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, Bartschat et al. 2022). 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 2014).

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, Beichert et al. 2023). 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.

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).

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.

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: 20%
•           Final exam: 40%