Spreading the Word of Fashion: Identifying Social Influencers in Fashion Marketing

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국마케팅과학회
· 수록지 정보 : Journal of Global Fashion Marketing / 1권 / 3호 / 142 ~ 153페이지
· 저자명 : Klaus-Peter Wiedmann, Nadine Hennigs, Sascha Langner

초록

Regarded as the most powerful force in the fashionmarketplace, often more powerful and valuable than plannedcommunication from marketing organizations, word-of-mouth(WOM) has been recognized in marketing research for manydecades. Who are the main transmitters of WOM, and why aresome of them more successful at diffusing new fashions andstyles in social networks than others? How can socialinfluencers be characterized? A comprehensive understandingand management of fashion-oriented referral behavior impliesthe in-depth analysis of its conditions and drivers, as well asthe identification of those customers with the highest socialinfluence potential and WOM value. The contribution of thispaper is to give a theoretical and empirical overview ofrelevant factors characterizing social influencers in fashionmarketing and their fashion-oriented referral behavior. In thecourse of the paper, ten different factors are described andempirically tested, characterizing three different clusters ofsocial influencers: the fashion superspreaders, the narrativefashion experts and the helpful friends.
A comprehensive understanding and better management ofWOM referral behavior implies the in-depth analysis of itsconditions and drivers as well as the identification of thosecustomers with the highest social influence potential and value.
According to Columbia voting studies, social influence isrelated to “who one is,” “what one knows” and “whom oneknows”. “Who one is” and “what one knows” affect theindividual capital that results from several demographic,psychographic, and personality variables. The importance of"whom one knows" was subdivided into the idea ofaccessibility – addressing an influencer’s central location in thenetworks in which he is embedded – and the idea that an "…individual may be influential not only because people withinhis group look to him for advice but also because of whomhe knows outside his group". Thus, for the purposes of thispaper, the WOM behavior and referral style of customers is tobe related to the customer’s individual and social capital attributes: A customer’s individual capital includes a customer’spersonality, knowledge, skills and abilities. Relating to aprofound understanding of WOM communications, a customer’ssocial capital requires the existence of and the effects resultingfrom specific and sustained social relationships betweenconsumers. In terms of a customer’s reference value, socialcapital addresses his social resources and is related to theeffects of WOM referral behavior, such as the customer’sopportunity, motivation, and ability to disseminate WOM, aswell as the scope, contents, and influence of the referral flows.
To analyze the relevancy of different variables measuringindividual and social capital to portray high social influencepotential in a more aggregated sense, the dimensions ofindividual and social capital needed to be operationalized.
Preparing the empirical test of our model, we used alreadyexisting and tested measures and generated further itemsresulting from exploratory inter-views resulting fromexploratory interviews with marketing and fashion expertsbeing asked what individual traits or social resources theyassociate with social influencers. The first version of ourquestionnaire was face validated twice using exploratory andexpert interviews and pre-tested with 50 respondents to identifythe most important and reduce the total number of items. Thesample used in this study was defined as male or femaleGerman respondents, aged 18 years and older. A total of 480interviews were conducted in the summer of 2007.
Data were analyzed in three stages: First, the variousdimensions underlying the individual and social capital ofsocial influencers were uncovered by a factor analysis usingthe principal component method with varimax rotation. Then,the factor scores for each respondent were saved andconsequently used in stage two for clustering them intodifferent groups of social influencers. The results stronglysuggested the presence of three clusters. Based on the variablesfrom which they derived, the empirical findings give cause forlabeling the three empirically verified clusters as follows: thefashion superspreaders the narrative fashion experts, and thehelpful friends. Each type of social influencer is characterizedby a different underlying philosophy of giving or not givingWOM referrals, which helps marketing managers to understandthe nature and extent of WOM communications and mightserve as a theoretical basis for efficiently generating andman-aging positive WOM referrals from existing clients. Thisknowledge can improve the efficiency of selecting differentcustomer groups and of encouraging appropriate key consumersto leverage their WOM potential.

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