Cross-cultural influencer marketing strategies used by influencers on Instagram – Comparison between France and the United States of America

The purpose of this thesis is to initiate research on the influencer marketing strategies used by influencers on Instagram. Influencer marketing has been studied. However, very few studies have taken the perspective of influencers. Therefore, this thesis will focus on it. In the literature review, different concepts from web 2.0 to influencers and sponsored content will be detailed to have an overview of the environment in which those influencers are evolving. Moreover, the opposite communication style of French people and Americans will be explained. The empirical part is an exploratory research based on qualitative data gathered from the observations of Instagram publications of 60 influencers from the US and France. The comparison will be based on ten criteria derived from the literature review. The results of the comparison show that there are similarities regarding the communication style, the transparency, the type of partnership and the use of information and sex appeal. Differences were found regarding the compensation of the influencers, the information aim of publications, the manners of presenting the product as well as the ways of encouraging the followers to engage in the publication. This points out the fact that French influencers and American ones do not have totally opposite practices even if there are some differences.