In this era, the practices of marketing continue to change following the technological developments. Many traditional marketing practices have shifted to digital. One of the technological changes is nowadays, there are many people who use social media. Because of the widespread use of social media, a phenomenon called Influencer Endorsement of Influencer Marketing emerged. Influencer endorsement is a marketing practice where many marketers are starting to change celebrities to Social Media Influencers to become endorsers of their products or brands, in various industries. Marketers admit this Influencer Endorsement technique is effective in achieving marketing objectives. On the other hand, the fashion industry in Indonesia has continued to grow rapidly in recent years. The more an industry develops, the higher the demand for organizational competitiveness. Therefore, this study aims to analyse and determine what factors are important and needed in Social Media Influencer’s characteristics in the fashion industry. These factors can then be used by fashion brands and companies to evaluate Social Media Influencers in the fashion sector before being chosen to be an endorser of fashion products.
This research is a descriptive study that uses quantitative methods. The sample in this study are people residing in Indonesia who follow or subscribe to Social Media Influencers in the fashion sector. Samples were randomly selected by the non-probability method, purposive sampling. The number of respondents in this study was 104 respondents. Then, the analysis technique used in this study is the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA).
The number of factors used in this study are 6 factors, which have been adopted and combined by the researcher from previous studies. After conducting the analysis using EFA, there are 5 new factors that are obtained, namely Congruence, Expertise, Popularity, Trustworthiness, and Power. These are the important factors in Social Media Influencer’s characteristics in the fashion industry. Thus, the marketers should pay attention to these factors to choose the most appropriate Social Media Influencer as an endorser for fashion products.
Keywords: Social Media Influencer, Influencer Marketing, Influencer Endorsement, Fashion Industry, Factor Analysis