The Impact of Influencer Marketing on Consumer Decision-Making: Social Identity and Imitative Consumption

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_103How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Influencer Marketing; Social Identity; Imitative Consumption

Abstract

With the rapid development of social media, influencer marketing has become a mainstream advertising approach. Its main function integrates social identity and imitative consumption. Firstly, this paper introduce three core concepts, which are influencer marketing, social identity, and imitative consumption. Based on their relationships, some consumers will resonate with influencers who have commonalities or same life experiences in a causal resonance. This sense of identity strengthens the influencers’ credibility and consumers’ trust in the products, thus prompting purchase behaviour. The paper discusses the dual impact of influencer marketing: It helps create an independent brand image and gain consumers’ attention and trust, but it is also likely to reduce consumers’ awareness of critical evaluations. False advertising may cause consumers to suffer economic losses and negative experiences in their purchases. This paper also explores how imitative consumption is promoted in fan groups through influencer marketing, approachable content and symbolic products. Finally, it suggests that social media influencers focus on building trust and carefully choose the products they recommend to achieve sustained success and stability. In addition, the government needs to enhance regulation and enforcement of regulations to curb the harm of false propaganda and promote the healthy development of influencer marketing.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ziyu Lin
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/23
TI  - The Impact of Influencer Marketing on Consumer Decision-Making: Social Identity and Imitative Consumption
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 2nd International Conference on Financial Innovation and Marketing Management (FIMM 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 990
EP  - 998
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_103
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_103
ID  - Lin2026
ER  -