Journal of Interactive Advertising

ISSN: (Print) 1525-2019 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujia20

The Power of Social Media in Fashion Advertising

Shu-Chuan Chu & Yoo-Kyoung Seock

To cite this article: Shu-Chuan Chu & Yoo-Kyoung Seock (2020) The Power of Social
Media in Fashion Advertising, Journal of Interactive Advertising, 20:2, 93-94, DOI:
10.1080/15252019.2020.1802955

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2020.1802955

Accepted author version posted online: 28

Jul 2020.
Published online: 11 Aug 2020.

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JOURNAL OF INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING
2020, VOL. 20, NO. 2, 93–94
https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2020.1802955
FROM THE GUEST EDITORS
The Power of Social Media in Fashion Advertising
Shu-Chuan Chua and Yoo-Kyoung Seockb
a
College of Communication, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, USA; bCollege of Family and Consumer Sciences, University of
Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA
In today’s digital era, as people increasingly spend their
time online, social media has become a trendsetter for
society. Social media platforms are now the primary
source of information for consumers and one of the
most powerful marketing tools for fashion businesses.
For example, Instagram has been recognized as the most
influential source for fashion insight. The fashion indus-
try has benefited from using social media, posting pic-
tures and videos and writing about their fashion
products and business practices to attract consumers and
increase brand awareness. In particular, social media
provides an interactive channel of mass communication
to amplify marketing strategy for fashion brands. These
platforms attract new customers by offering information
about fashion and brands while keeping loyal customers
by offering new channels for advertising.
Though fashion companies create and deliver value-
added contents in social media to satisfy consumer wants
and needs, there still remain challenges for them when
using digital advertising in social media space. People
want fashion companies to offer real-time interactions
with them through an active presence in social media,
creating emotional attachments. Given the tremendous
power of creating content and gaining consumers’ atten-
tion on social media, fashion companies might consider
digital advertising highly impactful and more valuable
and authentic than traditional advertising. It might be
the most likely direction for gaining control and achiev-
ing the results they are looking for as the advertising
landscape continues to shift. As the Journal of Interactive
Advertising is designed to “promote our understanding
of interactive advertising, marketing, and communication
in a networked world,” it is important to understand the
impact of interactive advertising on fashion consumer
behavior given the growth of the fashion market along
with new developments in digital and social
technologies.
As was indicated in the call for papers, the goal of
this special section on Interactive Advertising and Digital
Communications in Fashion is to examine the
CONTACT Shu-Chuan Chu schu7@depaul.edu College of Communication, DePaul University, 1 East Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60604, USA, or
Yoo-Kyoung Seock yseock@uga.edu College of Family and Consumer Sciences, 303 Dawson Hall, 305 Sanford Drive, Athens, GA 30677, USA
Shu-Chuan Chu (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is an associate professor in the College of Communication at DePaul University.
Yoo-Kyoung Seock (PhD, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) is a professor of merchandising in the College of Family and Consumer
Sciences, University of Georgia.
ß 2020 American Academy of Advertising
intersection of interactive advertising and fashion con-
sumer behavior. The three articles in this section show-
case digital advertising in the fashion industry and
suggest some future research agendas. These articles
address empowerment hashtags in Instagram fashion
advertising, beauty and fashion mega- and micro-influ-
encers on Twitter, and antecedents of social media-based
retail commerce activities.
In the first article, “Effects of Brand Name versus
Empowerment Advertising Campaign Hashtags in
Branded Instagram Posts of Luxury versus Mass-Market
Brands,” the University of Georgia’s Taeyeon Kim and
Joe Phua compare hashtags of brand names versus hash-
tags with empowerment messages by using two studies.
They examine the perceptions of consumers when hash-
tags are used by luxury versus mass-market brands.
Mixed results are found across the two studies. Using a
sample of undergraduate students (Study 1) and a gen-
eral sample of participants (Study 2), Kim and Phua
illustrate that empowerment messages provide greater
information value and generate more favorable attitudes
than brand names. Their findings lead to specific prac-
tical implications that social media-based ads can be
effective for luxury fashion brands when empowerment-
hashtags are used.
It is no surprise that the role of influencers in the
modern fashion and beauty industries is a research area
of increasing importance. In “Too Big to Sell? A
Computational Analysis of Network and Content
Characteristics among Mega and Micro Beauty and
Fashion Social Media Influencers,” a team of four
authors from the University of Alabama—Rebecca K.
Britt, Jameson L. Hayes, Brian C. Britt, and Haseon
Park—provide evidence that micro-influencers can
become more powerful than mega-influencers by devel-
oping intimate, emotionally laden interpersonal connec-
tions. Britt and her colleagues use an innovative
computational approach to examine differences in con-
tent and the diffusion process through mega- and micro-
influencer Twitter networks for fashion and beauty
94 EDITORIAL
brands. This study provides valuable theoretical and
practical implications. In particular, the findings demon-
strate that both micro-influencers and mega-influencers
provide value that fosters consumer-brand relationships
based on the characteristics of their networks and
the content shared within them. This Rapid
Communications (RAP) paper offers directions for future
research that can enhance our knowledge of social media
influencers in the beauty and fashion industries.
Continued research is desired on this topic.
As social media continues to gain popularity, an
understanding of the effect of brand-related and social
media–related experiences on future intention is crucial.
In the third article, “Antecedents of Social Media-
Induced Retail Commerce Activities: Impact of Brand-
Consumer Relationships and Psychological Sense of
Community,” the University of Georgia’s Jewon Lyu and
Kent State University’s Jihyun Kim seek to explain the
roles of brand-consumer relationships and psychological
sense of community in consumer attitude and purchase
intention in a multichannel context (e.g., brick-and-mor-
tar, e-commerce). Applying social identity theory, Lyu
and Kim finds that the psychological sense of commu-
nity plays a crucial role in building favorable attitudes
toward brands featured on an influencer’s social media
page, which leads to positive behavioral consequences.
The findings of this study provide potential implications
for fashion marketers and retailers who want to use
influencer social media platforms as venues for cultivat-
ing relationships with consumers and brands.
We would like to thank all contributors and reviewers
for their excellent work. We hope that this special sec-
tion serves as a catalyst for studies of interactive adver-
tising and digital communications in fashion. As new
technologies continue to emerge, future researchers
could examine the roles of artificial intelligence (AI),
augmented reality (AR), and virtual try-on in fashion
consumer behavior. For example, it would be interesting
to examine how Stitch Fix, an online styling subscription
service, uses AI technologies to provide targeted prod-
ucts. In addition, the impact of fashion influencers, blog-
gers, and vloggers on the fashion industries deserves
continued attention. Last but not least, how digital strat-
egies and fashion consumption behavior change in the
post–COVID-19 era calls for academic research. Our
ultimate goal is to understand how interactive advertis-
ing has changed and impacted fashion consumer behav-
ior and to provide implications for consumers and
the industry.