Influencer Marketing: Identifying and Explaining the Psychological Effects of Social Media ‎Influencers on consumers (Case Study: Female Students of Mazandaran University)‎

In recent years, we have witnessed an increase in the use of social media and social platforms. One of the important concepts in marketing through social media is influencers who are key factors in the effectiveness of communication. Influencers are called online opinion leaders. In fact, the term influencer is attributed to someone who can affect potential customers of a product or service through advertisement or advice via social platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Tick Tack, YouTube, etc. Para-social interaction describes a kind of relationship between the audience and social media celebrities in which the audience develops a delusion of perceived intimacy with the celebrities. The effects that influencers have on consumers depend on their target population like children, teenagers, women, men, etc., and are often deep and basic. One of the influencers’ impacts is psychological effects. Psychological factors refer to processes that work at the individual level and are effective in the mental status of individuals. Therefore, they are also effective in their behavior. There are six specific subtypes of psychological factors: mental disturbance, psychological symptom, personality trait or coping style, maladaptive health behavior, or a stress-related physiological response that adversely affects the general health condition. Influencers’ effects on their audience are acute. Through investigation of the literature on this subject, it can be said that although some studies have been done sporadically on detecting psychological factors of influencer marketing, there is still a lack of a comprehensive framework. To fill the gap, the main aim of the present study is to identify and analyze the social media influencers’ psychological effects on their followers.