Social media influencer engagement: An exploration of service-dominant logic from the perspective of nano social media influencers

Abstract

Nano social media influencers are gaining increasing recognition in the growing social commerce environment due to their higher relatability and more targeted niche appeal compared to their larger counterparts. Despite their growing presence, the meaning-making processes that shape how they engage with their followers remain underexplored. Understanding how they interpret and negotiate their roles provides insights into the dynamics that drive their deeper connections with followers. This thesis explores the meaning-making dynamics through which they foster consumer engagement with their followers, who are themselves consumers, within the consumer-to-consumer-driven social commerce context. Guided by the service-dominant logic-informed consumer engagement theory, this study focuses on understanding consumer engagement between nano social media influencers and followers in the social commerce context, with an emphasis on the influencers’ meaning-making dynamics underlying their motivations, strategies and outcomes. Adopting a critical realist philosophical lens and applying critical realist-informed reflexive thematic analysis to data collected through semi-structured interviews with 20 nano social media influencers in Singapore, this research identifies economic dependency on influencing work for an income as a key novel factor shaping consumer engagement resourcing and influencing strategy. It also introduces resource mobilisation as a distinct precursor to resource investment, which constitutes a conceptual delineation that enhances the current theory. The research also explicitly recognises the concept of feedback loops in the theory. By exploring the theory in a consumer-to-consumer context, this study offers preliminary insights that may inform future theoretical development beyond its current firm-to-consumer orientation. Through the theory’s metatheoretical socioecological structure, namely the micro-, meso- and macro-levels, this thesis provides deeper insights into the lived experiences of nano social media influencers, thereby contributing to the broader social media influencer literature and bridging the existing marketing and sociocultural discourse. The limitations of the research are acknowledged, and future research directions are proposed.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	English
Supervisor	Tracey DICKSON (Supervisor), Michael WALSH (Supervisor) & Tom CHEN (Supervisor)