Social Media Influencers (SMIs) in Context: A Literature Review

This review focused on three main areas, "Social Media Influencers (SMIs) in Context, The Impact of SMIs on Adolescents, and Consumer Behaviour in a Digital Era – Generation Z in Perspective". This article aims to further the overall understanding of SMIs and outlines the impact of SMIs on adolescents‘ lives. Thus, the main objective of this literature review is to raise awareness within the marketing field about the influence of social media influencers on adolescents and how brands promote their products and content through social media influencers. The review comprised a regular search using electronic journal databases and secondary data from reports, surveys, and empirical research. The main findings from this review are insights about who social media influencers are, how to recognise them, how they impact adolescents‘ lives, how brands and SMIs are partnering. 

The research conducted in this paper was funded by the Irish Research Council under award number GOIPG/2021/360.

December 2021Journal of Marketing Management 9(2):59-71

DOI: 10.15640/jmm.v9n2a9

Project: An investigation of the personality traits that could identify vulnerable young people who will be susceptible to undue influence by social media influencers (SMIs)