Is the use of influencer marketing and brand community effective for enhancing awareness of a new brand?

Abstract

Influencer marketing and brand community have been popularly used as one powerful marketing strategy to enhance brand awareness. This study aims to find out how and to what extent influencer marketing and brand community affect brand awareness in a context of a growing beauty product brand in Indonesia. Using a quantitative approach and in context of Loreca’s brand, this study measured the role of influencer marketing and the beauty community on brand awareness. The brand equity and brand management theory has been used as the theoretical framework, where further influencer marketing and brand community were considered as the antecedents. This method was implemented using a structured questionnaire addressed to the brand community Loreca Babes, with total population of 385 people and 197 respondents. The data were further analyzed with PLS-SEM using SmartPLS 4.0 software. The research results conclude that influencer marketing and brand community have positively and significantly affect brand awareness, in which influencer marketing exhibits a stronger effect (0.558) compared to brand community (0.276). Based on this finding, it is suggested that Loreca shall evaluate its brand community strategy and enhance its use of influencer marketing. This study provides insight into the importance of influencer marketing and brand community in increasing brand awareness.