Enhancement of Customer Loyalty for Youtube Influencers Through Service Innovation and Value Creation

Abstract

Social media is a part of our daily life and an essential marketing domain. Have you ever wondered why we follow specific social media influencers? Every social media savvy is loyal to one or the other influencer. Influencers earn revenue from social media, hence called social media entrepreneurs. Much research is available that highlights the properties of influencers attracting their followers. However, limited research is available that interrogates the characteristics of the content produced by these influencers. In this thesis, with YouTube influencers as context, I explore content characteristics influencing subscribers' loyalty. Building on service-dominant logic, service innovation, value co-creation, and influencer marketing literature, I propose that service innovation characteristics of the content and the value co-creation behaviour of the subscribers will positively impact subscriber loyalty. The proposed model could be considered standardised to study YouTube influencers, even when influencers do not appear in their videos.