Micro-Influencer Motivations to Engage with the Carhartt WIP Brand

Social media micro-influencer marketing strategy is a relatively new field of research and due to its constant developments, the findings of this research on micro-influencer motivations to represent the Carhartt WIP brand provide with a significant insight on current empirical reality. This qualitative research on what motivates the micro-influencers to choose and represent the Carhartt Work in Progress Brand? Offers the understanding for brand marketers to consider the importance of subculture micro-influencer motivational drivers in order to design a micro-influencer social media marketing strategy on Instagram. Micro-influencers are often chosen by brand marketers with the aim to reach subculture communities of brand consumers, therefore a specific group of consumers who would be naturally interested in brands culture. The exploratory nature of main concepts influence, influencers and micro-influencers are aimed to clarify the current fluidity of understanding and existing misconceptions in regard to conceptualization of influencer categories when designing a branded influence marketing strategy with the aim to reach online subculture communities. Micro-influencers are likely to exert their influence in an organic way, which means that they do not focus on brand representation but rather choose to be a part of the brands culture which fits within their perception of their own subcultural context. Thematic analysis conducted during this study ultimately led to understanding of micro-influencer motivations as well as influencer marketing in general while looking at the example of Carhartt WIP brand. This study is mainly based on pre-existing literature findings, however the assessment of qualitative data obtained during the qualitative interviews better clarifies the main concepts of this study. An explanatory overview of themes related to micro-influencer motivations such as relationship, authenticity and freedom of self-expression, heritage, creativity and organic influence discovered in relation to the previous literature findings offer the insight on so called ‘influence of culture’ brand marketing strategy