The communication around the fashion market is one of the most active around the Social Media and Online News. It generates lots of buzz and we have seen that consumers themselves have become prescribers and creators of trends, so the conventional advertising is no longer the most influential communication in this sector.
What kind of information can we find in the Social Media? Which brands are most discussed? Which topics are most popular around each brand in different regions?
The buzz is the main form of alternative marketing in the market of fashion brands, it is based on the word of mouth to spread and make it through the bloggers, establishing itself as a communication and prescription tool.
We analyzed retailers such as ZARA, H&M, Mango, Benetton and Promod during a period starting with July until August this year, with focus on the UK, Spain and France user generated conversations. The buzz around fashion brands comes mainly from social media channels (blogs, forums, Facebook and Twitter), gathering 95% of the total number of articles about the brands. The remaining 5% are articles originated in online mainstream media, visible in the graph below. The main sources of content are blogs and forums 58% and 25% respectively.
However, the distribution of channels changes depending on the regions. In Spain the most active channel is the mainstream media, especially the regional and economic press. In UK the forums are the most popular channel and in France blogs related to style and fashion trends.
Not only that the volume of buzz varies according to the territory, but also the values that are associated with each of the retailers. For example, the analysis shows that the most often mentioned retailer is ZARA with 55% of the total output, followed by H&M. Spanish media is mostly generating buzz for Mango and Benetton. Promod, however, is the third most cited firm in France.
Another point of interest is what the users say when discussing the retailers’ brands online. The topics with the highest volumes in relation to all brands are “price” and “online sales”, but the analysis can be performed also per brand and per market.
When it comes to ZARA and H&M, users discuss the price of the products, the online sales, but also the available accessories within the collections.
MANGO, by the contrary, is related mostly to the new collections.
Benetton is mostly associated to the “advertising campaigns” and “designers” whereas Promod with “accessories” and “footwear”.
While doing a regional analysis of the topics mostly discussed by the online users we discovered that the prices are still the most discussed topic in all markets, with the exception of UK and Spain, where the highest interest is for the “online shops”.
Stunning insights in the world of fashion retailers
The social media monitoring process based on the Attentio Brand Dashboard allows the extraction of interesting automated insights, such as:
- Online purchases of clothing, footwear and accessories surpassed for the first time the purchases of plane tickets and it’s quickly approaching the books market, which are the most successful product for online shopping.
- The new collections of the brands receive a fair amount of attention from social media users.
- A conflict in Bangladesh related to the bad conditions for the retail workers has generated negative comments across the social media and online news, reflected in the buzz for the quoted brands.
As conclussion we can say that the fashion market is totally integrated in the social media world and that the consumers are in close contact through the internet, where they seek for information and generate content about what they are interested in.
