Fashion Blogging - the Impact on Sales
Consumer Behavior
Fashion blogging – the impact on sales
Abstract
The recent growth of consumer generated media (CGM), also known as “new” media, has changed the nature of interaction between consumers and firms from unidirectional to bidirectional. This research addresses two key issues - does CGM affect consumer behavior and market outcomes and, is there any relationship between managerial communication and CGM?
The most prevalent form of new media is blogs. Thus, we first investigate whether blogging activity leads to (differential) market outcomes. We then examine whether managerial communication (magazines advertising) and blogging are synergistic.
We assemble a unique data set from fashion containing market outcomes (sales), new media (blogs) and traditional media (magazines advertising) for a brand of clothing, and a brand of shoes. Each category has at least one product launch during the duration of our sample periods.
We specify a simultaneous equation log-linear system for market outcomes and the volume of blogs. Our results suggest that blogs are predictive of market outcomes, new and traditional media act synergistically, pre-launch magazines advertising spurs blogging activity but become less effective post-launch and that market outcomes have some effect on blogging. We find detailed support for some of these findings via a unique and novel text mining analysis. We discuss the managerial implications of our findings.
I-Introduction
Consumer generated media (CGM) such as blogs (a contraction of the term “Web logs”) have witnessed explosive growth in the last few years. For example, the number of blogs worldwide is estimated to be 184 millions with a readership of 346 million (March 2010). In contrast, in March 2003, the number of blogs was essentially zero. Other types of CGM have also seen similar growth patterns, e.g., Facebook, which started in February 2004, now has about 400 million members worldwide (February 2011).
Fashion blogging – the impact on sales
Abstract
The recent growth of consumer generated media (CGM), also known as “new” media, has changed the nature of interaction between consumers and firms from unidirectional to bidirectional. This research addresses two key issues - does CGM affect consumer behavior and market outcomes and, is there any relationship between managerial communication and CGM?
The most prevalent form of new media is blogs. Thus, we first investigate whether blogging activity leads to (differential) market outcomes. We then examine whether managerial communication (magazines advertising) and blogging are synergistic.
We assemble a unique data set from fashion containing market outcomes (sales), new media (blogs) and traditional media (magazines advertising) for a brand of clothing, and a brand of shoes. Each category has at least one product launch during the duration of our sample periods.
We specify a simultaneous equation log-linear system for market outcomes and the volume of blogs. Our results suggest that blogs are predictive of market outcomes, new and traditional media act synergistically, pre-launch magazines advertising spurs blogging activity but become less effective post-launch and that market outcomes have some effect on blogging. We find detailed support for some of these findings via a unique and novel text mining analysis. We discuss the managerial implications of our findings.
I-Introduction
Consumer generated media (CGM) such as blogs (a contraction of the term “Web logs”) have witnessed explosive growth in the last few years. For example, the number of blogs worldwide is estimated to be 184 millions with a readership of 346 million (March 2010). In contrast, in March 2003, the number of blogs was essentially zero. Other types of CGM have also seen similar growth patterns, e.g., Facebook, which started in February 2004, now has about 400 million members worldwide (February 2011).