Consumer Preferences Towards Influencer Marketing in the Beauty Industry on Instagram and Youtube Platforms (Comparative Analysis)

Social media is a phenomenon that has modified the ways people around the world interact and communicate (Edosomwan et al., 2011). More than half of the world's population (59.4%) use social media, making a total of 4.76 billion users, while in Poland it is 66,3% of the total — 27.5 million residents (DataReportal, 2023.

What has made social media so popular among users is convenience, enjoyment and access to information (Chai & Kim, 2012). Social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc., are an integral part of social media and one of the fastest-growing uses of the Internet today (Omar et al., 2014). Society uses social networks for entertainment, to create and maintain relationships, to connect with others with similar interests or hobbies, or to fill free time (Marino et al., 2016; Ryan et al., 2016). Nowadays, in many cases, social media are replacing traditional forms of communication such as calling or e-mailing (Sigurdsson et al., 2021). The data also show that social media are engaging users around the world, who spend an average of 2 hr and 31 min a day, while for Polish residents, it is 2 hr and 2 min (DataReportal, 2023). Social media users use their favourite platforms because they want to stay in touch with relatives and friends, fill their free time, read news, find interesting content and be up to date. Alongside these reasons, they indicate a desire to find shopping inspiration or just to make purchases (DataReportal, 2023). One of the tools used to respond to users’ purchasing needs is influencer marketing-an extremely popular type of advertising that uses an opinion leader-an influencer. It was chosen to concentrate on this form because 66% of consumers say they trust shopping recommendations from family, friends or influencers. At the same time, only 33% trust brand recommendations (Celestino, 2023).

Moreover, it is decided to focus on the beauty industry, because beauty-related content is one of the biggest and fast-growing industries across all social media platforms (Van Kessel et al., 2019). Also, an analysis was performed on two-of the most relevant-social media platforms for the beauty field:

YouTube, because according to the data, beauty-related videos (about makeup and cosmetics) are the most popular content category for females on YouTube (Petrov, 2023).

Furthermore, on both Instagram and YouTube, ‘makeup’ is the most used hashtag, which also indicates a huge interest in beauty topics (Geyser, 2022). Also, Instagram and YouTube are the most common combination of platforms for beauty influencers. The majority of beauty influencers are active on both platforms (Industry Report — Beauty Brands, n.d.). Taking into consideration, the aforementioned information and the literature review, the objective of the article was formulated, which is to compare consumers’ preferences towards activities and content, published by beauty influencers on Instagram and YouTube platforms.

To achieve the objective, the paper was based on primary and secondary sources. The former was obtained through an empirical study, using a survey method, of a sample of 146 individuals. The latter included a review of scientific articles from the SCOPUS database, industry reports and articles.

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that allows brands to have commercial partnerships with selected social media influencers, thereby addressing the influencer's community and the collaborating brand's content (Lou & Yuan, 2019). Influencer marketing has become an indispensable part of digital marketing strategy that enables reaching out to target customers (Kim & Kim, 2021). According to the Influencer Marketing Hub report, the market of influencer marketing reached $16.4 billion in 2022, an increase of $2.6 billion (so 19%) compared with the previous year.

Influencers are individuals who are active on social media and influence their audience, fans, etc. through the content they add on social media platforms (Vodák et al., 2019). Beauty influencers focus specifically on creating beauty content and promoting beauty products or brands. Tran, Rosales and Copes define a beauty influencer as an aesthetic expert who provides teaching on topics of enhancement (life, health, style, etc.) and beautification practices (Tran et al., 2020).

Beauty influencers are eager to use social media platforms to share the content they create and to promote many of their own products as well as brands that collaborate with them. The beauty industry itself is worth a lot of money, and it is expected to increase from $420 billion in 2018 to $716.3 billion by 2025 (Roberts, 2022). The beauty industry on YouTube has grown, thanks to interesting personalities who engage their audiences. In 2019, there was an important event for the beauty industry when two popular beauty influencers, Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson, created a documentary series of beauty videos titled ‘The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star’, which achieved 152 million views on YouTube. The series resulted as the most significant customer engagement and the largest product launch in e-commerce history (Cowburn, 2022) with 2 million users queuing on the website to purchase the products promoted in the series (Weinlich & Semerádová, 2022). Another example is Instagram beauty influencer Kylie Jenner, who released her first product-lipsticks-called ‘LipKits’-and sold them out in minutes after announcing the launch on Instagram (Duboff, 2015). Kylie Jenner, who is the biggest beauty influencer in the world, is also in the second place (after Christiano Ronaldo) in terms of the number of followers on Instagram with 378 million (Instagram, January 2023).

Based on the mentioned examples, beauty topics are particularly popular and engaging for social media users. Researchers are also paying a lot of attention to the topic of social media (265,987 publications can be found in the SCOPUS database alone). However, considering the purpose of the article and the research gap, it was decided to narrow down the search results.

Table 1 presents a literature review based on the SCOPUS database. In order to search for relevant results, it was decided to use the following keywords: ((‘beauty influencer’ OR ‘beauty content’) AND ‘social media’). Initially, 18 results appeared. Then the results were reduced by branch criteria. Articles belonging to the categories of Business, Management and Accounting or Social Sciences were filtered out. Eventually, 14 articles were included for further analysis.

In the available literature, it is noticeable that the authors address the topic of influencer marketing in the beauty industry on social media in different contexts. Some researchers have concentrated on word-of-mouth marketing as a strategy for promoting brands (Fitriati et al., 2022; Yones & Muthaiyah, 2022), others as a potential determinant of SME resilience and competitiveness (Konstantopoulou et al., 2019). Some researchers concentrated on the influence of electronic word-of-mouth and perceived quality on purchase intention of beauty products (Rosara & Luthfia, 2020). Other papers focused on aspects of gender, such as exploring the topic of beauty in the context of plastic surgery for trans women (Zhang, 2022) or the level to which influencers show themselves in a sexualized manner in various roles (Devos et al., 2022). Previous studies have also examined the impact of beauty content on purchase intentions (Pangaribuan et al., 2019). Others have examined the level of consumer engagement with products (Rutter et al., 2021) or the reasons why users follow influencers (Tran et al., 2022). There was also a concentration on how the attitudes of beauty influencers influence repeat purchase decisions (Ayuaspharalinda & Tanuwidjaja, 2021). The authors also focused on ethical topics, examining transparency while influencers disclose information about advertised products and brands (Lee et al., 2022).

Several articles did not concentrate on a specific platform at all. The studies were conducted in the context of social media in general (Ayuaspharalinda & Tanuwidjaja, 2021; Tran et al., 2022; Zhang, 2022). One article focused its considerations on TikTok platform (Yones & Muthaiyah, 2022). Others approached the research only in the context of Instagram (Devos et al., 2022; Fitriati et al., 2022; Konstantopoulou et al., 2019; Pangaribuan et al., 2019; Rutter et al., 2021) or only on YouTube (Bishop, 2019; Dekavalla, 2022; Lee et al., 2022; Rosara & Luthfia, 2020). However, they did not put both platforms in one study. The exception was the research of Sokolova and Kefi's (2020) who focused on those two, previously mentioned platforms; however, the paper concentrates on examining the para-social interaction (PSI) that the audience creates with an influencer online and how this influences purchase decisions. To do this, the authors based their study on four beauty influencers who are popular in France. The survey considered not only beauty but also fashion influencers. Also, all the studies have been conducted in foreign markets, mostly in Indonesia (Ayuaspharalinda & Tanuwidjaja, 2021; Fitriati et al., 2022; Indrawati et al., 2022; Pangaribuan et al., 2019; Rosara & Luthfia, 2020).

The literature review helped to reveal that the Instagram and YouTube platforms have not been studied in terms of consumer preferences for the preferred beauty content shared by influencers and the product categories that they are most interested in. Moreover, neither the study focused on the Polish market and addressed the topic of the behaviour nor preferences of Polish consumers in terms of the beauty industry. This lack of information indicates a research gap, which prompted the authors, to conduct the following study.

The objective of the paper is to compare consumers’ preferences towards activities and content, published by beauty influencers on Instagram and YouTube platforms. The study showed similarities between consumer preferences for content. On both Instagram and YouTube, consumers are most likely to watch product reviews, and secondly tutorials. On the other hand, they least prefer advertising content, such as product promotional videos of brands the influencer works with and promotional content of his own products. This may be because promotional content is increasingly associated with advertisements, and consumers realize that such videos are aimed at profit and selling specific products. Reviews, on the other hand, respond to the needs of consumers, who see value in these videos for themselves, they might get an opinion on a product they are interested in, e.g., some particular cosmetics.

Meanwhile, taking into consideration the product preferences of respondents, some differences were noted between the platforms discussed. Favourite products in the beauty category for Instagram users are primarily facial care products and secondarily makeup products. These two categories are also the most popular on YouTube, with the difference being that makeup products were the primary choice and facial care the secondary choice. Given the high popularity of tutorials and makeup products, it can be assumed that Internet users are learning how to apply makeup from beauty influencers.

The survey also showed that both Instagram and YouTube users perceive beauty influencers rather positively. In both cases, most of the consumers trust their favourite influencers, but they do not always feel the same way about beauty influencers in general. In this case, opinions were mainly spread between rather negative, neutral and rather positive. Respondents also mostly declared that influencers on both Instagram and YouTube are the first source of information when they want to purchase a beauty product, and most often the mentioned influencers later affect their purchasing decisions. Such results show that influencers are opinion leaders and have a real impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions.

The study fulfilled the purpose of the article and answered the research questions. However, the conducted survey had some limitations, such as non-random nature of respondent's selection and a relatively small sample size. Therefore, it is difficult to generalize the results of this research. Nonetheless, it is hoped that the presented article can expand the knowledge of buyers’ perception towards influencers. In the future, it would certainly be worthwhile to overcome these limitations. Moreover, future research could focus on other social media platforms, such as TikTok, which has recently become incredibly popular, especially among teens and young adults.