This study assessed the effectiveness of brand image communication on consumer perceptions of cruelty-free fashion brands. Brand messaging data were gathered from postings on the official Instagram accounts of three cruelty-free fashion brands and consumer perception data were gathered from Tweets containing keywords related to each brand. Web crawling and natural language processing were performed using Python and sentiment analysis was conducted using the BERT model. By analyzing Instagram content from Stella McCartney, Patagonia, and Freitag from their inception until 2021, this study found these brands all emphasize environmental aspects but with differing focuses: Stella McCartney on ecological conservation, Patagonia on an active outdoor image, and Freitag on upcycled products. Keyword analysis further indicated consumers perceive these brands in line with their brand messaging: Stella McCartney as high-end and eco-friendly, Patagonia as active and environmentally conscious, and Freitag as centered on recycling. Results based on the assessment of the alignment between brand-driven images and consumer-perceived images and the sentiment evaluation of the brand confirmed the outcomes of brand communication performance. The study revealed a correlation between brand image and positive consumer evaluations, indicating that higher alignment of ethical values leads to more positive consumer assessments. Given that consumers tend to prioritize search keywords over brand concepts, it’s important for brands to focus on using visual imagery and promotions to effectively convey brand communication information. These findings highlight the importance of brand communication by emphasizing the connection between ethical brand images and consumer perceptions.

The paper examines how omnichannel communication of sustainability of luxury fashion brands enhance consumer brand engagement. We propose a multiple case study of four Italian high-end fashion brands. The study advances the literature on sustainable luxury fashion and omnichannel communication and offers guidelines for managers to effectively communicate sustainability.

Sustainability issue has received growing attention from various stakeholders. To engage more people to participate in sustainable actions, the United Nations has promoted #actnow campaign since 2019. Among various sustainability initiatives and approaches, the UN’s #actnow campaign focuses on food and fashion sustainability since these two industries encompass various sustainability issues from production and post-consumption. By analyzing Twitter's big data, the study findings demonstrate that negative sentiment messages are powerful in driving the public’s engagement in social media message dissemination. The findings suggest that practitioners may use assertive and strong voice messages to lead consumers’ participation in sustainable message dissemination.

Recent developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) can be applied in stores, and the number of fashion stores that have introduced and utilized ICT are increasing. By applying a literature review and empirical research, the types of ICT service factors of fashion stores were identified and categorized. The effect of their importance on consumer behavioral intentions was analyzed. Next, using factor analysis on the ICT service factors, five factors were identified and named as follows: smart space services, smart payment services, virtual image services, product information services, and smart access services. The importance of these factors was then analyzed. The importance of each factor and detailed questions was rated above average. After examining the effect of ICT service on behavior intention, issues such as purchase intention, revisit intention, and word of mouth intention were found to have significant influence. This study is meaningful in that it derives the importance factors of ICT services that can be used in fashion stores in a situation where retail techniques become important and expand, and provides marketing strategies related to consumer behavior according to detailed factors. With retail tech becoming more important and expanding, it is necessary to provide various services that consumers value by utilizing ICT in fashion stores. Considering the results of this study, ICT technology and services of various fashion stores can be effectively utilized and retail tech utilization performance can be improved.

The goal of this study was to develop a haptic communication system that can convey the tactile sensation of fashion materials in a virtual environment. In addition, the effectiveness and how realistically the virtual fabric image of this system delivers the tactile sensation of actual fabric was verified. First, a literature review was conducted through which the tactile attributes of fashion materials were defined that would be implemented in the haptic communication system. Then, a questionnaire for evaluating the tactile attributes of fashion materials was developed. Next, a haptic communication system was designed to convey fashion image experiences in a virtual environment, from which a haptic rendering model was suggested. The effectiveness of the haptic communication system was evaluated by verifying user experiences with questions developed through a user evaluation experiment. The validity of the evaluation questions pertaining to the tactile attributes and the effects of the haptic communication system were verified. Factor analysis was conducted to verify the evaluation of the tactile sense attributes of the fashion material, which identified density, thickness, and elasticity of the material as key factors. As a result of comparisons between the tactile sense through haptic characteristics and through touching, it was observed that regarding density and thickness, tactile sense experience led to greater perceived reality, while this was not the case for elasticity.

This research develops an under-investigated aspect of the business literature regarding firm-created and user-generated social media communication and their influence on purchase intention of endorsed fashion products. The results indicate that (i) brand equity mediates the relationship between social media communication and purchase intention of endorsed fashion products, and (ii) the mediational role of brand equity is further moderated by the consumer’s self-congruity with fashion brands.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the characteristics of the fashion narrative from the commercial and artistic viewpoints by identifying and evaluating the attributes of the fashion narrative and analyzing the fashion narrative focusing on various cases according to fashion media. Louis Vuitton, a brand of the Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) group that operates the entire fashion community platform, is recognized as an influential luxury company with enormous capital and capabilities. This study targeted Louis Vuitton to examine the fashion narrative. The common results of Louis Vuitton’s fashion narrative according to the communication platform are as follows. First, it emphasizes well-designed craftsmanship and artistry to convey the value and meaning of the brand. Second, it expresses the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie using traveling for finding life purpose, nature, and freedom as common denominators. Louis Vuitton connects, shares, and engages with customers by crossing the communication platform and trying multi-sensory changes based on the fashion narrative of the ‘artification’ message encompassing craftsmanship, innovation, and travel. The fashion narrative of Louis Vuitton applies tools (e.g., design, direction, stage, and props) differently according to the nature of media. In other words, the fashion narrative in the form of transmedia storytelling is a marketing communication strategy that indicates the representation means and direction of a brand’s goals by remediating the brand narrative in various ways through the communication platform.

Introduction The fashion business is known as one of the major industries that is suffering from rising concerns about the consumption of its product, which led to a reorganization of the fashion supply chain to become more sustainable three decades ago. The interest in the concept of sustainability and demand for sustainable marketing activities is gradually growing in the fashion industry due to the negative image and press it receives. Within the luxury fashion segment, the three main themes that are recognized to contribute to sustainability are exclusivity, craftmanship and limited production. However, luxury brands are increasingly shifting their attention and commitment towards environmental and social issues to be incorporated in the concept of sustainability. Yet, the majority of consumers has little understanding or misunderstands the concept of sustainable fashion and marketing, which leads to a gap between attitudes towards sustainability and actual behavior. As a result, fashion brands are trying to leverage their brand by making sustainability a key marketing strategy to raise awareness about social, environmental, economic and cultural issues. Extant research has not explored this recent trend to understand how consumers evaluate fashion brands with a sustainable marketing communication, especially in the context of luxury brands. This study investigates how luxury and mass fashion brands can utilize sustainable marketing contents in social media communication to reach their target group and enhance their equity with sustainability associations. Theoretical Development Associative network models of memory have served as a fundamental framework for a wide range of studies related to the formation and transfer of associations. According to associative network theory, brand knowledge is represented in form of an associative network of memory nodes connected to each other. Nodes are activated when cues, such as advertising, are presented. Mere exposure to cues was shown to be sufficient to active associations and facilitate association transfer. While brands are continuously attempting to make use of associative power to leverage brand equity, extant research has provided compelling reasons to accept that association transfer can also result in brand dilution when a retrieval of conflicting or negative associations occurs. Especially in the context of luxury brands consisting of very unique associations and being different from mass brands in many regards, managing the brand’s associative network is a crucial task in order to send the right signals to consumers and maintain exclusivity. This study investigates how social media communication of different sustainability dimensions affects brand attitude and how it ultimately impacts behavioral outcomes in an attempt to build brand equity for mass and luxury fashion brands. Method and Data The hypotheses are tested with 273 respondents who participated in an online experiment. They were first asked to state their involvement with the category fashion. Subsequently, subjects were presented with a brand post either for the mass or luxury brand including claims related to one of the four sustainability dimensions or no claims for the control group respectively. The experiment consisted of a 2 (brand: mass or luxury) x 5 (sustainability dimensions: none, cultural, economic, environmental, social) factorial design. The measures that followed included attitudinal as well as behavioral constructs related to the brand, sustainability as well as social media use. Analysis of covariance is applied to test for main effects and interaction effects. Summary of Findings This study provides evidence that social media communication of a sustainable brand affects the purchase intention of consumers. The findings indicate a significant difference between the mass and the luxury brand used for this study. The mass brand exhibits the potential to leverage associations with cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability. However, the results only reveal a marginally significant higher purchase intention when cultural sustainability is communicated compared to when the brand does not provide any sustainable associations. In contrast, the luxury brand suffers from significant brand dilution across all four sustainability dimensions resulting in a decline in purchase intention. Key Contributions The findings reveal that sustainability communication exerts a diverging influence depending on the type of brand that is involved. This study suggests that mass brands are able to benefit from sustainability communication in an attempt to leverage brand equity. However, for a luxury brand this type of associations rather presents a liability that might dilute the brand. The findings of this study provide important insights for brand managers. Since mass brands are currently increasing efforts into sustainable communication in the fashion industry, the results suggest that this might be a promising investment. However, luxury brands are advised to carefully manage the communication of salient content related to sustainability as it might harm the invaluable and unique associations inherent in a luxury brand.

In an increasingly digital and interactive global marketing landscape, social media marketing is emerging as one of the most important strategic tools for brand communication. This is especially true in the luxury fashion context, which traditionally exploited virtual environments as an effective communicational tool of brand-related content and product usage information all over the world. A contemporary consumer cohort that exhibits digital- and virtual-oriented behaviors are Millennials, which represent the digital native generation highly inclined to Internet interaction and, thus, a relevant strategic opportunity for social media marketers in the luxury industry. While the literature reports a positive relationship between Millennials’ social media usage and purchase intention towards luxury brand, scant attention has been paid to the underlying mechanisms explaining such a relationship. To fill this gap, the current research proposes and tests a conceptual model to provide three main contributions to the social media and brand communication literature: first, consumers’ perceptions of interactivity – a multidimensional construct comprised of real-time conversation, no delay/timing, and engaging/navigation – is hypothesized as an antecedent of social media usage. In this way, relevant theoretical and practical implications are provided to online luxury marketers interested in embracing virtual environments for brand communication. Next, two significant constructs of consumer behavior such as materialism – comprised of success, hedonism, and happiness – and morality – comprised of moral judgment and moral intensity – are hypothesized as mediating variables of the relationship between social media usage and purchase intention towards luxury brands. Particularly, these materialistic and ethical decision making processes emerge as relevant for Millennials’ online purchasing activities, with the expectation of transparent and effective brand-related information through social media. Finally, these mediating influences are hypothesized to be moderated by two other relevant constructs in the brand communication process—consumers’ motivation to use social media and advertising skepticism. In fact, a better assessment of Millennials’ motivation and skepticism toward social media marketing communication result as crucial for modern strategic marketers. Such hypotheses are tested using bootstrapped moderated mediation analysis on a sample of 297 Millennials actively following luxury brand social media activities. Our results confirm the proposed hypotheses, particularly both materialism and idealism partially mediate the relationship between social media usage and purchase intention. Moreover, motivation to use social media improves the effect of social media usage on materialism, whereas advertising skepticism reduces the effect of idealism on purchase intention. These findings contribute to the social media and brand communication literature, providing interesting avenues for future research.

The purpose of this study was to empirically examine the effects of salespeople's self-determination, shared value; and communication satisfaction on their job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention in a fashion company. Questionnaires were administered to 475 salespeople who worked in fashion shop at the time of the study. The data was analyzed via factor analysis, correlation analysis, and a structural equation model. The results indicated that self-determination was extracted as autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Only the relatedness of self-determination factors was positively correlated with formal and informal communication satisfaction. In addition, recognizing hared value was positively correlated with formal and informal communication satisfaction; whereas, the practice of shared value was positively correlated with formal, but not informal communication satisfaction. Formal communication satisfaction was significantly correlated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Conversely, informal communication satisfaction was significantly correlated with job satisfaction, but was not related to organizational commitment. Finally, job satisfaction was significantly correlated with organizational commitment and negatively correlated with turnover intention. Moreover, organizational commitment was negatively correlated with turnover intention. The implications of this research for human resources management within fashion companies are discussed in the concluding section of this paper.

Fashion brands are influenced by multiple identities. Even though, for example, the brand name might still be associated with one or more creative founders (Gucci, Prada, Chanel, Hermès, Adidas, Joop) the brand image, and moreover the overall brand reputation are influenced by many different identities. For instance, a specific product identity (e.g., Gucci’s Bamboo Bag), the identity of the city or country of origin (Florence, Italy), the identities of well-known key customers as brand ambassadors (Sophia Loren, Vanessa Redgrave, Lady Diana, Naomi Watts etc.). Of course, also fashion brands who are not directly associated with the name of creative founders are composed of the effects of several identities. In the case of e.g. Nike especially successful athletes (Steve Prefontaine, Michael Jordan etc.), specific sports and sport events, and product lines tailor-made for them did help to build a strong brand reputation. All in all, it seems to be expedient to understand fashion brands as more of less complex systems composed of several identities. To deal in more detail with such “brand systems” is becoming particularly important against the background of several strategic challenges – e.g., when fashion brands are growing older and the creative founders lose their specific gravitational power, when in the process of internationalization new countries gain more and more importance who’s citizens might not have a strong access to the existing brand reputation drivers, or simply when in the context of the growing global competition the fashion brand needs to be “refreshed”. Against the background of cultural differences, or even - as within countries - lifestyle differences between different groups of customers, it can also be quite possibly that very different reputation drivers account for the success of a brand. Thus, it is necessary to identify, in different contexts, the relevant reputation drivers, and to analyze which interplay of those drivers might be particularly promising. Is it the creative founder, the corporate heritage, the country and/or city of origin, a special designer, a specific corporate culture, an outstanding product design, attractive key customers etc.? Which combination of such identity factors leads to what kind of success (e.g., brand loyalty, brand trust, price premium)? Will, for instance, heritage especially lead to brand trust, whereas an outstanding product design and specifically attractive key customers create the readiness for a higher price premium? And, is it necessary to create sub-brands to especially highlight specific identities in the process of building a brand system (e.g., the sub-branding of a Michael Jordan product line in the case of Nike)? Or is sufficient to only communicate an alignment with the brand (e.g., ads showing Naomi Watts wearing a Gucci Bamboo Handbag)? In other words, which kind of brand system, and which kind of brand communications has to be designed to attract specific target groups and to sustain competitive advantages? The present contribution aims to present a conceptual framework for analyzing “brand systems” in the fashion industry. Concomitantly, an approach of measuring such brand systems will be presented. Furthermore, a concept for analyzing the impact of several sub-identities on the development of the overall brand reputation and brand success against the background of existing contingencies will be outlined. With the introduction and discussion of such a conceptual framework it especially is intended to initiate the launching of an international research project which attempts to find an answer basically to the following question: Which via an integrated branding and brand systems communication carefully crafted composition of sub-identities might be how successful under what kind of situational conditions?

The global luxury market is relentlessly growing over the last few decades, defying the global economic crisis. It is estimated that the luxury market is made up by a continuously enlarging heterogeneous group of 330 to 380 million consumers worldwide. The consumption of luxuries goes beyond the riches and wealth of countries, as the highest luxury spenders are to be found in places like the Middle East, Japan, and China. Luxury goods’ penetration relatively to GDP is low in countries like Germany and the U.S. and high in Italy, France, and South Korea. Wealth and economics alone cannot explain the economics underlying luxury consumption; culture is an important driver of growth in this sector. Culture gives meaning to luxuries, affects the perceived value and motivations to buy luxury goods, and determines luxuries’ signaling power and potency as differentiators and identity signifiers. Today, despite the size, growth and geographical spread of the luxury goods market, cross-cultural research is limited and rather scattered in different fields. Much of the research undertaken draws from Hofstede’s typology of culture and focuses on a narrow range of conceptual issues. The purpose of this presentation is to review and summarize existing cross-cultural research on luxury products and to identify fruitful future research directions that will expand our understanding of luxury goods marketing. In addition, attention will be given to examining current trends and behaviors in the field

Launched in 2008 and 2010 respectively, Instagram and Pinterest are two of the fasted growing social media platforms with 220 million users combined (Leverage 2014, Techcrunch 2014, Loren & Swiderski 2012). Their success is due to their simplicity and a focus on visuals rather than text, furthermore they are described as platforms with strategic potential for fashion brands (Wired 2012). Despite this, many fashion brands have been slow to engage with them. However the Huffington Post (2012) suggests that the visual social media has a wide appeal with respect to both brand positioning and increasing awareness. Recent research by Mashable (2014) highlights that referral traffic and spend is higher from Pinterest users than Facebook users, and this contributes to the rationale for study. The aim of this reseach is twofold, firstly it is to explore the reasons for the utilisation of visual social media platforms within a fashion brands marketing planning cycle, and second it seeks to identify the strategic and operational ways in which fashion brands can use them. For the purpose of this paper only Instagram and Pinterest are investigated. Using a qualitative and inductive approach, the study will use in-depth elite interviews with 6 UK fashion brands (2 Luxury, 2 mid-market, 2 value) alongside content analysis of their platforms. This will enable the research to also consider how each platform can be harnessed at different levels of the market therefore contributing to the lack of empirical applied research in this area.

The 21st century is the age when a sensational image has more explanatory power and can deliver a more powerful message than a message consisting of logical thinking. Powerful visual images create a big impact on many people throughout the world, overcoming linguistic barriers and even replacing language as a means of communication. In the fashion field, the concept and power of visual images within the new multimedia of the 21st century are becoming increasingly important. In recent years, other than the above methods, videos, movies and animation features have been produced directly to enhance visual effects and attempts are increasing to use these new tools as communication methods. This study focuses on animation contents that have been used in the fashion industry to overcome prejudice of luxury international brands that feature images that emphasize value, quality and heritage. The purpose of this study is to focus on the specific character of fashion animation in order to overview the concept of 21st video fashion communication and to show how the collection concept that includes color and detail places an emphasis on visual images. Analysis of previous research, theoretical research through literature and case study on Prada fashion animation led to the following conclusion. The common features of two different Prada fashion animation show that both animation have the following features in common : realism, dramatic impact and convergence for expression methods, and creativeness, hybrid and a happy ending for contents. Beginning with this study, I believe that various angles of interest and concern about communication in the fashion world, which is a social and cultural phenomenon that changes rapidly, can be will be looked at and learned from.