Engaging the consumer online : A quantitative study of attaining consumer engagement through social media in the luxury fashion segment

Abstract: Good communication is an important factor for a firm to think about when wanting to engage their consumers. Recently there has been an interest over the concept of consumer engagement within the context of social media by business practitioners. Social media today is used in most aspects of life and it is important to understand how to use it in order to enhance business strategies when approaching consumers. Consumer engagement has been defined through existing research in different ways, having no clear model for practitioners to follow when attempting to engage consumers. This is one of the main problems within existing research, as well as each focusing on different social media triggers. It is important to understand which triggers are more relevant when trying to attain consumer engagement. As well as bringing up the benefits that comes from utilizing such a concept. Research regarding consumer engagement within social media is required within a different context, in order to determine the triggers relevancy to the concept of engagement. Therefore, the purpose of this study is about attaining consumer engagement through the use of social media in the luxury fashion segment, which was done through the use of Brodie et al conceptual model of consumer engagement. The research that was conducted was of a quantitative nature, utilizing a cross-section research design. To gather primary data a questionnaire was created and distributed through social media, where 101 respondents out of a desired 90 were used for the analysis. The data gathered through the questionnaire was then analysed through the statistical program of SPSS, where descriptive statistics, a correlation analysis and a regression analysis were conducted. This was done in order to ensure the validity and reliability, as well as getting results to accept or rejected the presented hypotheses. The findings of this paper show that each of the five independent variables has a significant effect on the dependent variable of consumer engagement when tested on their own. However, when all the variables were tested together three out of the five hypotheses presented were rejected, these being the independent variables of co-developing, advocating and socializing. This does not mean that the variables for which hypotheses got rejected should be disregarded according to the results obtained from the regression analysis, according to the data gathered these triggers are still individually relevant to the attainment of consumer engagement within the luxury fashion segment via social media.