The Impact of Instagram Influencer Marketing in the Restaurant Industry

1. Introduction

Visiting a restaurant is much more than eating out, it is the experience that it should provide, the surrounding environment, the feelings that arise from attending it, the taste of the food and the innovative concept that it may have, either by having lights and plants as decoration or by serving the dishes on wooden boards or by having a certain type of music for its visitors, for instance. So, as all restaurants are different and each one has a specific offer, this is a market where it is possible to innovate a lot that can provide consumers with incredible experiences.

However the research of how this type of establishment will attract attention and interest in them so that people want to know more about it (Galli, 2019) is still underexplored, specially concerning the new needs, expectations and greater demand from consumers who want to have an accessible and easy way to find information (Deloitte, 2017). This is why, with the evolution of digital marketing and the dispersion of social networks, comes the influencer marketing (Gross & von Wangenheim, 2018), which has been increasingly adopted by several brands and considered one of the best marketing techniques today simply because it is considered ideal for persuading potential customers (Woods, 2016). This tool consists in using digital influencers with a vast network of followers who act as brand ambassadors (Boerman, 2020) when they share through their social media photos with the products and their opinions about them (De Veirman et al., 2017). In fact, influencer marketing is expected to grow from $8 billion in 2019 to $15 billion in 2022 (Sheth, 2020).

As it is considered one of the fastest-growing areas of advertising, restaurants are able to reach their target in a more efficient way (Paula, 2018). On the other hand, as Instagram is also a significantly growing platform and is becoming increasingly popular, it is considered the best choice when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2020). The central objective of this study is to extend existing knowledge of this modern communication strategy, the influencer marketing through Instagram, in order to provide knowledge, and mainly to generate value for the society and the restaurant market. Moreover, specific objectives of this research are to verify whether the process of searching for a restaurant can be facilitated by digital influencers, what characteristics they must have in order to have weight in the decision to choose one to go, but also what the content they share needs to have in order to be classified as persuasive and to arouse interest in the desired audience. On the other hand, it is intended to clarify whether Instagram is indeed the best platform for finding new trends in restoration, as well as to make a comparison between the advantages and disadvantages of the restaurants' own communication channels and the influencers who promote them. In this way, by fulfilling the goals of this study, it will be possible to find out whether this is classified as a marketing tool that allows consumers to change their opinion about a restaurant and create the will to experience it. It is now necessary to establish the intrinsic issues of this research in order to achieve the objectives mentioned above. These issues are constructed taking into account the literature of this study and are considered the most relevant in order to reach more concrete and detailed conclusions concerning the main problem.