Conceptualising involvement in fashion social media brand communities

Abstract

This study addresses the lack of understanding of the different elements (fashion products, fashion brands, social media platforms) and types of involvement (enduring and situational) that interplay in the development of involvement with fashion brands in social media communities. The research revises the concept of involvement in fashion social media brand communities from a multidimensional approach, with three different dimensions: fashion involvement, fashion brand involvement (enduring) and involvement with social media brand communities (situational). The revised conceptualisation of involvement is empirically tested using a sample (N = 451) of members of different luxury fashion and fast-fashion social media brand communities in Indonesia, a country with one of the largest social media audiences in the world. The results show that a multidimensional view provides a more adequate framework to study involvement in social media, even though further investigation is required to fully understand the concept of involvement in social media brand communities.