Instagram Consumer Culture, Shopping, Influencers

Instagram consumer culture- shopping/e commerce , influencers and brand matching, brands seeking influencers through purchasing item yourself then promoting on your page (the deeper story)

With developed markets, economic growth is heavily predicated on consumerism. In these instances, consumers are enticed to purchase products designed to make like more enjoyable, convenient, and easier. These products are ultimately backed by strong brands which look to occupy a niche within the consumer mind. Traditionally, this was accomplished through print and television advertisements. Companies such as Sears and JC Penny pioneered shopping catalogs designed specifically to entice consumers to purchase a litany of various products, goods and services. With television, ads were run consistently during prime-time periods to further generate mind share with the consumer unconscious psyche. Brands such as Coca-Coca, Proctor and Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson began to emerge during this period and dominated using these traditional forms of advertising. Today, the overall competitive landscape has shifting with companies such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter company large amount of consumer time and resources. Likewise, the influence to traditional print and television have been altered forever. Print distribution for example, is no longer relevant to the younger more digital savvy consumer demographic. Instead consumers are using digital channel is which to distribute their products. Likewise, traditional television usage is also decline due to consumers elected not to purchase cable but instead use streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. All of these trends have allowed Instagram to occur a unique niche in the shopping and advertising arena. For one, the platform has a captive customer base with no viable product alternative in the market. It uses typically spend large amount of their time on the platform. The platform becomes much stronger with each additional user that joins it, thus created a network effect that can not be replicated by other competitor. Finally, the product itself is addictive and relies heavily on need for validation and group approval. This is an innate human instinct which ultimately bodes well for the platform in terms of influencing consumer shopping behavior. All of these trends show now signs of abating and therefore show how powerful Instagram has become at owning, controlling, and influencing consumers preferences and shopping behavior.

To begin, Instagram retrieves is shoppers through its core networking platform. The platform is unlike any other social networking site in that it relies heavily on pictures and videos designed exclusively to show the best attributes of an individual. The network is powerful due to the natural need for validation. From a historical perspective, humans have always succumbed to the need for validation and acceptance. During the early years of homo sapiens species, much of civilization were hunter-gathers. In these instances, small groups tended to remain together as the scoured the earth for food and sustenance. Here, acceptance was needed as the group needed to work together in order to survive. Those that were outcast who often cast of the of the group and therefore had much more difficulty surviving on their own. Here, those within the group looked for acceptance in order to remain within the group and increase their ability to survive. This same concept is leveraged by Instagram albeit in a much more subtle manner. In this instance, Instagram uses a system of “follower” and “like” to create small pockets of groups. These are very similar to the “hunter-gathers” discussed above as these Instagram groups tend to want to get along with each other and look from validation from each other. The notion of obtaining a “follower” is akin to a member joining the hunter-gatherer group. Likewise, being unfollowed is akin to being an outcast and thus leaving the hunter-gatherer group. The network becomes powerful as more individuals, seeking this validation obtain “followers” and “likes.” As users earn more and more validation, their group becomes bigger and their influence grows. To obtain more validation the user continues to post similar content for the same validation. This activity becomes addicting and a never-ending loop of feedback mechanisms from users looking for acceptance and validation, following those who have the validation they are seeking, and posting images to improve their influence on others. As a result, users tend to stay on the platform for long periods of time and are captive within it. Thus, Instagram has obtained millions of potential shoppers on its platform.

Once the shoppers are obtained, Instagram must then attract merchants to the platform. Merchants will be attracted to large and captive number of shoppers using the Instagram platform to engage with one another on a daily basis. In addition, they are interested in the real-time data analytics that can occur through customer interactions on the platform. Merchants for example, can easily view what shoppers find attractive and what they fund repulsive. They can very honest opinions on their products along with those of the competitors. Shoppers, as they engage with one another tend to provide honest assessments of the products they purchase, while also giving insights into the reasoning behind the purchase. This unfiltered correspondence on the Instagram platform by shoppers who engage with one another daily provides very valuable information to merchants. Instagram, within its platform can also adversities much more effectively products shoppers would potentially like to purchase. This is also enticing to merchants as they are now better able to improve their overall conversion rates with consumers on the platform. These higher conversion rates ultimately lead to higher returns on advertising dollar spend, more targeted marketing efforts, and higher profitability.

Now that merchants and shoppers are both on the platform, brands can now begin to monetize the platform. As noted in the introduction, traditional methods of attracting customers no longer work. Historically advertising firms simply showed the product and its corresponding benefit. Consumers wanted the product would see the advertisement and go to purchase. This dynamic has quickly shifted as now brands must engage with consumers much more frequently to stay relevant. This is due in part to the quick and frantic pace of communication ushered in by social media websites. Consumers now have shorter attention spans and reposition their minds on multiple brands, products, and offerings. To stay relevant, brands must continually be top of mind in the consumers consideration set. To do this, brands heavily rely on influencers within the social marketplace. Brands do this for a litany of reasons. First, brands want to remain relevant in the consumer’s mind. Brands want to avoid becoming stale to consumers as many can easily shift their shopping behavior to other products. As a result, the brands need to occupy a niche within the consumers mind that cannot be easily erased by competitors. Brands such as Disney, Coca-Cola, and Nike have accomplished this masterfully as those brands continue to occupy a certain area in the consumers mindset. Coca Cola for instances is heavily associate with the word “Happiness.” Studies have shown that when asked to name a product they associate with happiness; Coca-Cola often ranks at the top along with Disney. Brands are attempting to replicate this mind share by being associated with individuals that reflect the company’s value and attributes. As a result, many companies like to use influences to help advertise their product (Abrams, 1990).

Influencers are important as they build credibility instantly for a product, good, or service. This credibility is further enhanced by the influencer’s ability to articular the value proposition in a manner the company can’t replicate. It is very difficult for brands to replicate a person’s charisma and charm, after all, that is often the reason the influencer garners such as large following to begin with. As a result, the manner in which the influencer sales the product becomes akin to a commercial or television ad. As a result, brands obtain much higher returns on advertising using this method as compared to more traditional television ads. In addition, influencers come with a captive audience going back to the “Hunter-Gatherer” example mentioned above, people have an innate nature to want to be liked and accepted. As a result, they want to remain in the group and will do what is necessary to not get kicked out of the group, or in this case, the social circle. As a result, they are much more like to mimic an influencers behavior and thus purchase a product recommended by the influencer, due to their pursuit for self-validation. Influencers are also perceived a much more trust worthy as compared to businesses themselves. Consumers are often heavily skeptical of businesses offering various products goods and services. Consumers have become sensitized to numerous instances of businesses committing fraudulent, misleading and otherwise deceiving behaviors with customers. A recent example is the recent behavior of Wells Fargo opening fraudulent accounts. Influencers however, are perceived as much more reliable and trustworthy, even though they too commit fraud. Due this perceived trust, influences promoting a product are often much more successful than traditional methods of advertising and marketing. Finally, the fan base of influencers is loyal to them. We have seen this with a variety of influencers from Kim Kardashian to Donald Trump. Each has a very strong base that are religiously loyal to them. This loyal is invaluable for merchants looking to build a brand as they recognize the influencers will provide immediate sales increases by pushing a product to their loyal fan base (Brass, 1995). On an extreme level, we have seen that loyal fans will even commit crimes base on their loyalty to an influencer. Donald Trump for example, was able to galvanize his base and promoting the first ever capture of the United States capital since our founding. Followers of Trump, believing his lies about the election, committed acts of treason by marching to the capital, seizing, and making attempts to overturn election results. This kind of loyal following, even at the expense of oneself, if very valuable to both influencers and merchants as it relates to manipulating consumer shopping behavior (Barsness, 2005).