| Abstract [eng] |
The topic of opinion leaders has led to important changes in consumer behaviour - it became much more easier for the consumer‘s to choose the certain products. A study shows that opinion leaders are those who have the ability to influence the audience, resulting in making consumer decisions. Opinion leaders are decribed as filters of ideas and information. Each industry, issue, interest and ideology has their own opinion leaders. Opinion leaders are well known sources of information with sufficient interpersonal communication skills to exert influence on others’ decision-making. Opinion leaders engage with the media where their ideas are spread to the wider world of those who care about the industry, issue, interest or ideology. These days are described as communication social networks in the become increasingly interactive and the consumers are faced with a massif product selection. The companies which have a better understanding in consumer’s habits, behaviour and hobies are superior to their competitors (Kotler 2004; Turban et al. 2002). Opinion leaders are keen to help the consumers to make their decisions. In respect of these changes companies wants to include opinion leaders in their communications with the consumers in order to attack consumers to choose their products. In the context of marketing, opinion leaders are used in order to attack the consumer‘s to use specific type of products. Opinion leaders play an external factor to influence the consumers’ purchasing behaviour to make a strong and positive recommendation about a particular brand. Their recommendations can impact the consumers to see positive or negative attributes of products. The problem of this Master’s Thesis is decribed as: what impact of opinion leaders are noticed in social networks to consumer‘s intention to buy. The object of the work is an impact of opinion leaders in social networks on consumer intention to buy and their determinants. The aim of this Master Thesis is to prepare a theoretical model describing impact of opinion leaders on consumer intention to buy and test it empirically using example of impact in social networks. Tasks of this Master Thesis: 1. To describe teorical priorities and problematical aspects of impact of opinion leader’s intention to buy. 2. To discuss the concept, idea, characteristics and types of opinion leaders. 3. To characterise communication peculiarity of opinion leaders in social networks. 4. To provide a theoretical model of impact of opinion leaders in social networks on consumer intention to buy. 5. To prepare an empirical research methodology of impact of opinion leaders in social networks on consumers‘ intention to buy and make recommendations, how to affect that communication between opinion leader and the consumer. Methods. Systematic and comparative analysis of scientific literature methods have been used in theoretical studies. The quantitative research method and statistical data processing methods have been used in empirical research. Results. An empirical study has confirmed that the opinion leadership has a positive impact on consumer intention to buy in social network Facebook. Results of empirical studies have confirmed that opinion leader‘s characteristics and recommended information are related with consumer‘s trust and intention to buy. The strongest impact was found between trust and intention to buy. However, the strong connection was also detected between consumer‘s trust and independent values- interactivity, visual clue, emotional value and timeliness of recommendation. The impact of opinion leaders to consumer perceived directly, through trust, or indirectly, through interactivity and visual clues, that can companies use in order to reach the consumer. |
