Chapter 7: The Importance of Social Media Opinion Leadership in Corporate Branding and Influencing Consumers' Behavioral Intentions

This chapter is aimed at elaborating on social media opinion leadership as an effective stakeholder communication instrument. An empirical approach is utilized by developing and testing a theoretical model indicating mediating effects of social media opinion leadership on the associations among Instagram accounts' characteristics and consumers' behavioural intentions.

In the present era of communication, social media platforms shape an important aspect of individuals' life, and they have turned into a vital means of interconnectedness. The current trend to use social networking sites has provided companies with unprecedented opportunities to do business and communicate with their partners and customers; arguably, these platforms enable companies to adopt marketing communication strategies helping them provide beneficial information to stakeholders (e.g. customers or suppliers), manage relationships with stakeholders and affect consumers' purchase decisions (Foroudi & Montes, 2017; Wattanacharoensil & Schuckert, 2015). The notion of corporate branding, which is a holistic approach to managing the corporate brand and its identity, has been considered as an effective mechanism to communicate with immediate stakeholders and the wider society (Foroudi, 2020; Foroudi et al., 2020; Melewar, Gotsi, & Andriopoulos, 2012; Pratihari & Uzma, 2018). Accordingly, social media opinion leaders, who are experts or social connectors influencing other people's attitudes, are increasingly being hired to communicate brands' image and identity and influence consumers' purchase decisions (Thakur, Angriawan, & Summey, 2016; Walter & Brüggemann, 2020). In the cosmetic industry, much evidence exists that major communication channels between companies and consumers have shifted to social media communities (Shen & Bissell, 2013), and regarding these companies' stakeholders communication practices, interactions among stakeholders and word-of-mouth are considered as principal sources of information acquisition and behavioural intentions (Kim & Ko, 2012). A noticeably large proportion of beauty brands (above 90%) perform their corporate communication practices on social networking sites, and among them, Instagram has gained a pre-eminent status, particularly among young adult active users (aged between 18 and 29) interested in beauty brands and services (Yesmail, 2015). Furthermore, due to the constantly increasing popularity of Instagram, the number of its monthly active users has passed 1 billion, and influencer marketing communication activities on this platform account for a market size of 1.7 billion US dollars worldwide (Statista, 2019c). Besides, this social networking site is distinctly popular among opinion leaders (influencers) as it provides dominant benefits such as immediate content sharing and community creation (Casaló, Flavián, & Ibáñez-Sánchez, 2020). Therefore, enterprises involved in the cosmetic industry could crucially benefit from Instagram and engagement with its opinion leaders to actualize their corporate branding initiatives, communicate with their stakeholders and particularly influence their consumers' behavioural intentions.