The Impact of Instagram Influencers for a Purchase Decision of Fashion Items from a Belgian Female Millennials' Perspective

The objective is to gain new insights in the impact of social media influencers for the purchase of fashion products. To be able to answer these objectives successfully, this research was conducted by applying a positivism and a deductive approach with a quantitative data collection and analysis. A questionnaire was used for the quantitative data collection. The nonprobability sample techniques in this research are a combination of self-selection sampling and snowball sampling. The analysis of the data showed that the higher the credibility of an social media influencer, the higher the purchase intention. Moreover, the most credible social media influencers where those from Belgium. However, the credibility of an social media influencer did not affect the conspicuous consumption of fashion products. Although as the millennials followed more social media influencers, the higher the conspicuous consumption. Therefore, this research tries to help fashion brands in determining the best possible way of reaching Belgian female millennials. Since this research is an quantitative study, it can be done using an qualitative approach to create more in-depth understanding about the reasons of a purchase intention or conspicuous consumption. In addition, this research can be applied again in other countries to see if the results differ.