Consumers strongly rely on friends and family when it comes to making a purchase decision, second to looking up online reviews or searching the web for ratings and opinions (Nielsen 2015). Such recommendations drive 13% to 19% of consumer sales, amounting to about $6 to $10 trillion dollars of consumer spending per year (Engagement Labs 2017, WOMMA 2014a).

To effectively manage and amplify these conversations, different forms of influencer marketing campaign formats have evolved, shown to drive sales (e.g., Godes & Mayzlin 2009, Dost et. al. 2019, WOMMA 2014b). Therefore, topics of this course provide students with a thorough understanding of different influencer marketing campaign formats, their inner workings, and strategic integration from a companies’ perspective.

After successfully completing this course, students will be able to:

•             Understand the concept of influencer marketing, its underlying psychological mechanisms, and different types of influencer marketing campaign formats
•             Know how to set up and strategically manage influencer marketing campaigns
•             Evaluate the performance of such campaigns, while being aware of related difficulty in reliable measurement and determining its contribution to sales or other relevant KPIs
•             Judge the strategic integration of influencer marketing campaigns into an existing marketing mix

In general, attendance is compulsory for PIs. Attendance is a prerequisite for the completion of the course, and can affect your grade through the graded participation during sessions. The attendance requirement is fulfilled if you attend at least 80% of the course (6 out of 7 sessions). Your attendence will be recorded in every session (e.g., via WU check-in).

In the exceptional case that you cannot attend a session because of important reasons (e.g., sick leave, quarantine), you should provide proof of it. In case this would cause you to miss more than 80% of the course, you might contact the lecturer for further instructions.

This course is planned as "in-class". However, should unforeseeable events make the planned in-person setting of this course impossible (e.g. pandemic, fire on campus), I reserve the right to switch to distance learning (i.e., remote synchronous and asynchronous learning). Should that happen, I will inform registered students in time; additionally, due to the recent UG amendment registered students can withdraw from the course without consequences due to these change(s).

Planned learning modes are:

• Interactive lectures with course discussions
• Project work in groups
• Preparatory readings

The course has 4 ECTS, which translates into a workload of 100 hours, about 22 hours of which are contact hours in the classroom. That means that you’ll need to work for about 80 hours outside the classroom. The workload (in hours) that you can anticipate for every grading component is approximately proportional to the weight that each grading component has for your final grade (i.e., expect a workload of approx. 10 hours for a task that has a 10% weight for your final grade).

Weights for each grading component used to compute your final grade: 

•           Group project: 40%
•           In-class assignments: 15%
•           In-class participation: 5%
•           Final exam: 40%

Prior knowledge on (integrated) marketing communication, or word-of-mouth/ consumer interactions are helpful, but not necessary. Similarly, practical experience with influencer marketing or related campaign formats is beneficial, but no precondition for taking this course.