Background: In today’s society, Influencer Marketing (IM) has become a rising phenomenon where brands collaborate with influencers in order to reach a wider range of consumers. Through the popularity of IM, influencers hold strong influential power since consumers feel a higher level of relatedness to them than traditional marketing efforts. The strong influential power enables influencers to communicate competing brands within a short period of time.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how consumers are evaluating influencers who communicate competing brands, from the aspects of trust and relationship.

Method: This study applied an inductive, qualitative approach with an exploratory and interpretive view of the findings. The research was conducted through semi-structured interviews with 11 participants, on the aspect of how they evaluate a fashion influencer’s communication on the platform Instagram.

Conclusion: The findings of this research contributed to the development of a conceptual model, including the aspects of personality & relatedness, trust, as well as influencer-consumer relationship. These aspects are important for the influencer to understand, in order to perform the communication in the most effective way to increase consumer purchasing decisions.