Understanding the effect of fashion involvement in the motivations to interact with a brand in social media applied to MANGO

Abstract

Nowadays, around 3,000 billion textile and garment industry new companies are entering the market daily (FashionUnited, 2016), which makes it a very competitive market. Nonetheless, fashion has changed. It his evident, that the industry has gone through a transformation because of social media and this shift is occurring because major fashion houses start to understand the real influence of social networking sites on the customer (Huffpost, 2017). Thus, the current research used ‘fashion involvement’, ‘motivations for using social media’ and ‘purchase intention’ as the three constructs of study. The objective is to understand whether fashion involvement influences the motivations to interact with a brand in social media and then the impact it might have on purchase intention, in the specific case of the brand Mango in the Portuguese market, due to personal involvement with the brand and current limitations of the brand in the online environment. In terms of methodology, this dissertation is divided in an exploratory and quantitative study. An online, structured and self-administrative questionnaire was performed, resulting in 265 valid responses. The main finding is that people mainly perceived Mangos’ social media platforms as entertainment and information seeking platforms, which is positively influenced by the involvement of consumers with the brand. Lastly, this thesis added significant information in the research about fashion industry both academic and managerial, however some implications for future research are then identified.

Date of Award	18 Jul 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Carolina Baptista Afonso (Supervisor)