VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY DANG MINH ANH IMPACTS OF DIGITAL INFLUENCERS ON THE VIETNAMESE CONSUMERS’ PURCHASE INTENTION OF COSMETIC PRODUCTS MASTER’S THESIS VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY DANG MINH ANH IMPACTS OF DIGITAL INFLUENCERS ON THE VIETNAMESE CONSUMERS’ PURCHASE INTENTION OF COSMETIC PRODUCTS MAJOR: BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION CODE: 8430101.01 RESEARCH SUPERVISORS: Prof. INOUE TOHRU Assoc. PHAM THI LIEN Hanoi, 2021 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Conducting Master thesis in VJU devotes a huge of my time and effort. Therefore, it could not be finished if I do not have the encouragement of people around me.
Firstly, I would like to express my sincere thankfulness to my great supervisor Prof. Inoue Tohru and Assoc. Pham Thi Lien for supporting and providing me plenty of valuable recommendation for Master Thesis. Secondly, I also would like to say thank you for my lecturers from both Vietnam and Japan side, my classmate at MBA04, my schoolmate at VJU and my dear program assistant – Ms.
Nguyen Thi Huong. Thank all of you for encouraging and helping me during VJU learning period. The 2-year journey of VJU will be a memorable experience I have never forgotten in my life. I wish to all of you always have health and success.
Finally, I am grateful for my family who always beside me even in a tough time. I will never complete my Master thesis if do not have the support of my family. Author Dang Minh Anh CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES. i LIST OF FIGURES .ii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.1 Review of related definition .1 Social media and influencer marketing .3 Definition and segment of cosmetic product .4 Consumer buying process and Purchase intention .2 Review of relevant theoretical models .3 Hypothesis development and conceptual model. 20 CHAPTER 3: DATA AND METHODOLOGY .4 Data analysis methodology. 26 CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS RESULTS .2 Scale measurement of constructs.3 Analysis and hypothesis testing.1 Regression analysis for whole sample.2 Hypothesis testing for whole sample .3 Demographic differences in evaluating independent variables .4 Regression analysis for each product groups .5 Hypothesis testing for each product group. 65 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION .3 Conclusion and limitation.
85 Apendix 2: DATA RESULTS. 92 LIST OF TABLES Table 3. Likert 5-point scale. Measurement scale development.
Cronbach's alpha summary. Exploratory factor analysis results of independent variables. Rotated components matrix. Exploratory factor analysis results of dependent variables.
Rotated components for dependent variable. Variance inflation factor results. Summary of regression analysis. Summary of regression analysis (second time).
Hypothesis testing results for whole sample. T-test analysis among independent variables. Anova analysis among age in independent variables. Anova analysis among living areas in independent variables.
Anova analysis among product segment in independent variables. Summary regression analysis for Cleanser product. Summary regression analysis for Makeup remover product. Summary regression analysis for Facial oil or serum product.
Summary regression analysis for Moisturizer product. Summary regression analysis for Toner product. Summary regression analysis for Sunscreen product. Summary regression analysis for Facial mask product.
Summary regression analysis for Peeling product. Summary regression analysis for Spot corrector product. Summary regression analysis for Anti-aging cream. 63 i LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.
Source credibility model (Ohanian, 1990). Regression Standardized Residual. 41 ii ABSTRACT Social media is more increasingly used in the worldwide. In a globalization process, influencers marketing would be considered as one of the most popular marketing methods in the world.
Since the companies have a harder time reaching out to their customers, digital influencers have been used as an appropriate solution to influence the purchase intention of them. The digital influencer has a role as a communicator who influences the purchase intention of the followers. In cosmetics industry in Vietnam, there are plenty of beauty influencers who uses their impact to suggest cosmetic products to their followers such as Trinh Pham, Changmakeup, Quach Anh, etc. This research aims to study purchase intention of consumers who have been enacted by social media influencers in cosmetic industry in Vietnam by testing the effect of digital influencers through expertise, attractiveness, trustworthiness, likeability, and product fit.
The results testing shows that expertise does not affect to purchase intention while attractiveness, trustworthiness, likeability and product fit have a significant impact to intention to buy. Moreover, the difference among demographic information including gender, ages, living areas and product segment are checked. This study also provides the examination about hypothesis testing for each kind of product, including Cleanser, Makeup remover, Facial oil or Serum, Moisturizer, Toner, Sunscreen, Facial mask, Peeling, Spot corrector and Anti-aging cream. Keyword: digital influencers, purchase intention, cosmetics, Vietnam CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Practical necessary Nowadays, social media content has been used by various brands for approaching nearby the consumers.
Following to Clement (2020), in 2020, an estimated 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost 4. Besides, the average time per day spent on social media varies greatly by country. Moreover, GlobalWeb Index's special study surveying Internet users in 17 countries in Covid-19 lockdown found that nearly half of users spent more time on social media, compared to about half of people (Telecommunication of Information and Communication Newspaper, 2020). This user indicated that they used more social media than before the social distancing.
Therefore, with the increasing users accumulating, trading in social media is potential activities which determine the success of each company. Celebrities who are known as a public person by the recognition of a group of people has the large contribution in social media content (Schlecht, 2003). Using a celebrity in social media is more likely to positively affect consumers’ brand attitudes and purchase intention (Schlecht, 2003). In Vietnam, following to the Advertising Vietnam (2019), influencer have been become as the brand’s favorite new sources for attracting customers buying products, particularly micro influencers.
Micro influencer blossomed with a large number, close-to- user characteristics, high authenticity, although the reach was not high but had good influence. Besides, CafeF (2020) stated that global brands' budgets for Branded Contents (content created by influencers that mention / use a product / service) increased from $ 3.6 billion in 2016 to $ 13.7 billion in 2020 and is forecast to more than double (25 billion USD) by 2025, opening great opportunities for influencer marketing. Therefore, the Vietnamese market is also not out of this wave with the influencer marketing budget 2020 1 increasing to 35% compared to 2016. Businesses use many influencers in many different areas, operating on multiple channels such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
The Vietnamese cosmetics market is growing fast and highly competitive with trend of online purchase. According to Statista (2020), the market value of Vietnam cosmetic industry at $2.35billion while Revenue of skincare product which is the highest spending product in Vietnam at 8. Furthermore, the trend of buying cosmetics online from retailers is increasing with total website visits of the whole cosmetics retailers skyrocketed to 10. Moreover, according to market research site Vinacresearch (2020), Vietnam's cosmetic market will reach 2.3 billion USD by the end of 2018.
This is an extremely potential market when the Vietnamese middle class in 2020 is expected to reach 33 million people. Besides, according to this page, according to the Insight Handbook (2019) report of Kantar Worldpanel, the most popular product in the Vietnamese cosmetic market is skincare with the average spending on skin care products is increasing. Following to the same report, the average spending on skin care products like makeup remover increased 1.5 times, moisturizer by 1.2 times and sunscreen by 1. From those data about current situation of cosmetic market, there is a need to enhance communication way to attract customers in order to raise competitive advantage of firm.
Current, according to Vietnam cosmetic market report in 2020, Majority of the cosmetics information source of Vietnamese customers are online leading by Facebook, Website, YouTube. Digital influencer as a key online channel which effectively communicates to customers in social media platform in cosmetics industry. According to report of Celebrity Intelligence (2018), Digital influencers have overtaken celebrities and are now the number one choice of talent and play a crucial role in shaping opinions and purchasing decisions of consumers. This kind of influencers also are the major opinion to shaping beauty trends, models and products.
Moreover, using digital influencers enable cosmetic suppliers received a success in sales activities. The report of Celebrity Intelligence (2018) shows that spending $1.3 for digital influencers to review, PR, advertise cosmetic products, brands get 2 the average profit $11. Therefore, thanks to the effectiveness of digital influencers, using celebrities on social networks to advertise, PR for cosmetics is enhancing in Vietnam (Tomorrow Marketer, 2020). The trend of using beauty bloggers in Vietnam to increase brand awareness and sell products is also rapidly popular.
In Vietnam, although using digital influencers in marketing is an effective and emerging form of information transmission between businesses and consumers, there are not many analytical studies on this object to optimize the use of digital influencers. Therefore, in this research paper, the author aims to study the effect of digital influencers for purchase intention in the technological era in cosmetics industry.2 Theoretical necessary In the past, numerous researches were done on celebrity and the influence of celebrity on purchase intentions. The characteristics of celebrity founded by Ohanian (1990) including expertise, attractiveness and trustworthiness was investigated by Chaovalit (2014); Fern, Boon, Ling, & Huat, (2015); Park & Lin (2020). However, not much research on digital influencer which is emerged and popular kind of celebrity nowadays.
In fact, under the explosion of the era of science and technology 4.0, the influence of digital influencers has grown stronger and better than the traditional celebrity, bringing the company revenue and spreading the brand coverage (Le, 2021). Since digital influencers is a new model of celebrity in the era of technology 4.0, there are are not much research related to the impact of digital influencer to purchase intention. Group authors Ambarwati and his colleage in 2019 published a journal about this issues, however, the content only focused on the effect electronic word of mouth (eWOM) to Wardah cosmetics purchase intention and did not mentioned about the characteristics of digital influencers to the purchase intention. Meanwhile, other group scholar - Handayani, Evelina, Sylvina & Lestari (2019) also researched about this topic but the authors just concentrated on the the content of digital influencer in order to engage followers.
In contrast, Torres, Augusto, & Matos (2019) studied about impact to purchase intention, 3 however, group author just cares about the attractiveness of digital influencer and congruence between the digital influencer and brand and did not mention about the fit between the celebrity and the product. Therefore, this research will fill the gap by researching the effect of characteristics of digital influencers including expertise, attractiveness, trustworthiness, likeability and also adding effect of product fit in order to provide the another perspectives to this topic in particular with cosmetics product in Vietnam.2 Research objectives In this study, I concentrate on the following specific objectives as below: – To research the effect of digital influencers on the customers’ purchase intention in cosmetics industry. – To propose the solution for firms to attract potential customers by using digital influencers.3 Research question – What are the characteristics of digital influencer influencing to the buying intention of customers? – Which is the most characteristic effect to purchase intention? 1.4 Research scope Conducting in Vietnam, this research focuses on Vietnamese people who are potential to buy cosmetic product through the recommendation of digital influencers. About the cosmetic product, in order to deeply understand the purchase intention of customers of one specific kind of product, the author narrows down the kinds of products that is facial skin care product which is popular in Vietnam and have a growing the average spending year by year.