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.
