influencer speaks sincerely and from herself or himself, even on the topic of sponsored products, and when he or she is working off the paid ones. But unfortunately, one of the marketing Agency's experts noticed that due to the pandemic, many bloggers have become less aware of what they are advertising. The demand for usual advertising has fallen. Advertisers need to be more careful about choosing an influencer than before. Bloggers and their agents themselves started contacting agencies and brands in search of new advertisers.

To sum up, in an increasingly digital world, digital influence is the currency that really matters (Backaler, 2019). Brands have to manage carefully, expand networks with the relevant influencers to ensure their today's ability to reach the target audiences tomorrow.

The role of influencers is to speak on behalf of the company in the language of customers. In fact, influencers add a human factor to the marketing equation, shaping the entire marketing campaign of the business and generating the trust of potential customers. This is the most important role of opinion leaders.

One of the main limitations of the study are the following: the low number of responses to the survey. Backaler (2019) said that the number of responses to social network survey can be as low as 20%. Nowadays, there is so much spam in the messages on social networks, that people often don't open such kind of messages that are sent to them by unknown senders. Moreover, respondents may fill surveys in an illegible manner, this influences on the quality of the data. Moreover, sometimes it is quite difficult for followers and Instagram users to distinguish sponsored influencer content from non-sponsored. This is due to the fact that influencers constantly share the details of their lives and express opinions regarding a variety of issues, products or food establishments that they visit (Stubb & Colliander, 2019). This means that in some cases the respondents have no ability to answer question about advertising on social networks in a relevant way.

Based on the research format, the `snowball' method was used to find and to contact with potential respondents for the survey. It is based on the fact that almost every representative of the target group can name one or more people who belong to this group. Therefore, the number of respondents is growing like a snowball (Naderifar, Goli & Ghaljaie, 2017). This appropriate method will give a high completeness and reliability of responses and a high speed of work. But it also contributes to the such limitation as the distortion of the sample, since the respondents would be people from the same companies. As the result, the line of the respondents of one person will need to be limited in number.

In addition, personal qualities of interviewer may influence the results of the in-depth interviews. This may be due to the interviewer's personal characteristics: gender, race, clothing style, etc. Finally, in-depth interviews and survey were conducted remotely in connection with the current situation with coronavirus in the world for everyone's comfort and safety.

Talking about target selection method, which was used to find the respondents for in-depth interview, the possibility of generalizing any estimates obtained on the target sample for the General population as a whole, that is, the external validity of the research results, is questionable sometimes.

Finally, the situation with COVID-19 strongly influenced the course of this research. Due to the decrees of the Russian President, photo and video production companies, marketing agencies, beauty and fashion brands were not allowed to work. Because of this, only those marketing specialists from the agencies that the research team had agreed to interview before isolation were included in the sample of in-depth interviews. Then the research team started from the full cycle of advertising production. Therefore, the sample includes respondents who are not only engaged in the full marketing strategy, but also participate in certain parts of its implementation. This limitation gave the study a deeper overlook at the influencers from different angles. Also, because of the coronavirus, all interviews were conducted online.

The subject of influencers has many uncovered topics, namely, the study of the Russian segment of influencers and how effective collaboration in the marketing strategy of brands is. The international articles on the study of influencers did not raise significantly the issue of the Russian influence market but noted that Instagram and influencer marketing is rapidly developing in Russia. Talking about future plans, we are going to continue this research project and answer the following question:” How do different stakeholders see the level of contribution of the influencers in the relationships with beauty and fashion brands”. Moreover, we are planning to analyze the best practices from around the world and compose a list of recommendations and study the risks for marketing agencies and brands within the collaboration with influencers. The possible methods for the future research are secondary data analysis, and in-depth interviews with stakeholders. Comparing the audience's perception of the advertising content of influencers and celebrities within the Russian market should be filling the gap. In spite of the increasing deployment of influencers, knowledge about their marketing value is limited (Schouten, Janssen & Verspaget, 2019). Moreover, it requires the study of Instagram as a tool for visual communication of the brand with potential consumers (Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017). Insufficient research on Russian Instagram does not provide an opportunity to study in more detail the subject of influencers and the issue of promoting brand products through influential Instagram content creators. The study of cross-cultural differences and features in the behavior of influencers and their collaboration with brands has also not been studied (Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017). The prospect of further research is the study of the specifics of influence marketing as a brand strategy in the Russian market, the algorithmization of the search processes for opinion leaders depending on the characteristics of the brand.

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Appendix 1

Interview protocol for undergraduate students

Good afternoon! Thank you very much for agreeing to participate in our study. My name is… and I am 4th year student of educational program "Management" of Higher Schools of Economics in St. Petersburg.

This study aims to identify and examine the role of influencers in the marketing strategy of various companies (marketing agencies, production and promotion companies, private entrepreneurs, etc.) We want to understand, why influencers as a marketing tool have become so popular and what role have, they played in promotion strategies. If you are interested in research results, our team will be happy to share with you. You must give consent to the recording with audio media, otherwise we will not be able to get the results we need.

Identifying information, and this company must be collected. You will have the opportunity to choose a venue for the interview. All participants should make every possible effort. Our team is grateful to you for your time.

Interview Duration:

The date:

Name of respondent:

Place of work of the respondent:

Position of the respondent:

General questions (the purpose of the block is to collect general information about the respondent):

1. How many years have you been working in fashion/beauty sphere?

2. How do you think the channels of promotion have changed over the years of your work and why?

3. What promotion channels do you use?

Use of influencers in marketing strategies

(the goal of the block is to understand how often the company uses influencers and to learn cases of working with them)

1. How often do you use influencers as part of your marketing strategy? /
In what cases does the use of influencers effectively affect a marketing strategy?

2. For what target audience does your company usually use influencers and why? (ask a question only if the respondent did not give an answer in the first block)

3. What are the criteria for selecting an influencer for a specific project? Describe cases

4. What do you think, how effective is the use of influencers as the main or only marketing tool to promote a product? Why? If there were such cases, describe them

Advantages and disadvantages of working with influencers

(the purpose of the block is to identify the advantages and difficulties of working with influencers)

1. Have you had any difficulties during the cooperation with influencers? If so, which ones?

2. What advantages do you see in using influencers in promotion strategy? Describe them.

3. What do you think, at the moment, influencers are a relevant channel of advancement and why?

Appendix 2

1. What's your gender?

- male

- female

2. How old are you?

- 13-17

- 18-25

- 26-30

- 31-40

- 41-50

- 51-60

- over 60

3. Do you have a personal permanent income?

- yes

- no

4. Which social network do you most often access when searching for entertainment content?

- Instagram

- YouTube

- TikTok

- Telegram

- Facebook

- VK

- Twitter

- Other

5. Which description is right for you as an Instagram user?

- Every day I share posts or stories, update the feed throughout the day

- Every day I go in and watch updates in my feed, from time to time I can create stories / posts

- Every few days I leaf through the tape, rarely publish photos

- I used to be more active, now I spend little time there

6. Among your Instagram subscriptions are:

- Friends and family

- Celebrities and media personalities

- Influencers and bloggers

- Thematic accounts (e.g. news, science)

- Brands accounts

- Online stores

- Other

7. What blogs are you most interested in in social networks?

- Fashion bloggers

- Beauty bloggers

- Celebrities

- Eco bloggers

- Popular Science blogs

- Comedy

- Fitness bloggers

- Food bloggers

- Other

8. How many bloggers/influencers cause you sincere interest, emotions and you constantly follow them?

- there are none such

- 1-4

- 5-10

- More than 10

9. In which social networks do you subscribe to influencers and bloggers?

- Instagram

- YouTube

- VK

- Telegram

- Facebook

- In the previous question I answered "there are none such"

10. How do you feel about the advertising of cosmetics and clothing in the accounts of public figures?

- I trust the bloggers and media personalities that I have subscribed to, this narrows my circle of choices to a specific product

- I trust only bloggers who advertise / recommend a product that matches the theme of the blog

- I do not trust at all any advertising on social networks

11. What is decisive for you when buying cosmetics or clothes from the proposed?

- Advice from acquaintances or friends

- Product reviews on social networks

- YouTube Blogger Video Review

- Product demonstration (and effect in the case of cosmetics) in InstaStories or in Instagram post

- Famous Brand Instagram Ads

12. When buying clothes or cosmetics:

- I choose in the store, and buy online

- I choose online, but buy in the store

- I choose, make out and buy online

- I choose and buy in the store

13. Have you ever made purchases thanks to advice from bloggers or influencers?

- More often satisfied than disappointed

- More often disappointed than satisfied

- No, I didn't

14. What kind of purchases did you make on the advice of bloggers or influencers?

- Clothing or accessories

- Cosmetics or care products

- Food and beverages

- Games and entertainment

- Decor and interior

- Household appliances and electronics

- Did not make purchases

15. How do you feel about advertising products from bloggers?

- Always positive

- Always negative

- Depends on media personality

16. Why do you usually subscribe to an influencer or a blogger?

- Original content, new and useful information

- Visually attractive profile (beautiful photos)

- I feel that this person is close to me in spirit

- The account inspires me

- I like the style of a person (clothes / makeup)

- To follow trends

- Other

17. How do you usually find blogs / communities / pages of interest to you?

- On the advice of others

- I usually find them on pages that I've already subscribed to

- Recommended / Interesting

- Hashtags

- Search on the Internet

- According to the geo-location

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