Social influencers refer to those individuals who have significant followers on social media. These influencers are frequently targeted by businesses to endorse their products since they have a large number of audiences seeing their posts each day. Their content has a large effect on people’s purchasing decisions. This would be a great way to expose the products to their target market.
Source: UpCity
According to research, 40% of people say they have purchased a product online as a result of seeing it being used by an influencer on social media. 72% of customers trust a business more after it is recommended by an influencer whereas 49% of consumers rely on product recommendations shared by influencers for their purchases. Some customers have even recommended a product or service based on an influencer post. Moreover, it is stated that consumers trust influencers 94% more than friends or family when making shopping decisions. Survey showed that social media influencers are their most trusted sources for shopping.
Customers trust them for their authentic and honest review of the products and thus, genuinely recommend the products to their followers.
Given the fact above, business has utilized this situation to increase their revenues as well as their brand popularity through paying influencers to say positive things about the products although those products are actually not that good. These influencers do not say what they really thought about the product and some of them, even, have a script of what the business wanted them to say. As a result, many customers are being lied to.
This strategy brings advantages to the business by putting the customers at a disadvantage situation.
Source: Huge IT
My question to you guys is – do you think that it is ethical for businesses as well as for the influencers to do this kind of strategy – just pay the influencers to talk good things about the product? If you were the social influencer, would you do it? Why or why not?
Happy Reading! ❤
Felicia Boedisoesilo 
Hi Felicia,
I feel that ethical dilemmas are always very grey. However, this boils down to the credibility of the influencer themselves. Influencers can only grow their success if their credibility remains in tact. Hence, It is really about the influencer making the right decision that is better for their own career. With that being said, promoting something you do not like/support and promoting something that is totally different from it’s actual form (false advertising) is very different. One is business and the other is simply lying. Therefore, if it is a lie, I think it is . unethical and it will lead to consumers losing trust in both the product and influencer.
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Great points you raise there. I think the same way too. If its business, then, even tough we do not use or support the products as an influencer, we still have to be professional by not interfering our work with our personal preferences but it is important to note that lying will not bring any long term good for the influencer as well as the business!
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I think that if the practice is legal go for it. As long as businesses dont break any rules i dont see the harm in what they are doing. It is just a promotion of products, and if people are silly enough to believe that famous people actually use these products all the time, well maybe they deserve to be catfished into the market. I also dont blame to influencers, they are getting paid for a job and they have accepted the job. I think that everyone knows what to expect with social media marketing.
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Hi Will, yes i do agree with you. As long as it does not inflicted any serious financial loss to the customers, it should be fine. However, i think that as influencers they should not lie about the actual product form/benefits as it might lead to a decrease in the influencers’ credibility as well as the business’ in the long term.
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I like the blog~ as the social media market is growing rapidly, more and more people utilize their advantage in the social media to do commercial promotion. From the personal perspective, I don’t like it, the influencer must take responsibility to those products they post in the social media, they can’t say “this is my job, I have to do it”. customers, followers trust the influencer. If the product is not good enough, what should customers do? it hurts customers.
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Hi Nule, good points you have there. I think the business should also responsible towards the product as they are the one who sell it directly to the consumers. The business use the influencers as its promotional tool for the products, therefore, during the transaction, it is possible that the business does not give the exact same product to the buyers like what they gave to the influencers to promote the product. However, as an influencer i think that it is important to reject the offer if it requires them to lie to their followers as it might cost them in the longterm such as losing their credibility.
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Hey Felicia. I think paying influencers to say good things about your brand can be beneficial if the socialite is very influential and has creditability amongst the target audience. However, as a consumer I take these reviews with a grain of salt. As Will said, how likely is it that these celebrities who have all this money, using all the products that they promote? I often look at Kylie Jenner, who has a different hair style every 5 seconds and ask myself, but does she really use those gummies that are meant to help your hair grow? I’m skeptical…
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Hi Kim! Yes good opinion you put there. I agree with what Will said above as consumers, we should be smart as well, we have to realize that not all products they promote are as good as what they said in real life. They are just doing their job. As consumers we should smartly choose which brands or products are good for us.
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I definitely think it would be unethical to promote something that you don’t actually believe is as good as you say it is. I know a lot of fitness gurus like promoting those “fit teas” that they probably don’t use themselves and only drank it the one time when they were promoting it. I think it prays on the followers’ desperation to lose weight and can cause harm to the customers. Though I do think the onus is on the customers to do research on the product before purchasing, but when the promotion is coming from a source they trust it can be hard for them to be critical
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Hi Ashley, yepp good point you have there. As an influencer, i think that we should not lie to the consumers just for the sake of earning the money. We have to keep our well reputation in order for us to succeed in the future/ long term.
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I think it is ethical so long as an influencer has genuinely tried and approved of the product, otherwise the influencers could be accused of being sell-outs and it would be unethical because they really wouldn’t know what they are pushing onto their followers. So if I were a social media influencer, I would be very choosy about which products I choose to endorse, while also making sure to do my research about the history of the brand before I choose to promote.
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Hi Katrina. Couldn’t agree with you more! I think that the influencers can also be charged for misleading their followers if their followers complain, thus, it is important to choose the products we want to endorse carefully.
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