How beauty influencers on TikTok can affect the purchasing of cosmetics

. Businesses in the cosmetics industry have struggled to preserve their market share, growth, and growing consumer preferences. According to Chatzigeorgious (2017), one strategy for these businesses to enhance their product sales is using beauty influencers (— for example, beauty product influencers on social media). This study thus aimed to examine the effect of TikTok beauty influencers on cosmetics sales. The report will demonstrate consumers' attitudes as well as behaviors towards beauty influencers' recommendations for cosmetics. The research employed quantitative research strategy survey methods. The research respondent entailed 100 individuals selected through the convenience sampling technique. It is also presented in the form of tables. The research findings showed that beauty influencers play a significant role in influencing customer purchasing decisions.


Introduction
In recent years, the "net popularity economy" has gradually emerged, generating great social and economic benefits, and many companies have changed their marketing methods from hiring celebrities to advertise to KOLs. Companies in the cosmetics industry have struggled to preserve their market share, growth, and growing consumer preferences (Widyanto and Agusti,2020) [1]. According to Chatzigeorgious (2017) [2], one strategy businesses may use to enhance their product sales is beauty influencers ( -for example, beauty product influencers on social media). In the last few years, there has been an increase in social media beauty influencers, which has led to the development of different technologies to identify the most relevant influencers who can enhance certain brands. TikTok is one of the social media platforms utilised to market cosmetic brands. The choice and purchase of products through the internet is based on trust, and once trust is established, economic activity is created. Predicated on this, this research thus aims to address the question, "How do beauty influencers on TikTok affect cosmetic purchases?"

Research Objective
The following Figure 1 shows the variables relationships studied in this article. Objective 1: To ascertain the relationship between consumer attitudes toward beauty influencers and the decision-making process. The first goal demonstrates how attitudes influence followers throughout their entire decision-making process. Positive or negative feelings about beauty influencers, in particular, can pique people's interests and lead them through several stages of the purchase.
Objective 2: To assess the credibility of influencers in influencing customer purchasing behavior for cosmetic products. As there is more hype in the beauty advertising industry, where products can cost customers several years, their primary concerns are trust and credibility. This article will investigate whether it is true that influencers' reputations can influence the behavior of their followers.
Objective 3: Determine the personal interaction between beauty influencers and audiences regarding their purchasing decisions. A good influencer's job is to interact with their followers as well as use the concept of  Ohanian(1990) [3], hypothesized that source credibility is an acceptable characteristic of propagandists, which leads to the acceptance of information transmitted by the target audience. Attractiveness and credibility are a major dimension of this model. Attractiveness refers to the familiarity and popularity of information sources (endorsers), which affect the objectivity of consumers in purchasing decisions. Thus, it can be inferred that consumers have a certain favorable impression on celebrities who are attractive to them, and this positive attitude will be transmitted to their acceptance of products (Park & Lin, 2020) [4]. On the other hand, credibility is the consumer's perception of the spokesperson's honesty, belief and integrity. Therefore, Chung and Cho(2017) [5] believe that the trust of celebrities highly affects consumers' attitude towards brands and also affects their purchasing decisions.

influencers on social media:
Influencers are third parties who dramatically shape the purchasing intention of customers (Brown and Hayes, 2008) [6]. On social media, influencers share their opinion on products, services, and brands which can be considered as leader points of view in their network and community (De Veirman, Cauberghe, & Hudders, 2017) [7]. Recently, engaging influencers on social media is one of the most effective ways to promote products and services as 94% of marketers found that campaigns using influencers are profitable (Ahmad et al, 2018) [8].

TikTok platform:
TikTok has become one of the most popular social media worldwide with more than 800 million users globally and 400 million users in China (Kemp, 2020) [9]. TikTok stands out with dynamism for influencer marketing as influencers make content mostly for young people in different categories: fashion, cuisine, travel, makeup, review, etc. (Haenlein et al, 2020) [10]. The attitude of TikTok users as well as potential customers is positive (Dirir, 2022) [11]. Regarding credibility, users think TikTok is not only the place to gain entertainment, and fun but also for information seeking and socialization (Yang & Ha, 2021) [12].

Trustworthiness
According to Willemsen, Neijens, Bronner, and Ridder (2011) [13], trust is the degree of assurance that information providers are motivated to present useful suggestions. According to others, this feature is most important when influencers recommend a product or service because the effect only becomes apparent after the customer makes a purchase and customers are blind to any prior payments. Customers cannot physically touch, feel, or connect with sellers and items in the online market environment. People consequently feel a great deal of ambiguity, making trust a crucial component in making wise purchasing decisions.

Implications
Based on the results of previous studies, it can be determined that cosmetic consumers have positive attitudes toward beauty influencers. Chen and Chang (2021) [14] stated that individuals with positive attitudes are more likely to purchase a product, which increases the likelihood of liking the product. In addition, the study found that beauty influencers gave credible information. According to Pramono and Pradana (2022) [15], credibility and attitudes toward beauty influencers have a direct beneficial effect on followers' responses to purchase the advertised product.
Finally, according to the study, it was found that the use of beauty influencers on TikTok influenced consumers' purchase decisions. The results are also consistent with the theoretical applicability of the stimulus-organization-response model. According to this theory, consumers who open TikTok are stimulated by online advertisements; the cosmetic information promoted online is evaluated in the minds of the audience based on their level of understanding and influences their decision-making behavior. Influencerendorsed products are preferred by consumers, especially when they lack product knowledge and are less likely to purchase false or dangerous goods. Influencers are crucial in influencing organizational purchase decisions because of this.

Methodology
This study set out to investigate how social media influencers affect how consumers make decisions. Qualitative research is required to gain an in-depth exploration of the study's subject in order to accomplish this purpose. This method of research allows the researcher to study things in a natural setting without intervening with any variables and can more naturally and accurately explain the meaning and phenomena brought about by the research process. This strategy is suitable and appropriate for this report since it will enable the researcher to examine the topic's specifics from the respondents' points of view and result in a thorough comprehension of the issue. Also, this report will combine quantitative research strategies and survey research design. The study uses a survey research design because the research strategy effectively characterizes a large population and visualizes the results of the sample. Since many people use social media, the researchers used convenience sampling.

Type of Questions
Each participant will be interviewed by the researcher with open-ended general structured questions. This type of interview is more convenient for participants to express their views on the topic freely and honestly. Questions will be posed taking into account the theory discussed and the literature reviewed.
The first phase of interviews will be conducted in a relaxed atmosphere, featuring the researcher interviewing participants about their unique perceptions of beauty products recommended by influencers on TikTok and their own consumption behavior in response to this marketing model. In order to properly comprehend the impact of online marketing influencers on customers' buy intentions, the second stage involved investigating online purchase intention and its contributing elements. The interview questions in the third phase designed to investigate the influence of influencers on consumers' purchase intention. The final phase will briefly discuss the types and personalities of influencers that consumers are more convinced by, including the style of videos recommended on social media platforms.
Also, this study combines interviews with a questionnaire that will select a sample of 100 people, and potential participants volunteer to provide data for the study, where data collection is done through an online questionnaire.

Data Collection Techniques
Considering that the goal of this study is to investigate how consumers' purchasing decisions are influenced by marketing influences, this report will use semi-structured interviews to collect primary data. This contributed to determining how well the interviewees' opinions on the subject truly reflected their feelings. This method of data collection is very applicable to this report, allowing the interviewees to speak freely, thus providing the interviewer with the opportunity to obtain a more robust response. In addition to the primary data, other sources of data were collected and the data collection technique for this report for the questionnaire will use descriptive statistics to assess the data and verify the completeness of the data set. SPSS was used as the primary statistical data tool to accomplish this by using specialized tools to tabulate the data for each item of the questionnaire and make tables to create a literature review and generate a conceptual model.

Sample Requirements & Sampling Options
Prior to conducting the primary interviews for this thesis, the researcher had an obligation to protect the private information of the participants and to avoid addressing inappropriate questions. Also, the researcher needs to evaluate if participants are members of the study's target sample demographic and whether they are appropriate for the interview's subject. This was done to determine the knowledge of potential participants about the topic under study. The sample size, calculated based on a 95% confidence level and a 10% error rate. The participants selected for this study include 100 individuals with different occupational and educational backgrounds, gender and age groups, they were considered relevant to the topic of this study and met all the selection criteria so that the researcher could obtain reliable data from them for analysis. The sample selection method in this study used purposive sampling, is a non-probability sampling in which participants were selected after the researcher's basic judgment of their suitability for this survey. The selection criteria were summarized according to elements such as the use of social media platforms and online consumption as follows: (i) respondents who have social media accounts and/or read blogs/online content (ii) respondents who use social media to communicate (iii) respondents who are aware of influencers (iv) respondents who have made at least one online purchase in their lifetime.

Conclusion
As a result of the findings and the subsequent discussion of the research, it is possible to draw the conclusion that promotion of cosmetics on TikTok through beauty influencer has a significant influence on the consumers purchasing decision. And that consumers' attitudes towards this behavior remain mostly positive and will pay for it. This implies that advertisements for cosmetic products posted on TikTok are increasingly being improved by paying attention to the following dimensions: content, credibility, and creativity of the beauty influencers.