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Insights from consumer interactions on a social networking site: Findings from six apparel retail brands

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Abstract

Consumer social interactions on a social networking site have been discussed in the literature as information sources on consumer negative voice, product market research, and trend forecasting. The present study contributes to this line of research by identifying insights that a retail brand can derive from consumer social interactions about a competing retail brand. Based on 2,573,620 consumer social interactions related to six apparel retailers on the social networking site Facebook, this study analyzes the fan number, brand posting and response behavior, and consumer activities. The number of fans correlates with retail sales and the number of stores. However, the fan number is not an indicator of (social) displeasure. Consumer activities such as commenting, liking, and sharing, provide significant indications of these situations. As posting and response behavior reflect central elements of brand strategies on social networking sites, this study proposes a framework for identifying these strategies and the positioning of competing brands. For the six apparel retail brands, we identified a prototypical representative for three of four social interaction strategies.

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Notes

  1. The fiscal year varies for all six companies. Sales are gross, except for Ernsting’s family and Zara who released net sales data.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks the editors of the special issue and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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  1. Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, University of Hagen, 58097, Hagen, Germany

    Carsten D. Schultz

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Schultz, C.D. Insights from consumer interactions on a social networking site: Findings from six apparel retail brands. Electron Markets 26, 203–217 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-015-0209-7

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