Investigating the failure of firm-blogger collaboration initiation: A blogger perspective

The purpose of this paper is to investigate from the blogger’s perspective why company’s efforts to establish relationships with bloggers fail. Collaboration with private bloggers has become increasingly common in many... [ view full abstract ]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate from the blogger’s perspective why company’s efforts to establish relationships with bloggers fail. Collaboration with private bloggers has become increasingly common in many industries, especially in fashion and beauty. Previous research on such collaboration has mainly focused on successful collaborations but in practice many firms fail in their attempts of establishing such relationships. This paper draws on social media marketing and relationship marketing literature by identifying six potential reasons for failure: characteristics of the blogger, the blog, the firm, the firm-blogger relationship collaboration, and communication. The data consists of interviews with 14 beauty and fashion bloggers in a North European country. All of the interviewed bloggers were leaders in their country and niche, with wide readership and actively collaborating with firms. The data analysis indicates that according to the bloggers the relationship initiation failed because of several tactical mistakes by the firms. These mistakes include poor choice of bloggers, mass produced campaigns, wrong communication style and unfeasible requirements set to bloggers. The results of our study show that in the relationship initiation with firms bloggers have to be considered as unique, often non-professional actors with a dual or even multiple roles.