Fashion weeks - Engagement concentration or spill over?

• Purpose: This paper aims to explore the interplay between social media, fashion weeks and the degree to which participating and non-participating brands enjoy engagement of social media users.Design/methodology/approach: A material of 4424 user-generated content published before, during and after Fashion Week Stockholm in February 2016 were collected and analysed.Findings: The presented results show that the studied fashion week both concentrates engagement for participating brands but also creates spillover engagement to non-participating brands.Research limitations/implications: Because of the specific characteristics of the Swedish fashion industry and the Swedish media landscape, empirical illustrations from fashion weeks in other fashion cities would be valuable to verify the presented findings.Practical implications: As participating brands enjoy an increased level of engagement during the fashion week, but that engagement for non-participating brands simultaneously increase, these findings question whether individual brands should be official participants of fashion weeks.Social implications: Since the fashion week seems to have transformed from a marketing platform to a brand of its own, this shift can enable closer collaborations with the tourism and hospitality industry as well as efforts related to the promotion of place brands.Originality/value: This paper contributes to the field of fashion marketing and management by illustrating the dynamic interplay between engagement created in social media and fashion weeks while also pointing out the conceptual and managerial implications this development generatesfor participating and non-participating brands.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Fashion

fashion week

social media

digitisation

engagement concentration

engagement spill over

Företagsekonomi

Business Studies

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)