Thesis: Social Media influences their followers into conforming into this new social norm of craving a more luxurious lifestyle.
luxurious in this sense is referring to the excessive amount of material goods, which are not deemed a necessity to everyday life.
A. Different kinds of advertisements on social media
- Traditional advertisements, such as pop-ups or endorsements
- Celebrity endorsements/”social influencers”
- Company ran social media accounts
B. The concept of “social influencers”
- Social influencers are basically advertising agents for copious brands in various departments. These ordinary people with a large group of followers, get sent promotional items and codes in exchange for their reviews and positive testimonies while using social media as a platform. These promotions go viral, they get shared and continue to spread throughout different social media apps for years. People see these testaments and either feel obligated to purchase these products to become like these “popular” people, or they use these advertisements as ideas to furnish their lives.
C. Target Audience
- These advertisements cater to a wide range of people from different races, ethnicities, ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. Each type of advertisement has different audiences in mind when they use their tactics. Traditional advertisements aims for a very general audience, they pop-up randomly throughout your feed like in Instagram. However, due to the “cookies” technology even the advertisements that appear are personalized, shown by any recent social media likes, or internet searches you have done. Company ran social media has a similar approach. They aim for their followers interest, or sometimes use funny tactics like Wendy’s twitter account. They are very interactive with their followers and make jokes slandering their competition in the fast food industry.
Celebrity endorsements target their fans with products they know they will like. Take Khloe Kardashian, for example. She is known for her body figure and used this to promote this beauty product to her followers who are mostly teenage-young female adults. She knows that this age group is very concerned with their body and physical appearance, so she appeals to them with this product. She even says #WaistGang, which is a way to marginalize the group of women who use a waist shaper v. women who do not.
D. Data proving the increase in purchasing of material items
- “According to the PwC total retail survey 2016, 45% of global respondents said that reading reviews, comments, and feedback influences their shopping behavior.” (socialmediaweek.org)
- Feedback causes them to feel safe and content with their purchases thinking that they are holding these items to a high standard. Also, seeing that an item has good reviews causes the person to gain interest in that item even if they were not initially interested, similarly to the impulse buying effect. Even, seeing the advertisement alone could cause this effect, especially if it is becoming or is a trend on social media.