A study of influencer marketing on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube: The effects of parasocial interactions, openness, perceived interactivity, persuasion knowledge and correspondence bias

The importance of influencer marketing through social media has been growing over the years and has become a key strategy for companies. Consumers have more trust in influencers than in traditional advertising. Among the social medias, three come out strongly for influencer marketing: YouTube, Instagram and more recently TikTok. Brands have a card to play by using those social platforms combined with those social medias. There are some concepts which explain the effectiveness of influencer marketing such as parasocial interactions, persuasion knowledge and correspondence bias. In this thesis, we decided to look at how parasocial interactions and its derivatives (openness and perceived interactivity) affect the engagement on the three social medias talked about above. We also looked at the difference in persuasion knowledge and correspondence bias on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.