THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCER ENDORSEMENTS AND CUSTOMER REVIEWS TOWARDS PURCHASE INTENTION OF ORGANIC PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS

• Main Author: Sitty N, Nikihapsary
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/48892
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

In digital era, people use social media as part of their life to get a new trend and information. This phenomenon leads to the lifestyle-changing and customers' behavior towards organic personal care products where people start to change their habit of using chemical-based products into the products made from all-natural ingredients. These changes are due to social media whose users can influence and be influenced by other users just as social media influencers could influence their followers to use the products they used. On the other hand, the study shows that people start to have a doubt and trust issues towards the products because the review from influencers might not be entirely honest. New customers tend to look after past customers' reviews as the reviews are based on real experience and reviewers did not get paid by the brand. This study aims to determine the persona for new businesses that run in the organic personal care products industry and to examine how social media influencer endorsements and customer reviews could impact purchasing intention of customers on organic personal care products. By using a qualitative approach, the data of this research is collected by conducting an indepth interview method to 26 participants of female with the range age of 19 to 30 that use organic personal care products daily. Data collected is analyzed by using saturation and triangulation by validating through the previous research. The result of this study is expected to provide the representation of the market to develop the most effective marketing strategies based on the persona's characteristics by seeing the role of social media influencer endorsements and customer reviews. The results of this study show that the right persona is college students that have concern on the environment and take a good care for themselves by being productive and use clean products. Also, the researcher found that endorsement by influencer only have an impact in increasing the brand awareness, customers’ purchase intention is strongly influenced by reviews from previous customers about the products.