Social media marketing offers a vast array of opportunities for fashion brands to engage with their core customers and the broader digital audience. However, they still struggle with the question of which specific strategies can be successfully applied to enhance the effectiveness social media marketing (Rampton, 2014). This study investigates how a luxury brand’ social media brand page satisfaction and brand love are positively related to desired marketing outcomes (i.e., word-of-mouth and loyalty intentions toward the luxury brand). On the basis of Customer Value Theory (Sweeny & Soutar, 2001) and Brand Love Theory (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006), this study developed and tested a dual impact model encompassing both brand page value (i.e., information, financial, brand interaction, social interaction, and entertainment value) and brand value (i.e., inner self-and social self-expressive value). Usable responses from 290 U.S. consumers following at least one luxury brand on social media were used for data analysis. The results of structural equation modeling showed that information, brand interaction, and entertainment values were positively related to brand page satisfaction while financial and social interaction values were not. In addition, inner self-and social self-expressive brand values were positively related to brand love. In addition, brand page satisfaction was positively related to WOM intentions but was not related to loyalty intentions whereas brand love was positively related to both WOM and loyalty intentions. Furthermore, mediation analysis showed that brand page satisfaction fully mediated the influences of information, brand interaction, and entertainment values on WOM intentions. In addition, brand love fully mediated the influences of social self-expressive value on WOM and loyalty intentions. Our study suggests that social media brand pages providing unique value propositions can reap benefits in terms of enhanced brand page satisfaction, highlighting the crucial role of “content excellence” in social media marketing (Holt, 2016). Our findings also show that brand followers tend to love a particular luxury brand when the brand helps express their self and when the symbolic meaning of the brand is integrated into their own self-identity. Thus, one of the roles of social media marketing is in elucidating brand followers how to express their inner states guided by the desire to signal their self-identity not to others but to themselves (Berger & Heath, 2017).

Due to the highly competitive nature of the apparel industry, fashion brands attempt to constantly engage consumers through various marketing strategies. Social media was found to drive female consumer purchases for apparel items. In shopping for fashion, consumers have used their personal connections on social media as an information source about different brands and products and to seek approval of their peers before making a purchase decision (Park & Cho, 2012). Cha (2009) found that female consumers look to their social media network connections for emotional connections, opinions, and approval on clothing, perfume, and accessories they are considering purchasing online. Ruane and Wilson (2013) found that female consumers use social media sites for information on where to shop and what merchandise to purchase. In studying the effect of blogs on corporate outcome, the role Millennials play is found to be significant. They are heavily reliant on word of mouth when up to 93% of Millennials has purchased a product after hearing about it from a family member or friend (Hoffmann, 2014). They not only usually read reviews prior to purchase, but also pass their recommendations via social media post-purchase (Hoffman, 2014). This age group constitutes 27% of the US population and in spite of their lower incomes, they spend more money on e-commerce than any other age group ($2,000 annually) (Smith, 2015). Therefore, this study aims to suggest strategies to fashion brands on effective blog campaign, which may eventually provide insights on how marketers can encourage engagement with female Millennial apparel consumers. The study’s objectives are 1) to examine the effect of brand awareness building customer’s brand credibility, brand similarity and blog engagement 2) to investigate the impact of brand responses on customer’s brand credibility, brand similarity and blog engagement, and 3) interaction effect between brand awareness and brand responses on customer engagement through cognitive evaluation in fashion blog context. A 3 (brand response: automated response, personalized response, no response) x2 (Brand awareness: well know, unknown) experimental design was developed through a pre-test of 139 participants. For main-test, experiment conditions and the following survey were completed by the convenience sample of 537 students in a large Southern university. Research findings revealed the significant impact of brand awareness on customer perceived brand credibility and brand similarity which were significant predictors of engagement intention. In contrast, the study indicated the insignificant relationship between brand responses and blog engagement intention. Study’s result not only suggested implications for marketers but also expanded further studies contributing on the body of knowledge.