A Study on Usage Behavior of Influencers by College Students

Purpose: This study aims to explore the various influencing factors that influencer channel characteristics have on users, targeting university students who are the main users of various social media after the pandemic. Method: in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 college students to investigate their influencer usage behaviors, explore factors affecting their use, and develop a related research model. Results: First of all, in the early days of using content, they encountered content for reasons such as topicality, information, friend recommendation, and curiosity, and there was a tendency to select content based on similar tastes through algorithm and friend recommendation. In particular, the highly topical contents of influencers recommended by friends played an important role in forming peer culture with friends. It was found that sincerity and candor revealed in the content were important factors influencing the period when an influencer's channel was subscribed and used continuously and intimacy was formed. When they felt their sincerity and honesty, they realized that they were different from other influencers and continued to watch them. It was found that the interaction factor plays a decisive role in forming intimacy with influencers and contin-uously using the channel for more than 3 months, forming a fandom and recommending content to others. Conclusion: This usage behavior of college students has great implications for companies that want to pro-mote and market through the influencer channel. As the factors that affect users vary depending on when they use the influencer channel, a promotional strategy that reflects this is needed. In addition, as integrity and hon-esty are important factors in building users' trust, it should be given more important value than anything else in maintaining and managing channels.