This master’s thesis explores the understanding of relationships and quality collaboration between companies and social media influencers within the framework of influencer marketing. It focuses on how companies and influencers understand quality mutual relationships and how they (co-)create and maintain collaborations in different partnership forms when executing marketing communication activities. The theoretical part examines the role of influencers in modern communication environments and the importance of building quality and long-term relationships between online influencers and companies in collaborative marketing communication campaigns. In the empirical part, we use our own qualitative research to examine how companies and influencers perceive quality collaborations in executing marketing communication activities. A qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with three companies, three influencers, and one agency was conducted and analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings show that quality collaboration is built on trust, communication quality, creative freedom, and personal connection, creating opportunities for long-term, value-aligned relationships. The study also reveals differences in how companies and influencers perceive quality relationships, particularly regarding the evaluation of collaboration effectiveness, perceived expectations they have towards each other, as well as the roles, and symbolic significance of collaborations. The findings suggest that successful partnerships go beyond operational goals and emerge as multidimensional, strategically maintained processes.
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