Consumer engagement is paramount in the digital era, where people actively engage with brands. The importance of social media influencers in influencing customer behavior has grown in the current digital environment. The digital era has changed how consumers interact with brands and judge what to buy. Most information and engagement now occur on social media platforms, and customers frequently look to influencers to help them make decisions. Nowadays, influencer marketing is a multi-billion-dollar business. Brands are forming influencer partnerships with various industries to connect and interact with their target consumers. Given the significant investments in the field, evaluating influencer marketing's success and impact is essential. The study explores social media influencers' crucial role in influencing customer choice. This chapter's goals are to thoroughly examine consumer engagement dynamics and expose the power that social media influencers possess.
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Consumer engagement (CE) is a process that connects the consumer with a brand through the knot of trust, loyalty, and satisfaction. This two-way process involves communication from both ends as what the brand serves or sends is considered, analyzed, and responded to by the consumer. The success of a product largely depends upon the consumers' feedback as it is a way to attract new consumers. In other words, a consumer plays a crucial role in increasing the brand value in the market for a company, a brand, or a shopkeeper. The consumer is not a mere onlooker who watches and observes the brand's marketing activities but also becomes a part of the generation process (Sawhney et al., 2005, p.15). Based upon emotions, it is a practical activity in which a consumer is involved with a brand in multiple forms like cognitive, affective, behavioral, etc. “Cognitive engagement refers to the overall focused mental activity, involving attention and absorption; affective engagement involves enthusiasm and enjoyment about a focal object, while behavioral engagement denotes the active manifestations of the concept, including sharing, reviewing, learning, recommending, and endorsing behaviors (Dessart, 2017, p. 400). The involvement of the consumer with the brand is a process that takes time, consistent efforts, and innovative strategies to keep them intact and contribute. To achieve this objective, the method adopted by a firm is called consumer engagement marketing, in which the brand encourages and motivates them for their creative input in this process (Harmeling et al., 2017, p.331).
Adopting various marketing tools to convince consumers is not limited to traditional ways (face-to-face) but machine-to-human (telephonic communication) and machine-to-machine (Facebook, WhatsApp). In a world of digital advancement, online methods are gaining popularity in consumer engagement as they save time, money, and energy. Moreover, it works faster and reaches new people who were not associated with the brand earlier. Nowadays, business organizations invest more in online tools to engage consumers with their brands, and the reason behind this strategy is that people all over the world are more interested in online transactions and spend quality time shopping from online stores, booking transportation, using GPS for finding routes, pay bills of basic needs like water and electricity. During online activity, many people become a part of consumer engagement- active and passive. The active ones pay full attention to new products, attractive offers, and seasonal sales announced by the brand and share them with others. On the other hand, the passive group looks at the comments, shares, and reviews lightly given by others. As a result, active engagement is essential, and the passive side makes a significant contribution as a sole glance creates a lasting impression in the minds of the least interested consumers.
The rise of social media sites has made a tremendous change in consumer engagement marketing. Social media has become a mouthpiece of the brand, binding the company and the consumer together in a strong thread of mutual understanding that works slowly but steadily as it marks a significant impact on the inner state of the consumer. As a result, they start working as a source of brand representation and help increase the demand for their products. Social media sites like Facebook and WhatsApp for social networking, Twitter for micro blogging, YouTube for sharing videos, and Blogger for posting blogs make remarkable contributions to consumers and company interaction (Fischer & Reuber, 2011, p.12).