convention and exhibition dissertation proposal

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PROJECT SELECTION SHEET (PR1)

Student’s Name: Jane GAO Title: An Investigation into How Chinese Beauty Industry Takes Advantage of Social Media Influencers to Affect Purchasing Behaviour of Customers

Rationale for topic: The research is important to conduct because in today's society, the influence of advertising is declining. Consumers question the authenticity of the TV advertisement. Instead, they are more inclined to believe in those people they trust. As many interactive video platforms emerged in China, such as Tik-Tok and Kuaishou, online celebrity (influencers) tends to be more popular and becomes one of the determining factors before consumers make purchase decisions. The research will realize better marketing through grasping a means that is advancing with the times—influencer effect to achieve more accurate and effective results. Instead of directly keeping contact, companies are focused on how to choose influencers – individuals who have an impact on their potential buyers. The right use of influencers via social media can make the company reach potential target customers and markets, and takes advantage of their stickiness to fans to promote it from a third-party perspective in order to meet customers' growing demand for authenticity. Aim & objectives OR Research questions: The aim of the research will be to understand the relationship between influencer effect and purchasing behaviour of customers within cosmetics industry. The aim should be researched because based on the effect of social media influencer on each stage of consumer decision process, beauty and cosmetics companies can understand when and how to join in that process to realize effective and efficient marketing. And also, to observe the attitudes of consumers on such kind of marketing is helpful to prevent from excessive force so as not to cause disgust. The objective of the research will be to review literature related to social media influencer, influencer marketing, beauty influencer in China, influencer and customers, customer decision process, interpersonal influence, digital marketing and marketing communication. Besides, it is also important to collect the data by means of survey, and to analyze the data by means of Wenjuanxing and MS Excel. Principal literature sources: Bognar, Z. B., Puljic, N. P., & Kadezabek, D. (2019). Impact of Influencer Marketing on

Consumer Behaviour. Economic and Social Development: Book of Proceedings, 301-309. Booth, N., & Matic, J. A. (2011). Mapping and leveraging influencers in social media to shape

corporate brand perceptions. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 16(3), 184-191. doi:10.1108/13563281111156853

Brown, D., & Hayes, N. (2008). Influencer marketing: Who really influences your customers ?. Burlington, MA;Oxford;: Butterworth-Heinemann.

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China circuit: Online 'influencers' become hot assets. (2016, Mar 30). Dow Jones Institutional News Retrieved from https://search-proquest- com.libaccess.hud.ac.uk/docview/2019826832?accountid=11526

Choi, W., & Lee, Y. (2019). Effects of fashion vlogger attributes on product attitude and content sharing. Fashion and Textiles, 6(1), 1-18. doi:10.1186/s40691-018-0161-1

Enke, N., & Borchers, N. S. (2019). Social media influencers in strategic communication: A conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 13(4), 261-277. doi:10.1080/1553118X.2019.1620234

Fill, C., & Turnbull, S. (2016). Marketing communications (Seventh ed.). Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson Education

Ki, C., & Kim, Y. (2019). The mechanism by which social media influencers persuade consumers: The role of consumers’ desire to mimic. Psychology & Marketing, 36(10), 905-922. doi:10.1002/mar.21244

Kingsnorth, S. (2019). Digital marketing strategy: An integrated approach to online marketing (Second ed.). London;New York;: Kogan Page.

Konstantopoulou, A., Rizomyliotis, I., Konstantoulaki, K., & Badahdah, R. (2019). Improving SMEs’ competitiveness with the use of instagram influencer advertising and eWOM. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 27(2), 308-321. doi:10.1108/IJOA-04- 2018-1406

Liu, S., Jiang, C., Lin, Z., Ding, Y., Duan, R., & Xu, Z. (2015). Identifying effective influencers based on trust for electronic word-of-mouth marketing: A domain-aware approach. Information Sciences, 306, 34-52. doi:10.1016/j.ins.2015.01.034

Lou, C., Tan, S., & Chen, X. (2019). Investigating consumer engagement with influencer- vs. brand-promoted ads: The roles of source and disclosure. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 1-41. doi:10.1080/15252019.2019.1667928

Online beauty and vanity: Digitization boosts PHL, Asean cosmetics sales. (2019, Sep 01). Business Mirror Retrieved from https://search-proquest- com.libaccess.hud.ac.uk/docview/2283208896?accountid=11526

ResearchAndMarkets.com releases report: China beauty market report. (2019). Entertainment Close - Up, Retrieved from https://search-proquest- com.libaccess.hud.ac.uk/docview/2219871961?accountid=11526

Strugatz, R. (2017). Beauty: Bobbi brown to tap influencers, introduce lower-priced range: The brand is making sizable investments in the online space. Women's Wear Daily, 9.

Sudha, M., & Sheena, K. (2017). Impact of influencers in consumer decision process: The fashion industry. SCMS Journal of Indian Management, 14(3), 14-30.

Wei, H. (2019, Apr 09). Influencer marketing has vital role. China Daily Retrieved from https://search-proquest- com.libaccess.hud.ac.uk/docview/2204979412?accountid=11526

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Proposed methodology: I plan to collect data by structured questionnaires which was done similarly in another study such as Impact of Influencer Marketing on Consumer Behaviour, in order to answer my research question to what extent the eWOM from social media influencer will play a role in purchasing behaviour of Consumers in China. I plan to collect data from 200 participants, which is supported by Impact of Influencers in Consumer Decision Process: the Fashion Industry which used a similar amount of participants. They are characterized with 18~45-year-old women working in the first-tier cities of China, which are relevant to my research question of I plan to capture the data by survey completion because nowadays online marketing is fundamentally based on big data and put great emphasis on precision. The well-organizers questionnaire can reflect what consumers’ attitude and feedback and enable me to scientifically discover the inter-relationship between multiple factors. Reference Bognar, Z. B., Puljic, N. P., & Kadezabek, D. (2019). Impact of Influencer Marketing on

Consumer Behaviour. Economic and Social Development: Book of Proceedings, 301-309. Sudha, M., & Sheena, K. (2017). Impact of influencers in consumer decision process: The

fashion industry. SCMS Journal of Indian Management, 14(3), 14-30. Relationship to other final year work & pathway title: It will be closely linked to the global business strategy and marketing because social media has become the most favorable channel for multinational companies to conduct marketing strategies worldwide, especially those cosmetics ones willing to develop in China. Influencer effect is one of the key processes in today’s online media, through which companies can create demands or affect purchase decisions. Therefore, this research is closely connected with marketing and customer behavior in Events management. Proposed supervisor’s signature: Lionel Huntley Henderson

Date: October 21st 2019

Co-ordinator’s signature: Lionel Huntley Henderson