International Journal of Sub-Saharan African Research (IJSSAR)

Background: While growing research attention have focused on how it is nearly impossible for brands to stand out among the crowd of advertisers, and how Influencer marketing is dominating the business communication terrain, the question of why businesses use influencer marketing as a marketing tool is still a black box concept in the marketing communication domain.
Objective: In the present study, the key objective is to ascertain why brands deploy influencer marketing as part of their product narratives.
Method: We subscribed to the mixed method of survey research and the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) techniques for quantitative and qualitative perspectives of the phenomenon among a sample of 212 participants (survey n=200; FGD, n=12) in Abuja, Nigeria.
Result: The results indicate that influencer marketing has become the go-to desk, when seeking brand’s influence on social media platforms. Again, the built-in level of trust between influencer and prospects is increasingly becoming difficult for brands to build alone with the consumer, which is a very strong argument for answering why brands should use influencer marketing as a marketing tool.
Conclusion: People are more likely to buy a product or pay for a service that is promoted by an influencer they follow than from a sponsored post, thereby lending credence to the social learning theory, which posits that people learn by observing others. Unique contribution: The findings bear implications on social learning theory as a contextual foundation in understanding social media influencers as they represent a novel type of independent third-party endorsers.
Key Recommendation: We recommend that brand managers should strategically search for influencers who continuously produce high-quality content (product-content relevance) and exhibit a high level of credible reputation among loyal followers.