Bachelor Thesis Opinion leaders in the new social environment A Youtube case on social media opinion leaders Authors: Amanda Gonzalez 911123
[email protected] Joseph Blomqvist 911105
[email protected] Tianchen Hu 930329
[email protected] Supervisor: Dan Halvarsson Examiner: Åsa Devine Date: 2016-05-27 Subject: Marketing Level: Bachelor Degree Course Code: 2FE21E Abstract Due to the development of new technology, there has been a shift in many communication concepts. With consumers now gaining more control in the online environment, more influential consumers, or ‘opinion leaders’, can also gain from this increase in power. However, insufficient research has been conducted regarding the concept of social media opinion leadership, and in particular what the relational nature of these new opinion leaders is. Therefore, this study aims to explore this issue within the social media opinion leadership theory. A qualitative research design was applied to get a more in depth insight to the issue, in where interviews were conducted with followers of specific opinion leader on a social media platform. The empirical data was analyzed through the means of coding and interpretation which then lead into the theory of what possible relationships can be found amongst social media opinion leaders and their followers. Conclusively, three types of relationships emerged as most dominant: the trustworthiness relationship, the friendly relationship and the passive relationship. The theoretical contributions of this paper together with practical implications and suggestion for future research are discussed based on that conclusion. Keywords Opinion leaders, opinion leadership, social media, opinion followers, Youtube i Acknowledgements We would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all the people who have helped us bring this research into fruition.