I samarbete med : En beskrivande studie om influencers i förhållande till modeföretags strategiska kommunikationsarbete på sociala medier

The overall aim with this study is to get a better understanding of influencers and the relationship between influencers and companies in relation to companies’ strategic communication. The method used in this thesis is a qualitative interview study and a qualitative content analysis of the interview results. The theoretical perspective of the study is strategic communication focusing on two further aspects: opinion leader and electronic word-of-mouth. The results from the interview study show that an influencer is a person who works with social media channels and has a large number of followers. An influencer has the opportunity to influence their followers through these social media channels. Influencers communication is based on honesty and credibility which is the most significant factor why companies want to collaborate with influencers today. The result shows that companies have a planned approach for strategic communication in collaboration with influencers; however, the result also shows that influencers have significant discretion in deciding how to execute the collaboration. Therefore, the companies do not entirely control the strategic communication.