Abstract
The South African beauty and personal care industry accounted for $3.5 million (R57.4 million) in South Africa in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 4.89% between 2019 and 2024. This is significant because it is one of the largest industries in Africa in terms of revenue due to its abundance of natural resources, its strong retail network, and research and development abilities. It is a highly competitive industry with many players offering substitute products to beauty and personal care products (cosmetics, skin care, personal care, and fragrances) and new entrants offering specialised products such as male, natural, and ethnic products. The rise of the Internet and online communities has altered the behaviour of businesses, societies, and consumers with the vast amount of information, enhanced social networking, and communication capabilities available. Consumers now look for information online as the Internet serves as a critical information resource in terms of instantaneously linking businesses to their consumers, who are looking for information on businesses’ offerings in the second stage of the decision-making process. Consumer behaviour has therefore shifted and, specifically in this industry, consumers seek beauty and personal care product information online, such as social media influencer (SMI) tutorials, product tips, and identifying new trends before going in-store to make a purchase in an attempt to minimise any risk of disappointment in the products not meeting the consumer’s needs. SMIs lessen the risk because consumers trust SMIs more than the brands themselves as they are seen by consumers as real-life characters who live normal lives, which makes them more relatable and credible. They are therefore critical in steering consumers in certain directions regarding product purchases. SMIs will therefore have an impact on the consumer’s purchase intentions, specifically in industries such as beauty and personal care due to the nature of the products. For many beauty and personal care products, seeing is believing and SMIs are able to easily review these products in real time. As a result, to stay ahead of the competition and attract the attention of consumers, many brands in the beauty and personal care industry are increasingly using SMIs. Understanding how these SMIs affect consumer purchase intentions of beauty products in South Africa is therefore necessary to ensure the success of this strategy.
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However, there is limited understanding surrounding the use and impact of SMIs in the South African market and current literature focuses on countries outside of South Africa. Previous studies have also focused more on the peripheral cues such as source attractiveness and credibility as precursors to consumer purchase intention. Given that consumers can make decisions using peripheral SMI cues, as well as evaluate SMI communications critically, argument quality is an important precursor. It is therefore important to include this as a cue as well. The Information Adoption Model by Sussman and Siegal (2003) includes both central and peripheral routes; it is therefore notable in understanding the online adoption of information to make more effective use of this tool. Given all the above implications, understanding consumer behaviour is important for beauty and personal care marketers because consumers make use of information from external sources, in this case SMIs, to inform their purchase intentions.
In this study, a descriptive research design was adopted with a quantitative research method through online questionnaires shared via social media using the non-probability snowball sampling method. The population for this research study comprised active social media users (individuals who use social media at least once a month on any device) between the ages of 18 and 65 years residing in South Africa, with 242 questionnaires deemed usable for statistical analysis. The statistical analyses conducted for this study were descriptive analysis and factor analysis, including both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modelling.
The findings of the study revealed that relevance, trustworthiness, expertise, similarity, and likeability had a positive relationship with perceived usefulness; perceived usefulness had a positive relationship with information adoption; and information adoption purchase had a positive relationship with purchase intention. The findings also revealed that comprehensiveness did not have a relationship with perceived usefulness.
Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that beauty and personal care businesses ensure that the use of SMIs in marketing strategies is more consumer centric. It is also recommended for these businesses to firstly use Instagram for SMI marketing as it is one of the top social media platforms in South Africa and most of the respondents used this platform to obtain information from beauty and personal care SMIs.
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Secondly, they should target young audiences (18 to 29 years old) and women with SMI promotions by integrating young audiences and women-specific stories. Thirdly, they should ensure that SMIs do not share a considerable amount of information but only provide consumers with the relevant information to assist them in their decision making (ingredients, benefits, and product ranges for diverse needs). Fourthly, they should make use of aspirational SMIs so that consumers can imitate them to become their ideal selves, as well as credible SMIs, who can be obtained from digital media agencies. Fifthly, they should ensure that SMIs are transparent, using Instagram Live to showcase real-time product applications and results, as well as real-time Q&A with SMIs and other consumers of live videos. Lastly, they should ensure that SMIs make their content shoppable by incorporating buy now / shop now Instagram features that link back to the beauty and personal care websites to help facilitate a seamless shopping experience, using SMIs who consumers aspire to be so that they can imitate them.
Keywords: social media influencer (SMI), beauty and personal care, consumer purchase intention, social media, consumer behaviour theory, social learning theory, social exchange theory, Information Adoption Model (IAM).