Influencer Marketing And Customer Engagement: The Critical Role Of Credibility In Building Brand Connections.

Due to the technological advancements, brands are leveraging the importance of bellwethers, having a mass accompany in the internet community in a various genres like beauty, fashion and many more. With the help of influencers, brands are enhancing their engagement with their consumers, which ultimately results in loyalty to a brand and increase their sales revenue. Influencers must possess qualities like credibility, trustworthiness and authenticity to create a genuine connection with their audiences otherwise it creates a gap between them. Brands should carefully engage in influencer marketing strategies to reap the benefits of these techniques. The objective of the paper is to analyze the influence of influencer marketing on customer engagement by taking influencer credibility as a moderating variable in the state of Uttar Pradesh. To achieve the objective of the study, the paper employed the quantitative method and online structured questionnaire was distributed to the consumers as per the conveniency. Total 100 responses were collected and analyzed. PLS-SEM 4.0, a smart partial least square structural equation modelling technique, was used for data analyses. A structural model has also been created to test the hypotheses, as well as a measurement model to assess the instrument’s reliability & validity. The results support the instrument reliability and validity and all the hypotheses was validated by the structural model. The findings concluded that influencer marketing is strongly correlated with customer engagement which is mediated by influencer credibility. The study accomplishes that influencers who are seeming as trustworthy and legitimate are more inclined to boost customer engagement by building their bond with their audiences and increase the brand consciousness. Forthcoming studies could also discover the impact of evolving technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality (AR), on influencer marketing and customer engagement