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• Findings threaten banks, insurance companies, fintechs, others
From Taiwo Oluwadare, Ibadan
An academic study conducted by a Babcock University doctoral researcher, Adebusola Sileola Akinbowale, has found that social media influencer activity is becoming a significant factor in determining the valuation of companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX).
The study examined 22 listed service companies and 392 senior management executives to assess the relationship between digital marketing activities and corporate performance.
According to the research, Social Media Influencer Activity (SMIA) emerged as the second most potent predictor of corporate valuation, recording beta coefficients ranging from 0.205 to 0.314, with the relationships reported as statistically significant at p < 0.05.
The study further found that influencer engagement was the strongest explanatory factor in its market capitalisation model, with a beta coefficient of 0.314, surpassing the effects attributed to traditional investor relations and corporate public relations.
The findings suggest that digital creators and social media platforms are increasingly influencing how consumers and investors perceive companies, their brands and their prospects.
The researcher linked the development to Nigeria’s youthful population and growing digital adoption, noting that younger consumers increasingly interact with companies through smartphones and social media rather than traditional corporate communication channels.
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The study also highlighted the growing use by service companies of automated sentiment monitoring, social-listening tools, programmatic advertising, artificial intelligence-generated content and other technologies designed to optimise engagement and brand awareness.
It reported that structured social media advertising (SMAD) explained more than half of the variance in asset expansion in one of the models, with an adjusted R-squared value of 0.54.
The findings indicate that companies that integrate social media engagement into broader corporate communication and marketing strategies could have an increasingly important role to play in shaping brand visibility and market perception.
The study also reported a negative relationship between firm size and some of the digital-performance measures, with a beta coefficient of -0.137, suggesting that larger organisations may face challenges associated with bureaucratic decision-making and slower adaptation to rapidly changing digital platforms.
The findings could have implications for banks, insurance companies, fintech firms and other digital-service businesses operating in Nigeria, particularly as competition for customers and investor attention increasingly moves online.
The research adds to growing global discussions about the influence of social media personalities and algorithms on consumer behaviour, corporate reputation and financial markets.
