Resumo

With the emergence of social networks, using endorsers as a marketing strategy became popular. Not only celebrities (CAMARGO, ESTEVANIM; SILVEIRA, 2017), but now one sees the emergence of opinion markers that have great groups of followers and whose opinions are very respected. They were first called Bloggers, as they communicated with their public mainly through blogs, later became Vloggers (from the combination of video+loggers) or Youtubers, as most migrated to videos in Youtube, Vimeo and others, and more recently, they are being called Digital Influencers

the present work aims to analyze the perceptions of the followers of digital influencers, in order to answer the following research problem: What factors affect the influence of digital influencers, and how the contents of her messages moderate this influence.

The TEARS Model (SHIMP 2003) proposes that the influence results mainly from two factors, that total five dimensions: Credibility, that consists of Trustworthiness and Expertise, and Attractiveness, composed by Physical Attractiveness, Respect and Similarity. Credibility is associated to believing in someone, and can be explained by Trustworthiness, the perception that the person is honest and whole (ALI, 2011), and Expertise, the perception that the person fully understands the subject she is communicating (ERDOGAN, 1999). An influencer can easily lose her credibility if she is perceived as..

qualitative in-depth interviews, quantitative survey with questionnaire, use of t-tests for testing hypotheses.

Based on the results of this study, it was observed that most respondents have a positive perception about the content created by digital influencers and recognize the ability of influencers to popularize a product or service.

It was found that respondents appreciate the utilitarian and also hedonic content, however, in relation to the probability of purchase, it can be seen that the influencers who produce content directed to the utilitarian aspects, have a higher probability of purchase when disclosing a product or service to followers. Thus, through the utilitarian and hedonic dimensions they did not allow the differentiation and segmentation of consumers (because they consume both dimensions), but rather the differentiation between influencers.

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