The communities of fashion brands and their cross connections: An empirical investigation based on Facebook data

Mariana Medeiros Seixas (1) , Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb (1)

1 CNELIAS - Centre Norbert Elias

It is not any surprise to say that Facebook is one of the most popular social networks. This growing and powerful market enable fashion brands to attain consumers worldwide, increasing their popularity and sales figure. For that reason their investment on marketing and management of Facebook pages is highly increasing. Also, this field is gaining strong interest from researchers in fashion studies. Surveys and data analysis have been done considering the users’ social experience and user’s influence on Facebook (Lewis, Gonzalez and Kaufman : 2011), the user’s motivations to “like” fashion pages (LI and Mousseaux : 2013), the construction of identity by displaying pages of brands in personal accounts (Zhao, Grasmuck and Martin 2008) and so on. However, this paper aims to treat another dimension of fashion brands pages on Facebook, observing experimentaly the proximity and the distance between communities of fashion brands pages on Facebook, formed by the subscription of its users. We propose to base our study on scatter diagrams that represents fashion brands that were “liked” simultaneously by 280 Facebook users chose randomly and worldwide. Once we identify these communities using community algorithm (Facebook data tools provided for developers), we will propose a few hypothesis to justify their organization. We propose to analyse the different phenomena represented from this data and to speculate the reasons that could explain the connection or the exclusion of brands in these communities, the interactivity between them or their interdependence. Also, and for further study, we will analyze more closely the profile of people in each group, what would specify users and consumers of those brands and the interdependence of brands. The goal of this article which is based on a Masters thesis project is to observe the relationship between fashion brands on online social networks and to understand their interactive reciprocity. That study would allow us to have an overview of fashion brands organization in the market and new fashion communication patterns that could be developped to improve the cross connection between fashion brands on online platforms like Facebook.

Mots clés: Fashion films; Fashion film; Brand communication; Brand community; Fashion brands; Cinephilia; Facebook analytics; Community Communication; Brands valuation how to estimate the respective value of brands and trade marks; Scatter diagram; Social network Analysis SNA; Facebook reactions; Facebook site web; Facebook pages; Communities of Knowledge; Communities of Interests; Communities of Brands

Domaines: Sciences de l'information et de la communication

Mariana Medeiros Seixas, Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb. The communities of fashion brands and their cross connections: An empirical investigation based on Facebook data. Fashion Tales 2015 International Conference, ModaCult - Centre for the Study of Fashion and Cultural Production; Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Sep 2015, Milan, Italy. ⟨hal-01884048⟩