Do attractive celebrity figures have more influence on public opinion than experts when it comes to consumer fashion choice? Given that influencer marketing is on the rise – essentially exploiting word-of-mouth from the words of well-known and favoured individuals – then understanding whether or not this kind of marketing is more effective when the influencer is a celebrity or a well-known fashion expert is an important topic of research for the fashion industry.
Researchers in India have surveyed several hundred individuals in the “Generation Y” cohort, those born after 1980, and looked at how they made their fashion choices in the wake of following celebrities and fashion experts on social media. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the research established that attractive celebrity influencers have a much greater impact on the choices made by Gen Y individuals over fashion experts, pointing to the seemingly obvious idea that attractive celebrities can be used to market products more effectively than the less famous but more expert individual.
Trivedi, J.P. (2018) ‘Measuring the comparative efficacy of an attractive celebrity influencer vis-à-vis an expert influencer – a fashion industry perspective’, Int. J. Electronic Customer Relationship Management, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp.256–271.