The Role of Influencer Marketing in Shaping Consumer Perceived Value and Online Pricing

Abstract

Influencer marketing has evolved from a peripheral promotional tactic into embedded socio-technical infrastructure that links content creators, platform algorithms, consumer valuation processes, and dynamic pricing systems. This paper examines the system-level role of influencer marketing in shaping consumer perceived value and online pricing. It conceptualizes influencer-mediated commerce as a multi-sided architecture in which algorithmic curation, promotional content, social proof, and behavioral demand data interact continuously. The paper analyzes how perceived value is produced through signal aggregation, authenticity cues, parasocial attachment, and social comparison, and how these transformations influence pricing algorithms, audience segmentation, and willingness-to-pay. It emphasizes structural trade-offs between efficiency and fairness, personalization and manipulation, platform scale and authenticity, and robustness and opacity. It further considers governance mechanisms, algorithmic accountability, disclosure requirements, consumer protection, and competition policy. Cross-domain comparisons illustrate how influencer effects differ across e-commerce, luxury goods, travel, hospitality, and digital financial content. The paper argues that sustainable governance requires architectural transparency, fairness-aware pricing audits, data minimization, and multi-dimensional consumer welfare assessment. Future research should integrate causal identification, platform ecology analysis, creator labor conditions, and resilience evaluation. The analysis contributes to systems research by framing influencer marketing not as isolated persuasive communication but as infrastructure that shapes price formation and value perception in digital markets.