How do Influencers Shape Shopping Behaviours?

The rise of bloggers emerged in the early 2000’s, with writers such as Perez Hilton and Heather Armstrong rising to fame. Content creation became popular in the late 90s and early 2000s, through online writing and blogging. With YouTube rising to fame in the early 2000s, content creators or ‘YouTubers’ produced various video media, with many rising to fame. Further development of platforms like Instagram and TikTok has led to a job market in influencing.

Many influencers make money through brand deals, in which they share content praising, displaying, using or wearing the brand’s products. This has become a popular marketing strategy with brands, with the estimated influencer market value to be over 32 billion US dollars in 2025. Influencing can be used to promote more sustainable consumption, for example Vinted collaborates with influencers, which promotes second-hand awareness. However, according to Kolsquare, Zara, Shein and H&M are the top fashion brands mentioned by influencers.

According to EU statistics, the primary growth of the fast fashion market is social media micro-trends, with the key companies being Inditex and H&M. Does social media shorten the life cycle of fashion trends? Is constantly seeing new products through Instagram posts or TikTok reels contributing to new purchasing behaviors? More importantly, can influencers play a role in which brands young people buy from?

Ella Knight is the Head of Influencers running Dyson activity across New Zealand and Australia. In an interview, she described why people resonate with influencers, the metrics for choosing influencers to work with and the metrics driving influencer’s pay. She highlighted that people resonate with influencers because they are relatable and share something in common with the viewer. This interview helps us to understand people’s trust in influencers, and how more sustainable brands can work with influencers to promote ethical consumption.

In Conversation with Ella Knight

What makes people resonate with influencers? What makes them engage with the influencer’s content, rather than just scrolling past?

People resonate with people first and foremost – those who feel authentic, relatable, and trustworthy, sharing personal perspectives rather than sounding like corporate ads. Audiences stop scrolling and engage when content triggers an immediate emotional or practical reaction, such as humour, inspiration or relatability – moments that prompts them to engage.

What is the process of choosing an influencer for a brand deal?

The process starts by defining campaign goals (like brand awareness or sales), followed by matching the influencer’s demographics and stats with the brand’s ideal customer –someone with mass reach but low engagement might be great for an upper funnel campaign to ensure reach, but not good for a lower-funnel campaign where engagement matters.

Next, we evaluate the creator’s visual aesthetic, tone, and past partnerships to ensure brand fit, and finally vet them for audience sentiment.

What metrics are based on choosing an influencer?

It entirely depends on the objective of the campaign – for sales campaigns, VTR and ER are important. For awareness, reach is the main metric. Generally, when we source for creators, we across-the-board look at engagement rate (active interactions relative to follower count), audience demographics (age, location, interests), and historical performance or past campaign results.

What is the criteria for a brand to work with an influencer once versus long-term?

To be honest, a lot of this is guided by budget. For many brands, influencer marketing is still a test-and-learn side project.

One-time deals are typically used for single product launches, holiday pushes, or testing a new creator’s audience with minimal risk.

Long-term ambassadorships are reserved for creators who have proven conversion power, high audience trust, seamless aesthetic alignment, and a history of professional collaboration. We typically push brands into long-term ambassadorships as they provide better ROI and means a creator can embed the brand into their lifestyle.

What metrics drive an influencer’s pay rate for fashion brands?

Pay rates are driven by content format (videos usually cost more than static posts), audience engagement quality, usage rights (whether the brand plans to run the content as paid ads), and exclusivity clauses that block the influencer from working with competing brands.

How are influencer metrics measured? E.g., what’s used to measure the number of people the post reached/saw the post?

Metrics are pulled via native platform analytics or creator software.we typically rely on creator marketing platforms like Upfluence, Traackr, or Grin, alongside native platform dashboards (like TikTok Creator Marketplace and Meta Business Suite). These tools generally look at:

Audience Authenticity & Quality: Filtering out fake followers, checking follower growth curves, and analyzing audience demographic breakdowns (geo, age, gender, and active interests).

Performance & Engagement Analytics: Tracking real-time reach, impressions, views, and engagement rates (likes, comments, shares, saves) across campaigns.

Conversion & ROI Tracking: Measuring trackable links, discount code usage, and direct e-commerce integrations (like Shopify web traffic and attributed sales) to see how well an influencer actually drives purchasing behavior.

Are there platforms used for tracking the influencer’s influence on the brand, and if so, what do these look at?

Yes, many platforms can be used to track e-commerce revenue (via Shopify integrations), sentiment analysis of comments, and overall share of voice compared to competitors.