a study submitted in partial fulfilment of the...
TRANSCRIPT
Registration number: 100141014
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE CHINESE FASHION VIRTUAL COMMUNITY
WHAT DO CHINESE CONSUMERS TALK ABOUT FASHION?
A study submitted in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science in Information Management
at
THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
by
YUE FAN
September 2011
1
Abstract
Background. The literature presents the change of fashion market and the
application of virtual communities. Previous research on fashion consumers joining
in the virtual community was revealed. But few studies were conducted on Chinese
fashion consumers participating in virtual community.
Aim. The study aimed to investigate the fashion related discussion and different
member consumers in a Chinese fashion virtual community in order to generate the
insights in the fashion virtual community and improve understanding of Chinese
fashion consumers for retailers and marketers.
Methods. Content analysis was applied to categorise the posts in a virtual
community. Within the forum bbs.trends.com.cn, the subgroup brand-clothing was
selected for analysis. The first 200 threads with minimum 5 posts in this group were
investigated. A total of 4590 posts were reviewed and noted by two people
independently. The most popular category was further categorised using the same
method. Reliability for the study was conducted. Online questionnaire was designed
to obtain the demographic information of member consumers in this forum. The
questionnaire was only posted on this forum.
Results. The most popular categories were tips and advice, brands and designers,
personal style and retailers. The most popular tips and advice subcategories were
personal style tips, brand/ product select, retailer/ store and price consult. Chinese
consumers are lack of fashion knowledge and requiring fashion information.
Marketers and retailers can participate in the discussion in virtual community to
provide different consumer groups what they need while communicate their brand
and products.
Conclusion. It is concluded that although Chinese consumers have littler fashion
knowledge, they demand fashion related in
formation. Marketers and retailers can try to understand what Chinese consumers
really want, in order to better conduct brand communication with target consumers
and raise the marketing success rate.
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Acknowledgements
Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Jonathan Foster. He took so much
time out of his tight schedule to guide me and provided me suggestion and advice
throughout this dissertation. Secondly, I would like to thank my friend to help me
review the 4590 posts together. Finally, I would like to thank all the respondents who
participated in the online questionnaire.
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Table of Contents
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 7
1.1 Research Background......................................................................................... 7
1.2 Motivation .......................................................................................................... 8
1.3 Research Scope .................................................................................................. 8
1.4 Research Aims, Objectives and Questions ........................................................ 8
1.5 Methodology ...................................................................................................... 9
1.6 Research Structure ........................................................................................... 10
2 Literature review ..................................................................................................... 12
2.1 General overview of virtual communities ........................................................ 12
2.1.1 Social media marketing ............................................................................. 12
2.1.2 Concept of virtual community .................................................................. 12
2.1.3 Characteristics of virtual communities ..................................................... 13
2.1.4 The business value of virtual communities ............................................... 15
2.2 Understanding today‟s fashion ......................................................................... 16
2.2.1 Fashion and the Information Economy ..................................................... 16
2.2.2 Fashion consumer groups .......................................................................... 18
2.2.3 Chinese fashion consumers ....................................................................... 20
2.3 Virtual community and fashion marketing ...................................................... 21
2.3.1 Consumption with virtual communities .................................................... 21
2.3.2. What are consumers saying about fashion? ............................................. 23
2.3.3 Virtual communities with fashion retailers of apparel .............................. 25
3 Methodology ........................................................................................................... 27
3.1 Content analysis ............................................................................................... 27
3.1.1 Definition .................................................................................................. 27
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3.1.2 Unitizing .................................................................................................... 27
3.1.3 Advantages and disadvantages .................................................................. 28
3.1.4 Data collection .......................................................................................... 29
3.2 Online questionnaire: fashion consumer classification .................................... 31
3.2.1 Fashion consumer groups .......................................................................... 31
3.2.2 Questionnaire Design ................................................................................ 31
3.2.3 Final Questionnaire ................................................................................... 32
3.2.4 Distribution of Questionnaire .................................................................... 33
3.2.5 Method of Data Analysis .......................................................................... 33
4 Analysis ................................................................................................................... 34
4.1 Findings of content analysis ............................................................................. 34
4.1.1 Category of classification .......................................................................... 34
4.1.2 Sample presentation .................................................................................. 39
4.1.3 Sub-categories Identify ............................................................................. 45
4.2 Results of Online Questionnaire ...................................................................... 47
4.2.1 Questions analysis ..................................................................................... 47
4.2.2 Sample analysis ......................................................................................... 54
5 Discussion .............................................................................................................. 60
5.1 Discussion of results ........................................................................................ 60
5.1.1 The comparison with previous research by Thomas et al. (2007) ............ 60
5.1.2 Analysis of the differentiation ................................................................... 61
5.1.3 What is each type of Chinese consumers caring about fashion? .............. 62
5.1.4 Virtual communities and Chinese fashion market .................................... 64
5.2 The reliability of data ....................................................................................... 65
6 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 67
6.1 Summary of Results ......................................................................................... 67
6.1.1 Response to research questions ................................................................. 67
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6.2 Limitation ......................................................................................................... 69
6.2.1 Questionnaire concern ............................................................................... 69
6.2.2 Sample concern ......................................................................................... 69
6.2.2 Consumer category concern ...................................................................... 70
6.3 Contribution ..................................................................................................... 70
6.4 Recommendation.............................................................................................. 70
References .................................................................................................................. 72
Appendix .................................................................................................................... 81
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List of Figures
Figure 4.1 Classification of the results…………………………………………….38
Figure 4.2 Sub-categories of Tips and advice…………………………………......46
Figure 4.3 Gender………………………………………………………………....48
Figure 4.4 Ages……………………………………………………………………48
Figure 4.5 Location………………………………………………………………..49
Figure 4.6 Education……………………………………………………………....50
Figure 4.7 Expenditure…………………………………………………………….51
Figure 4.8 Factor considered in purchase…………………………………………52
Figure 4.9 Type of purchasers………………………………………………….....53
Figure 4.10 Types of fashion consumers…………………………………………54
List of tables
Table 3.1 Categories of topics……………………………………………………30
Table 4.1 a sample of the 200 selected threads and the number of posts………..35
Table 4.2 the results of classification…………………………………………....37
Table 4.3 the results of sub-categories of tips and advice…………………….....45
Table 4.4 Fashion innovators…………………………………………………….55
Table 4.5 Fashion opinion leaders……………………………………………….56
Table 4.6 Innovative communicators…………………………………………….57
Table 4.7 Fashion followers………………………………………………….......59
Table 5.1 comparison of two studies……………………………………………..61
Table 5.2 most popular subcategories of tips and advice……………………...…62
Table 5.3 Reliabilities of category………………………………………………..66
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1 Introduction
This chapter will introduce the background of research on fashion market, virtual
communities and the specific forum the research focused on. The research
motivation and scope will be given to explain why the study was conducted and
which aspects it focused on. Then, the aims, objectives and research questions of this
study will be illustrated. And the methodology of this study is introduced. Finally,
the outline of this dissertation is presented.
1.1 Research Background
The field of fashion from the late 1990s has been influenced by marketing forever
(Agins, 2000). Internet related technology changed the social communication by
gathering people from different geography or time. Marketers and retailers began to
recognise the importance of networked Internet and considered to apply it for
business to keep pace with today‟ fashion. Fashion consumers have been influenced
by the Internet as well. With the Internet related technology, they become more
powerful in the fashion fields. Astonishingly, they can even be the promoters of a
brand (Bickart and Schindler, 2001; Gruen et al., 2006). Consumers began to
influence not only the fashion trends but also the fashion market. Fashion marketers
are going to discover online platforms to build relationship and observe behaviours
of today‟s fashion consumers.
Virtual communities such as forums and social network sites provide users free
online platforms for information sharing and interaction. Communication methods
are becoming diverse, instant message, blogs, forums, links, videos, audios are used
to network with others. Users can participate in any interested communities to find
their interesting topics. Such as a fashion virtual community developed by some
users for fashion lovers to share opinions and ideas of fashion related topics. These
topics contain rich marketing related information, such as brand image, retailing
affinities, and shopping preferences.
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Bbs.trends.com.cn is a Chinese fashion forum, which gathers a group of fashion
insiders who have strong purchasing power, and pursued by fashion followers. They
influence users‟ fashion interests by their professional fashion perspectives. This
virtual community currently offers 23 types of fashion related subgroups for
members to chat and share fashion related information. The brand-clothing subgroup
is a general fashion group for consumers to talk about fashion. It is one of the most
activist forums with 22585 threads and 868668 posts in total so far.
1.2 Motivation
Fashion virtual communities have been explored by some researchers, but only in
some English virtual communities such as MySpace.com with most American
participants. There is nearly no study on Chinese fashion consumers and Chinese
fashion virtual communities. Thus, it is necessary and interesting to find out what
Chinese consumers are saying about fashion, in order to provide more information
for retailers, marketers and other researchers.
1.3 Research Scope
The research scope of the study focuses on two aspects: the demographic information
of member users in the brand-clothing group in bbs.trends.com.cn and the data from
the selected 4590 posts generated by these members.
1.4 Research Aims, Objectives and Questions
The study is based on previous researches to investigate the fashion related
discussion and different member consumers in a Chinese fashion virtual community
bbs.trends.com.cn. It aims to examine the content of topics from the member
consumers in order to generate the insights in the fashion virtual community and
improve understanding of Chinese fashion consumers for retailers and marketers.
The following objectives are generated to reach the research aims:
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Objective 1: To categorise the discussion topics members generated in a Chinese
fashion virtual community.
Objective 2: To classify user members in this forum into different fashion consumers
groups.
Objective 3: To find out the connection between fashion-related discussion and
different types of Chinese consumers.
Objective 4: To provide insight information in Chinese fashion marketing with
virtual communities.
This study was driven by four research questions including: “What are Chinese
consumers saying about fashion in the particular virtual community?”; “What types
of consumers do these members belong to?”; “What are the differences between each
type of Chinese fashion consumers?”; “What kinds of insights can retailers and
researchers gain from the fashion virtual community?”
1.5 Methodology
This study applied content analysis as the method to investigate the virtual
community. Brand-clothing subgroup of the forum was selected for analysis, since it
was most relevant to the general fashion topic discussion. The first 200 threads with
minimum 5 posts were selected for examination. Entire 4590 posts were analysed by
the author and one person independently. Each person reviewed all the posts and
noted each post and classified them into relevant topical categories. Reliability of
the coding was considered in this study. The online questionnaire was conducted to
investigate the consumer types for further analysis of the relationship with the results
of content analysis.
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1.6 Research Structure
The dissertation includes six chapters:
Chapter One: Introduction
This chapter gives an overview of the research, including introduce the research
background, define the research scope, express the aims, objectives and research
questions, and explain the motivations.
Chapter Two: Literature review
This chapter will review the key studies from the relevant literature; it includes three
parts: generally introducing the virtual community; understanding today‟s fashion
and fashion consumers and fashion virtual community and marketing.
Chapter Three: Methodology
This chapter will introduce the methodology used in this research and detail of online
questionnaire design and distribution will be explained. Data collection and method
of analysis will be illustrated as well.
Chapter Four: Analysis
The findings of the content analysis and the online questionnaire will be
demonstrated in this part, some samples of the topic discussion and demographic
information of member consumers will be selected and further analysed.
Chapter Five: Discussion
Some research results are compared with previous research and the reasons of
differentiation will be discussed. Different types of consumers will be connected
with different topics and the future of virtual community combining with Chinese
fashion market will be prospected.
Chapter Six: Conclusion
This chapter will summarise the whole dissertation, including answer to the research
questions, explain the limitation of the study and contribution to the future researches.
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In the end, the recommendation will be given to help other researchers and retailers
for further studies.
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2 Literature review
This chapter contains three parts. First part gives an outline of the virtual
communities and the marketing value of it. The second part introduces the fashion
and information economy and the characteristics of fashion consumers groups, the
research of Chinese fashion consumers was also mentioned. The last part combines
virtual community with fashion marketing to gain an overview of this filed.
2.1 General overview of virtual communities
2.1.1 Social media marketing
Since Web 2.0 emerged, social media started to boom. It has had a great impact on
firms and their brand communication. The social media tools from the Internet
transferred the connection between customers and organizations. Social media
marketing makes use of the large social networks of customers from the Internet to
help them gain more attention to the brands. It spreads much more quickly from user-
to-user through the Internet than from physical face-to-face communication. Social
media is like a platform for people to easily access any brand information when there
is Internet access. It also helps companies to increase the awareness of their brands
and improve their relationship with customers. In addition, social media is a low cost
platform for companies to effectively assist their marketing, because the low barrier
of entrance of social media, even smaller companies can implement social media into
their marketing. Virtual community is one of the typical social media tools, which
began to be used by companies for marketing purpose.
2.1.2 Concept of virtual community
The virtual community first emerged in 1970s, but it was not growing until the
Internet was widely used in 1990s. At the same time, email, chat rooms and instant
message systems were also widely spread (Flavian and Guinaliu, 2005). The concept
of virtual community is defined by many scholars from different literatures. Some
13
definitions emphasise the virtual characteristic and the function of sharing
experiences and knowledge. Kardaras et al. (2003) describe it as a group of people
sharing interests through Internet without meeting each other in the same place or
face-to-face. Correspondingly, Cothrel and Williams (1999) believe it to be a group
of individuals applying Internet related technology to communicate with each other.
Preece (2000) asserts four elements the definition of a virtual community should
contain:
People, the subjects of communication and interaction, they perform diverse roles in
community, such as, managing or leading.
A shared purpose, share experiences or interests, require and exchange information,
or provide service.
Policies, rules and laws are laid down to form users in a particular virtual community.
Computer systems, a platform based on a facility to support the social interaction
taking place in a steady environment.
2.1.3 Characteristics of virtual communities
Armstrong and Hagel (1997) point out four needs which enable users to complete
when using virtual communities:
(1) Sharing resources. Virtual communities provide online platforms for people
to share interested information on a range of topics.
(2) Establishing relationships. You may get along with some people who have
similar interests or viewpoints as yours by talking through virtual communities and
making friends with them.
(3) Living fantasies. Users can explore fantasy virtual world through games in
virtual communities.
(4) Trading. Some virtual communities are applied for business transactions.
Lee et al. (2003) summarise the elements a community should embrace: an Internet-
mediated space with no barriers of geographical access. There are interaction and
14
communication among members in which diverse topics are generated and discussed
by participants. A forum built with relationship for discussion, where contains a
sense of community.
Kim and Jin (2006) generalise two common qualities of relationships in virtual
communities. Some active members may have vigorous interaction with others, and
keep the relationship by the support of Internet-related technology in the electronic
environment. Some virtual communities have a loose connection among members,
individuals are identified only by their user names or the content of messages they
have posted. In any case, there is a sense of connection between members in virtual
communities which is sharing experiences, ideas, goals, loyalty, commitment and
norms.
Eager and McCall (1999) indicate two types of virtual community in the present
world: geographic communities and common-interest communities. Geographic
communities gather people by the place; people who live in the same city or school,
a working place will be interested in the geographic community. Common-interest
communities gather people by the same interest and hobby sharing with others. For
instance, a fashion virtual community brings people of same interest in fashion
together, they share fashion topics based on enthusiasm. These virtual communities
offer platforms for people to participate in a virtual online space, enabling them to
interact with more people to share common interests and ideas.
Communications were categorised into synchronous and asynchronous by Powazek
(2002) according to diverse users in virtual communities. Synchronous
communication happens when users are in the same place at a same time, such as
chatting room and instant message. Asynchronous communication such as bulletin
boards and forums, allows users to communicate at any time they like. Unlike chat
rooms which offer an electronic space for instant communication, Asynchronous
communication like forums provide asynchronous environment for extended debates
or information sharing during a period of time. Eager and McCall (1999) also
15
indicate in their book that chat is one of the communication systems in the
community; it is a real-time activity, people there are either chatting or not chatting.
A forum is another communication system in the virtual community, it is not real-
time. Community members post threads about different topics. These topics are
stored on the website, so that others can read and reply the threads at any time they
want. Forums normally contain several subjects, according to different topic subjects;
members can join their parts of concern and find information of interests. For
example, a fashion related forum may involve hair body beauty, brand clothing,
house and home, food, travel subjects.
2.1.4 The business value of virtual communities
Flavian and Guinaliu (2005) mentioned the term of virtual brand community, which
is a virtual community built around brands. Virtual community becomes interesting,
when it creates value for a brand or products. Many studies have compared the online
and traditional distribution channel of the brand. Degeratu et al. (2000) are some of
the researchers. These studies show that online distribution of products with
insubstantial and emotional features is better for brand equity, such as fashion.
Virtual communities can help to improve brand image and product differentiation,
besides it is a marketing tool for companies to increase brand awareness.
Barnatt (1998) summarise the benefits a company may enjoy through virtual
communities in business:
(1) Companies can have more opportunities to build their own brands as top online
brands.
(2) Organisations can raise customer loyalty through virtual community. A virtual
community likes a user-united community with standard rules and specific types of
topics. People who interested in these topics can participate and require the
information and advice from other members.
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(3) Members will trust their approved and belong virtual community, and hardly join
other communities, which raises a barrier for other competitors (Hagel & Armstrong,
1997).
(4) Organisations can attract consumers from different areas and different
demographical status in a virtual community by their advertisement and promotion of
products and brand, even the discussion and communication between members can
raise other consumers‟ interests of particular brand and products.
(5) Companies can benefit from the „word-of-mouth‟ from members‟ communication.
Good and bad experiences, opinions, ideas will spread quickly which help
organisations to understand more about consumers in order to improve service and
products. Virtual communities become a place of sharing credible information of
company‟s products and brand.
(6) Once lunched new products and services, organisations are able to test with their
consumers in the virtual communities, which is more convenient and direct.
(7) Virtual community become a marketing tool for companies to convey advertising,
sales and distribution and develop customer relationship strategy. Virtual
communities provide a direct interaction platform for organisation to listen to their
customers transparently thus to reduce some intermediaries (Barnaat, 1998).
2.2 Understanding today’s fashion
2.2.1 Fashion and the Information Economy
In terms of an academic perspective, fashion is defined in the Webster’s New College
Dictionary as “the prevailing style during a particular time.” It comprises “the choice
or usage (as in dressing, decorating, or living) generally accepted by those who
regard themselves as up-to-date and sophisticated.” Nystrom (1928:35) first brought
economics to fashion field in his book Economics of Fashion, he termed fashion as
“nothing more or less than the prevailing style at any given time.”
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Before companies applying Internet for marketing purpose, fashion was only
communicated through television, magazines, celebrity sightings, models displayed
in the store windows, and films. Word of mouth was only happened between
acquaintances. The origins of world fashion are from every season‟s fashion week
event took place at the following main cities: New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and
Milan. In the fashion weeks, the designs of the world famous high-end brand
concluded the fashion trends of this season (Lim and Bayrak, 2010). Anderson (2006)
suggests that 20 % profit of the fashion market was influenced by the advertising and
showing of substantial products. For the same system in fashion week, the seasonal
fashion trends were only determined by a small number of fashion gurus.
The market value of information goods are normally obtained from information, such
as books, films, magazines, CDs and DVDs. Information goods are expensive for
manufacturing, but cheap for producing same more (Varian and Shapiro, 1999). Lim
and Bayrak, (2010) believe fashion is a type of information good, although its
manufacture is all about patterns, fabric, seams and printing, the process of design
before producing is a format of information whose profitability is unidentified. In
addition, fashion offers the same experience to consumers as books, magazines, films,
CDs and DVDs do. People obtain the feeling of confidence, when wearing trendy
clothes, which are the experiences fashion bringing about. Another important reason
should be highlighted is that fashion related topics are widely communicated through
Internet, which become online resources for people to share and seek.
The Internet provides fashion a strong power to communicate its related topics and it
influences the progress of fashion marketing and fashion trends. Lim and Bayrak,
(2010) points out the key to success in fashion industry can be related to the
utilization of online networks, which is altering the information adaptive system in
fashion field. The related fashion topics consumer saying about online will directly
affect companies in brand communication and product promotion.
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2.2.2 Fashion consumer groups
Consumer behaviour is termed by Belch and Belch (1993: 115) as “the process and
activities that people engage in when searching for, selecting, purchasing, using,
evaluating, and disposing of products and services so as to satisfy their needs and
desires.” From the definition, it can be seen that the motivation of some consumers to
purchase products is because they want new goods, whilst others may purchase
goods when they warn them up and really need new one. Hirschman and Adcock
(1987) mentioned four groups of fashion consumers: fashion innovators, fashion
opinion leaders, and innovative communicators and fashion followers.
Fashion innovators are a group of consumers who are much more interested in
fashion and take action to purchase and wear trendy clothes to express their
individuality. They concern about fashion related things, read more fashion
magazines, study trendy clothing styles, and clearly know what is “in” and what to
wear. Compared with other groups, innovators are venturesome and willing to try
new products (Robertson and Kennedy, 1968). Fashion innovators also have high
sense of fashion cognition and mental stimulation than other fashion consumers
(Lennon and Davis, 1987; Stanforth, 1995). They try different clothing styles, change
styles frequently, and dispose out of date clothes when a new round of trends is
coming (Chun, 1987). Behling (1992) identifies three types of variables associated
with fashion innovators, which are 6 demographic variables (age, gender, education,
occupation, children, and race), 5 psychographic variables (sociability, self-
confidence, narcissism, conformity, inner-directedness), and another variable
(interest in fashion).
Fashion opinion leaders generally have strong positive attitude towards new fashion
trends and products, they also like to try new fashion goods but have their own
judgement of new trends (Myers and Robertson, 1972). Fashion opinion leaders have
fashion information literacy. They are good at media exposure and are skilled in
seeking fashion resources and use them more frequently (Chowdhary and Dickey,
1988; Goldsmith et al., 1991). Both interested in fashion and shopping, fashion
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opinion leaders prefer to communicate fashion knowledge to others such as clothing
styles, current trends, and quite often to join social fashion events than other
consumers (Katz and Lazarsfield, 1955; Kim and Schrank, 1982). Behling (1992)
identifies three kinds of variables: “Eight demographic variables (age, marital status,
children, education, income, socioeconomic status, gender, and race), five
psychographic variables (sociability, narcissism, conformity, competitiveness, and
venturesomeness)”.
Innovative communicators combine the characteristics of fashion innovators and
fashion opinion leaders. They are always be the first amount of consumers to try new
trendy style while influence others with their fashion knowledge (Baumgarten, 1975).
Innovative communicators usually spend more money on fashion, and own more
fashion related products. They are well up in styles, clothing, brands (Johnson, 1989).
Baumgarten (1975) generalises innovative communicators are mostly younger
dynamic consumers who are sociable and like to talk about fashion in daily lives and
have more fashion goods than other consumers.
Fashion followers are the most conservative consumers who will not purchase the
new fashion until it being proved successful and is widely popular (Baumgarten,
1975). They have less desire to own diverse clothes than other groups of consumers
(Workman & Johnson, 1993).
Fashion innovators, fashion opinion leaders and innovative communicators are
similar in demography and psychology. They share same interests and attitudes in
fashion, their innovative behaviour towards trends are alike, they understand their
favourable tastes. There are also some differences between fashion opinion leader
and fashion innovators. Fashion opinion leaders apply more media resources in
communication of fashion information, either on sharing or accumulating knowledge
about trends. Fashion innovators are confident with their fashion tastes. They never
avoid taking risks to try new style. They love to exhibit their personality by wearing
unique clothes. For fashion innovators, fashion clothes can offer them satisfaction of
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cognitive complexity and requirement of mental stimulation (Workman and Kidd,
2000).
Hirschman and Holbrook (1982: 96) proposed that “because of the multisensory
involved in fashion apparel, it is a consumer product that is capable of stimulating
and requiring considerable mental activity”. Many researchers from different
countries have conducted studies to support the function of fashion goods and
shopping to be cognitively concerned and emotionally activated. Fashion innovators,
fashion opinion leaders and innovator communicators are collectively called fashion
change agents, and they have many things in common. Both facing fashion
recognition, fashion change agents behave spiritually while fashion followers
concern more about utilitarian factor (Workman and Studak, 2006). Fashion change
agents judge fashion products by the symbolic and figure (i.e. colour, style, trend,
brand) (Beaudoin et al., 2000). Park et al. (1999) recited that fashion change agents
emphasize the appearance and are good at manage their bodies and exterior. In
summarise, fashion change agents purchase more clothing and obtain more fashion
information as their high requirement of mental stimulation, high standard of
cognitive complexity and achievement motivation (Workman and Studak, 2007).
2.2.3 Chinese fashion consumers
With the largest population of consumers in the world, China has reached
unprecedented economic growth (Parker et al., 2004). More and more international
fashion retailers covet the Chinese market, and try to open their stores in China. But
research in this area has not kept up with the development of Chinese fashion market
and consumers. Most of them focus on economic and fashion industry, but little
studies concentrated on Chinese fashion consumers (Zhang, 1996). Therefore, many
of the foreign retailers and marketers are not familiar with the Chinese market and
consumers, which leads to a high risk to sell their products to Chinese consumers and
partner with Chinese firms (McEwen et al., 2006).
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There is little literature on identifying Chinese fashion consumer groups. Some
relevant studies are only on investigating market segments of Chinese consumer
behaviours (Sin and Ho, 2001). Some of these studies have focused on the
demographic and geographic differences, more others have examined around the
psychographic and lifestyle differences, and only one is relevant to the apparel
consumer behaviour. The relevant research is about Chinese consumers‟ inclination
of purchase of foreign made or brand apparel, which discovered Chinese consumers
of younger aged, female, residents of Shanghai or Guangzhou, higher level of
education, and higher incomes would be more likely to purchase (Dickson et al.,
2004). Consequently, researches on Chinese fashion consumers are still scarce and it
still need more studies to understand Chinese consumers.
2.3 Virtual community and fashion marketing
2.3.1 Consumption with virtual communities
Kozinets (1999:254) mentions the definition of virtual communities of consumption
as “affinitive group whose online interaction are based upon shared enthusiasm for,
and knowledge of, a specific consumption activity or related group of activities”. At
the beginning, users will seek related information depending on consumption interest.
Now the users become skilled at using Internet and begin to interact with other users
and join some particular online group discussions for the sake of requiring more
information (Kozinets, 1999).
“Collective knowledge” and “increasing returns” are two key attributes
Subramaniam et al. (2000:368) mentioned in their study. Since increasingly numbers
of members provide discussion in virtual communities, the wisdom of crowd makes
it more authoritative of particular products and service. Furthermore, virtual
community offers a portal for marketers to directly network with consumers and
satisfy consumer needs (Champy et al., 1997). Okleshen and Grossbart (1998) found
in their study that the perceived value of information from the perceived members‟
interaction relationship influenced the consumer behaviours. As a result, virtual
22
communities help to affect the form of consumer opinions, knowledge and behaviour
(Kim and Jin, 2006).
Hagel and Armstrong (1998) strongly recommended companies to apply virtual
communities to better understand consumers through interaction. Members
contribute discussion to an online community with loyalty to product and brand.
Since virtual communities have such characteristics, more and more organisations
began to pay attention to virtual communities and create own brand communities to
facilitate consumer interaction (McWilliam, 2000).
In terms of brand-based community, McWilliam (2000) mentioned the chances the
virtual community provides. It offers a dialogue in communication with vendor
compared with traditional interaction flow. Consumers are allowed to build
relationship with companies including directly talking to brand managers. This
improvement combines a marketing tool with online brand communities. Thus,
marketers are able to investigate consumer perception toward their own brand in the
provided virtual community (Kim and Jin, 2006).
Kozinets (1999) has explained complex condition of multiple aspects in virtual
communities. Rather than standardised database marketing with quantitative
programme schemes, marketers are required to understand the complexity and
diversity of interaction with consumptions toward consumers in virtual communities,
thus become more vigorous to the new consumption activity.
The character of consumption activity in virtual community determines the
commitment level of users‟ consumption. Consumption activities help to form users‟
self image, and require value of consumption in virtual community (Kozinets, 1999).
Kim and Jin (2006) believe apparel companies apply virtual community would be
successful since apparel consumption is closely connected to self-image. Apparel is
used to improve self-image and self-concept when present a better image and
23
personality before others in the society. These users join the virtual communities can
be the active and loyal members for the sake of self-image to support the
consumption activities.
2.3.2. What are consumers saying about fashion?
Even though there are an increasing number of researches on virtual community with
consumption, literature on the fashion related virtual communities is hardly found.
There are few studies closely related to the fashion and apparel. One of them is to
investigate what consumers saying about fashion in a virtual community in the
MySpace.com (Thomas et al., 2007). The results of study show that personal style is
the most popular topic in the community. Many members are keen to present their
personal styles and show their sense of fashion. These users are fashion change
agents or even market experts to set examples by their action combined experienced
discussion to influence others.
Brand and designers is found to be the second large group of topics in the discussion,
present a partiality for brand and its relationship with consumers. Since fashion
cannot exist without the two key elements, brand and designers are apparently
significant to the discussion. Brand can always be an important knowledge culture in
the virtual community, but it is accepted by members depending on personal
preference and styles. The virtual community provides a platform for spreading the
culture of brand and showing members‟ personal preferences to further interpret
individual sense of style.
Two most common topics personal style and brands and designers are the central of
discussion among fashion consumers, it expresses consumers‟ requirement of
individuality. Many members are fancying branded products; many of the brands are
high-end brands. These consumers like to display their ensemble of clothes and
accessories to show their uniqueness of personal style then communicate the
information to others. On the other hand, their personal styles were responded to the
24
uniform consumption of fashion retailing (Ritzer, 2005). In reality, consumers are
confused with large amount of products in the marketplace; they require some
guidance of personalisation. Thus fashion marketers can better understand today‟s
fickle and diverse consumers through analysing the discussion of brand related
system and consumer needs for personal style in virtual community.
The four most common topics Thomas et al. (2007) found in the community were
respectively: personal style, brands and designers, tips and advice, and retailers.
These popular topics represent an over-arching discussion in control of consumption
between marketers and consumer. Muniz and O‟Guinn (2001) believe virtual
communities will reduce the manipulate power of marketers, since consumers began
to control the communities. Thomas et al.‟ (2007) study proved this debate.
Obviously, brands, designers, and retailers are managed by marketers to influence
fashion industry in order to improve business and sale. In the studied community of
MySpace.com, personal styles are talked more frequent than brands and designers,
and tips and advice are above retailer. The dominant position of these themes
suggested that fashion marketing may be designate by consumers now.
As Agins (2001) mentions elite fashion houses have handed over design trends, ideal
retail outlets and promotion of brands to consumers in virtual communities, and an
influential forum is provided for them to discuss fashion topics and partly control
over the fashion marketing. Consumers demand the designs, define the trends and
support and communicate their preferred brands. Apparently, marketers, retailers,
designers should pay more attention to the virtual communities which are
increasingly influencing the fashion industry. One of the strategy Thomas et al.
(2007) summary to suggest retailers and marketers is to embrace virtual community
and recognise approaches to cooperate with growing fashion related forums.
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2.3.3 Virtual communities with fashion retailers of apparel
Although fashion marketing related topics such as brands and designers, retailers are
increasingly discussed by consumers in virtual communities, results present there are
still few fashion retailers applying virtual communities as marketing tools (Kim and
Jin, 2006). It manifests that virtual communities hardly catch the attention of fashion
retailers. Thus, more assertive evidence of fashion marketing applied virtual
communities is needed to persuade retailers to apply virtual communities. Researches
on how virtual communities gaining profits for retailers are required as well. A study
has proved that online apparel retailers with on physical presence are prone to host
virtual community for marketing. Single channel online retailers are more familiar
with web source and understand more about how to fully apply virtual resources in
business and marketing by reducing costs.
A study of virtual communities applied by apparel retailers demonstrated some
interesting outcomes. As the results showed, members in virtual communities are
mainly young consumers, and often applied by casual apparel retailers. Kim and Jin
(2006) believe young consumers have opener mind to communicate online and
receive information by applying Internet related technology. Young people are main
target consumers who can be cultivated through virtual communities. Marketers can
consider it and benefit from the combination of young consumers and the virtual
communities. Kim and Jin (2006) believe future market will include large amount of
consumers who are using virtual communities.
Companies began to pay attention to the posts in virtual communities which are the
subjects they created to give a direction for further discussion. Creating a discussion
subject, marketers need to consider the target market segment and its significance to
the success of forums and influence the communication among users. Such as Lane
Bryant‟s message board, the subject areas provide relevant topics to build a structure
for community. NiceTeesCasual.com also presents how the message boards guide
discussion from the marketers‟ original intention the company started (Kim and Jin,
2006).
26
Virtual communities applied as a marketing tool by appeal retailers provide
consumers the service to share common interests by age range, same lifestyle or
tastes, etc. Thus, retailers can make decision of designing and manufacturing
products with consideration of consumers‟ wants and needs. Additionally, discussion
from word-of-mouth in the virtual community brings rich information to retailers in
order to help accurate targeted products and design. With virtual community,
retailers take advantage of becoming a “lurker” among consumer behaviours to better
understand the fashion consumer market (Kim and Jin, 2006).
27
3 Methodology
This chapter will introduce the methodology of this study in detail, it contains two
main parts. The first part will introduce the content analysis used to categorise the
fashion topics in the forum. The second part is about online questionnaire, including
design, distribution and data analysis.
3.1 Content analysis
3.1.1 Definition
Content analysis as a research method is not new to consumer research. Bryman
(2004) defines it as “an approach to the analysis of documents and texts (which may
be printed or visual) that seeks to quantify content in terms of predetermined
categories and in a systematic and replicable manner”. Although there are
distinguishing definitions of content analysis in this field, the characteristics of it
always include objective, systematic, and quantitative (Kassarjian, 1977).
The objectivity is to stipulate the accurate categories of analysis which provides
analysts the equivalent body of content and to obtain the same results (Berelson,
1952). The requirement of systematization is to select the materials which only fit the
investigators‟ subjects and eliminate the exclusion of content or analysis categories.
The findings of analysis must be generalizable and relevant to a theoretical
hypothesis or problem. Quantification requires measuring the extent of emphasize or
omit the given categories which makes content analysis distinctive from critical
reading (Kassarjian, 1977).
3.1.2 Unitizing
The procedures of content analysis include three steps: sampling, unites of
measurement and categories of analysis (Kassarjian, 1977).
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Sampling
The immense step of content analysis studies usually begins with sampling.
Researchers especially in the field of marketing, communications and consumer
studies are familiar with this procedure. They need to draw samples from various
consumers for particular consumer studies.
Unit of measurement
The subdivisions of content being analysed may range from a sampling of articles,
selected paragraphs or sentences to key words or terms in articles. These elements
are all the units of analysis. Generally, the smallest unit is the word, which is
sometimes identical to a symbol. However, it is not often used in a consumer
research. The theme unit is applied the most in content analysis. Researchers often
use it to discuss issues, values, beliefs, and attitudes (Kassarjian, 1977). In the fields
of entertainment, character as the recording unit is widely used in films, dramas,
fictions and radios. The item unit is mainly for symbolic material, such as entire
speech, news story or radio program. The space-and-time measure was normally
applied for physical divisions of content classification.
Categories of analysis
Content analysis is as much as its categories. Categories can present research
thinking and purpose of the study; it indeed reflects the concept of scheme and how
this study being designed.
3.1.3 Advantages and disadvantages
Bryman (2004) outlines several advantages of content analysis in his book. Content
analysis is a transparent method; the procedures are clear to be seen and understood,
the results of analysis are feasible for later study. It is nonreactive and unobtrusive,
which does not involve participants. It is also a high flexible method, which can
analyse wide range of unstructured information. It allows researchers to do easier
29
longitudinal analysis relatively. It can gain easy access to social groups, such as elites,
company directors, and top personnel.
Like other research methods, content analysis also has limitations; Bryman (2004)
summarises five disadvantages of content analysis. Content analysis can be only
conducted on documents which practitioner does. It is unable to figure out the
reasons through content analysis. Study analysis may arouse theoretical results.
Invalid conjecture may be magnified and lead to problems in analysis. There are no
coding manuals without interpretation in terms of coders.
3.1.4 Data collection
Virtual community as one kind of social media tools, are increasing in popularity
among fashion consumers in China. Many studies have been conducted fashion
related virtual community in some countries. In order to find out what Chinese
consumers are saying about fashion, one Chinese fashion leading virtual community
bbs.trend.com.cn was selected for investigation. bbs.trend.com.cn was one of the
most popular fashion communities in China. The site provides 12 specific fashion
related forums for members to chat about fashion. Some categories are more beauty
specific, such as skin, hair, body & beauty; others are home specific, like house &
interior decorating, or life-oriented, such as emotional stops.
The study is going to investigate what fashion topics Chinese consumers care about.
Content analysis is required to analyse their discussion in the virtual community. The
categories were selected from a study of a published paper: An exploratory
investigation of the virtual community MySpace.com: What are consumers saying
about fashion, which is an investigation of the fashion-related discussion taking
place in the virtual community, MySpace.com. A general fashion discussion
subgroup FashionLOVERS was selected for analysis. The researchers selected the
first 200 forum topical areas, which includes five or more posts. They have analysed
6623 individual posts in total and identified ten classification categories (Table 3.1).
30
Table 3.1 Categories of topics
Tips and advice
Brands and designers
Personal style
Retailers
Purchases
Trends
Prices
Self-promotion
Other fashion topics (Celebrity style, etc.)
Unrelated topics
Data collection of content analysis began July 17, 2011 and ended July 23, 2011.
Because reliability is required to measure in content analysis, it is necessary to
invited one more person to identify the categories together but independently.
Considering the expense of printing hard copies and to be eco-friendly, screenshots
of threads and posts were used instead of hard copies. 4590 posts were reviewed
while noting the categories of content. A code was assigned to every selected post to
record them into relevant categories.
After classification of all the posts, the category which contains largest number of
posts is going to be further classified. In the further classification, the sub-categories
of the tips and advice were built up by researchers when read through the data of this
category. The same coding process was conducted.
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3.2 Online questionnaire: fashion consumer
classification
In order to find out the relationship between different kinds of Chinese consumers
and different types of fashion topics, the demographic information of the users in this
virtual community was necessitated collecting.
3.2.1 Fashion consumer groups
Hirschman and Adcock (1987) categorised fashion consumers into four groups in
their study: “fashion innovators, fashion opinion leaders, innovative communicators
(the fashion change agent group) and fashion followers.” Fashion innovators are the
consumers of action who always being the first purchaser and wear new trendy
fashions than most of other consumers. Fashion opinion leaders provide more about
their fashion opinions to interact with others. Innovative communicators are the
consumers who have both two characteristics of fashion innovators and fashion
opinion leaders. Fashion followers are the largest consumers group who are the
fashion imitators, as the name implies, follow the fashion trends (Workman and
Studak, 2006).
3.2.2 Questionnaire Design
Online questionnaire is a popular data collection method for consumer researches.
Like other methods, it also has the advantages of low requirement of participants in
the field and low cost. Compared with telephone interview, it can be extensive and
look for direct information. The disadvantages are also available as it is easily to be
ignored by people. And if the respondents are unable to understand any questions,
there are no direct solutions for the problems. Another problem is that it takes a long-
time to receive the results after sending out the questionnaires compared with other
methods such as interviews (Easey, 2008).
32
With the purpose of categorising user consumers in this virtual community, online
questionnaires were conducted to acquire the users‟ demographic information. The
online survey website SurveyMonkey (http://zh.surveymonkey.com) was selected
and edited for the questionnaires. Although this website has limitation on the
quantity of questions, which only allows up to 10 questions for free, it is enough for
the small demographic survey.
The online questionnaire was designed in Chinese, since the target people are all
Chinese users in that virtual community. The questionnaire was composed of eight
choice questions and two completion questions; they were first drafted in English
and translated into Chinese, then edited on the survey website, finally posted on the
branding-clothing forum.
3.2.3 Final Questionnaire
The Appendix presents a copy of the English version of the questionnaire. Ten
questions are choice and completion questions, which are easy and quick to complete.
Question 1 is to know consumers‟ user names, in order to trace all of its posts, and
analyse what they have talked about in this community. Question 2-3 is to know its
gender and age to see whether there are some differences of fashion topics between
male and female and different ages. Question 4 can identify the occupations related
to fashion consumers‟ types. By question 5-6, it is possible to know whether there is
some relationship between what types of consumers and their living places and
education backgrounds. Question 7 is a multiple choice question, it is to know which
aspects different types of consumers pay attention to when purchasing fashion goods.
By question 8, it can be seen the relationship among different kinds of consumers
and the amount of expenditure they spend on fashion. Question 9-10 are important to
categorise user consumers into different fashion consumer groups.
33
3.2.4 Distribution of Questionnaire
Because the questionnaire was posted on a particular community, which is the only
way to distribute the questionnaire, there is not much possibility to receive too many
responses. So it was planned to require about 60 samples for analysis. The
questionnaire was carried out from July 20, 2011 to July 30, 2011. The link of online
questionnaire was posted as a thread on the board of Brand-clothing forum, with
explanation of the situations and asked users to help complete the small demographic
surveys.
3.2.5 Method of Data Analysis
The data analysis was conducted in Microsoft Excel for coding the collected data.
Figures such as pie charts and column charts are used to present the results.
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4 Analysis
This chapter focuses on the results of content analysis and the online questionnaire.
The first part is to analyse the categories of discussion and subcategories of tips and
advice, also some sample findings are presented. The second part is to demonstrate
the results of questionnaire and evaluation of each question. The 12 typical sample
users will be analysed explicitly.
4.1 Findings of content analysis
4.1.1 Category of classification
The brand-clothing group being selected is because it was more general discussion
about fashion. It is the third most popular category in this community. The category
was created on October 27, 2002 and has grown into a forum of 22585 threads and
868668 posts so far. In this category, users are sharing their opinions and advice
about fashion related information, such as brand, clothing, trends, style, and
purchases.
In order to compare with what Chinese fashion consumers saying about fashion,
same method was used to analyse this Chinese virtual community in
bbs.trends.com.cn. In the brand-clothing subgroup, the first 200 threads from as few
as 5 posts to as many as 279 posts were selected for analysis. Table 4.1 shows a
sample of the 200 threads being analysed. For example, the thread “Why
SWAROVSKI is so expensive in China?” had 52 posts; “About Hermes” had 49
posts, and “Alexander McQueen is opening its store in China” had 28 posts. The 200
threads include 4590 individual posts, which is relatively active in this virtual
community.
35
Table 4.1 a sample of the 200 selected threads and the number of posts
Topic name Active
posts
1 Some favourite American men‟s brand 33
2 Come back from HK—ARMANI, BAPE!!! 17
3 The quality of D&G‟s clothes sucks! 37
4 Little present on 8, Mar (loewe) 39
5 Lost in the brands of Polo...looking for guiders 43
6 Experience summarization of American online shopping 24
7 Why TOMMY is much more expensive than I thought 44
8 Three most fashionable way to carry the big brand bags 8
9 Why SWAROVSKI is so expensive in China? 52
10 Which brand of men‟s shoes is better, ECCO, CLARKS, Hush
Puppies, GEOX, SKAP, TIMBERLAND?
30
11 What brand of watch is better within 10,000rmb? 21
12 Which looks better among the three? 22
13 The knowledge of wearing clothes (repost) 19
14 Bought a 40% off Prada coat~ happy 22
15 Which brand of bags is worth buying when going to UK 23
16 About Hermes 49
17 Which colour of this bag is easy for matching up and practical? 20
18 Trousers of dior homme 16
19 It is terrible to wear longuette with high heel 52
20 Cloth shoes of LACOSTE 57
21 Is there ZARA in Guangzhou? 31
22 In midsummer, how these stylish yuppies are wearing? 24
23 Ask about the information of this old version Celine bag 5
24 Please help to choose a colour 10
25 A album about street shots of UGG boots from western stars 81
26 Which colour of these Bottega bags looks better? 21
36
Topic name Active
posts
27 Why some shop assistants of Chanel store were so arrogant! 23
28 Bought a on sale GUCCI bag, worries about the quality 11
29 Whether it is cheap to buy these watches abroad? 16
30 What kind of scarf matches a grey bat-like sweater? 6
31 solved 12
32 To the Polo LACOSTE L!VE, which is better polkadot or
stripe~~~~?
14
33 Where to buy this clothe?? Forget about Taobao.. 10
34 What trousers better match the long type army green coat? I am a
man.
12
35 I wanna buy a bag, could you please recommend a brand 10
36 GAP jeans are really nice; there are two types of length for one
size waist.
6
37 Alexander McQueen is opening its store in China 28
38 Help!!! Does Dior sunglasses all contains a safilo certificate? 10
39 Nice Uniqlo printing T-shirts.. 44
40 Are there any recommendations of men‟s fragrance? 15
37
Within the Brand-clothing forum, user consumers are active in sharing fashion
information on various fashion related topics; many of the topics are connected to
marketing. The 9 fashion categories of information applied from another paper are:
personal style, brands and designers, tips and advice, retailers, trends, purchases, self
promotion, and prices. Table 4.2 shows the frequency of occurrence of each category
in Brand-clothing community. It was also presented in Figure 4.1 to be clearly seen.
The reliabilities of this study are reported in the discussion chapter.
Table 4.2 the results of classification
Frequency of occurrence
category of information
Raw score Out of 4,590 (%)
Tips and advice 1100 24
Brands and designers 672 15
Personal style 654 14
Retailers 441 10
Purchases 434 10
Trends 384 8
Prices 152 3
Self-promotion 47 1
Other fashion topics
(Celebrity style, etc.) 156 3
Unrelated topics 550 12
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Figure 4.1 Classification of the results
The table 4.2 and figure 4.1 demonstrate that tips and advice are the largest
categories among all the topics. In some way it may illustrate that Chinese
consumers have less fashion knowledge, so that they may propound fashion related
questions more frequently. The findings of detailed interpretation of nine categories
are translated into English and explicit presented below.
15%
24%
10%14%
8%
10%
1% 3%
3%
12%
Classification of the results
Brands and designers
Tips and advice
Retailers
Personal style
Trends
Purchases
Self-promotion
Prices
Other fashion topics (Celebrity style, etc.)
Unrelated topics
39
4.1.2 Sample presentation
Tips and advice
Tips and advice was the most active topic in the brand-clothing community, 1100(24
percent) of the 4590 posts were asking and receiving tips and advice. Some
posts asked for style or colour select, others might give advice on choosing a
product or brand for particular use or purchase. Breath123 a 30-year-old male
posted a message to ask for advice on what kind of bag he should buy:
I will get married in November, I wanna buy a high-end bag for my wife, I am
thinking about LV alma of epi leather, how do you think? For anyone who have ever
used epi, is the leather easy for cleaning? Is it real leather? Are there any better ones
to recommend? Thanks so much.
The following replies provided various aids which might help the post originator and
others who have the similar problems in solving the problems. Users can also read
these tips and advice other posted with questions and answers to gain more fashion
information, plenty of posts were about advice on how to wear properly and trendily,
including which two items better matched or what colour of items fit the style.
Rainbow a 29-yuear-old female posted for advice on what bag to match her down
jacket:
It looks so fat wearing a down jacket in winter and it is not matched with any bag.
Can anybody offer me some advice on what kind of bag is matching a down jacket? I
wanna buy a Marc Jacobs’ black stam bag, but it was out of stock, I don’t know
which brand of bag to buy? How about Prada’s wrinkle series? PS: I was born in
1982.
Members also liked to ask about retailer and store information, through word-of-
mouth they get updated information efficiently. qd-hope is a 29-year-old female who
wanted to know about the store information and posted a question like this:
Is there a Zara store in Guangzhou? I have searched it online; somebody said yes,
but some said no. Weather it is yes or no? I know there is one in Shenzhen.
There are plenty of replies, thus she quickly got the answers. There were many other
different types of tips and advice in this theme, for example, asking for prices of
40
particular products, distinguishing some unknown brand products, even asking for
the methods of how to take care of the products. Research has further classified the
theme in order to understand the detail of what are consumers really caring about in
tips and advice theme.
Brand and designers
There are 672 posts referred to this topic among 4590. The fashion designer brands
mentioned a wide range of brand from high fashion labels such as Hermes, D&G,
Dior, Prada, Chanel, GUCCI, Bvlgari, Celine, Loewe, to middle-end brands such as
Diesel, Juicy Couture, Tommy, Lacoste, COACH CK, as well as lower-end retailers
such as Abercrobie & Fitch, ZARA, and H&M. Posts mentioned about brands and
designers include many aspects: to evaluate the brands or designers by individuals, to
share own image and opinions of different brands and designers, to show purchase
decisions among alternatives. To figure the different series of CK brand, xiao_a, a
23 year-old male posted a message:
I heard there are two kinds of CK labels, grey label and black label. Could you tell
me what is the label colours of ck calvin klein and calvin klein? What is the
differences between ck calvin klein and calvin klein? Which one is more expensive?
Other members of the community also provided fashion sources for individuals to
help solve various brand related questions. Some users liked to express their own
feelings towards different brands by their experiences, Qianqiuxue, a 28-year-old
female complained in her post:
The quality of D&G products is so bad! The material, the workmanship and the cut
are all terrible! It is my true feeling.
To some extent, the word of mouth fashion information posted by users would
influence other consumers‟ brand images and their intention of purchase.
RECHURCH a 24-year-old female posted a picture of a G-star cap and some words
showing her intention of purchase. In other conversations, brands introduction were
illustrated by some members, which can be useful for others either in purchase
decision make or brands knowledge enhance. Noto1985 a 26-year-old female, living
41
in UK posted a very explicit thread, introduced famous British brands ranged from
high-end to low-end, which helped a lot of users to gain the brand cultures and
knowledge. The associations learned from the other members had made a
contribution to the community and consumer purchase decisions.
Personal style
Within total 4590 posts, personal style involved 654 (14 percent) numbers among the
total posts. These posts are mainly talking about personal preference and daily style,
which included posts on personal preference of style, brands, products, retailers,
showing pictures about what they were, or how their own clothes were like.
sissi_0314 posted a thread with three pictures of wearing ankle length trousers and
words:
Love ankle length trousers!!!
Here are the pictures of my several recent ankle length trousers. How is that?
Other posts were similar like showing their own bags with different styles, Arielynn
posted a message:
My three bags…This spring comes within canvas bags…trendy and eco-friendly… I
don’t think that only further bags are fashionable. How do the three bags look like?
The second one is my favourite~~!~
There are also some posts asking for preference of their own products or purchasing
ones. With the help of crowd wisdom, users can easily solve the encountered fashion
problems and have a good choice among alternatives.
Retailers
Retailers related posts were 441 (10 percent) of the total 4590. Some users
mentioned specific retailers in their posts which might be related to their purchased
clothes or to answer questions about the retailer names who were looking for a brand.
Mybeatles a 26-year-old female posted a message in response to a user‟s post of
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where to find H&M and ZARA in Shanghai, a 24 year-old female, jeosy from
Shanghai, replied this:
You can find both stores in Super Brand mall, there are also Mango and Uniqlo
upstairs. Zara on the Huaihai Road is too small with incomplete products.
With the useful posts, the originator of the thread gained some ideas for her shopping
trip. In another kind of posts, a user provided some information and links of online
shopping stores for other members. Arielynn introduced several British online
retailers with some distinguishing features. According to Arielynn:
Barbour: http://www.barbourbymail.co.uk/. Baracuta: http://www.baracuta-g9.com/.
Jaeger: http://www.jaeger.co.uk/. REISS: http://brand.reissonline.com/. Paul& Smith:
http://www.paulsmith.co.uk/shop/.
Therefore, fashion virtual community became a portal for information of purchasing
from retailers seeking and sharing. Information included users‟ experiences of online
shopping, with both positive and negative experiences from purchased retailers.
Purchases
Purchases topic were discussed with 434 (10 percent) posts, users shared their own
purchased experience and products, such as a particular product they bought
yesterday, the store where they bought it from, and the place they went shopping.
These posts look like the feedbacks of members‟ purchases. According to noto1985 a
25-year-old male, posted several pictures of her purchased goods with names listed
below:
The second time been to Bicester village, let’s see…
Burberry pullover
Leather shoes of Church’s (custom grade, handmade in UK)
Shirt of Thomas Pink
Aquascutum suit
43
I prepared a hand map before going, but the shopping trip was not as awesome as
last time. Burberry classic scarf is out of stock, woollen one was 66 pounds, and
cashmere one was 136 pounds. Last time the Polo shirt was only 29 pounds; I
regretted not to buy some. Actually, the on sale shirts from Paul Smith were not
cheap, but I liked the slim fit suit, it was too casual. I have bought the super slim fit
suit, but still feel a bit large. After all, the body shape is different between European
and Asian…but any way cheaper than in China...
As members can observe each other‟s purchase status, useful purchase information
was gained to help others with product evaluation and purchase decision make.
Trends
A total of 384 posts (8 percent) were mentioned, with some users offering fashion
insights of particular style in this season, or some fashion opinion leaders changed
ideas of fashion trends, or discussion of trends with others particular fashion products.
Ellvans a 23-year-old female posted a suggestion to introduce others some latest
fashion products. Ellvans listed them with pictures:
Since large bags were everywhere, used from Hippies to every woman, small bags
hardly have any space to live. But the simple, delicate and portable features make it
a symbol of personality, and became the best accessory in summer. Following six
different styles are presented for reference.
1. Bright soft leather bag
2. Rivet cow leather bag
3. Vintage fringe bag
4. Patent leather dual purpose bag
5. Shoulder purse
6. Bowknot handbag
Posts like Ellvans‟ are provided other user consumers‟ the directions of fashion
trends, both to aid in fashion purchase and help fashion opinion enhance.
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Price
Prices were mentioned in 152 (3 percent) posts. Some prices were provided by
members as a reference of a particular product or brand, such as a high-ended brand.
Other prices were discussed with a particular product someone introduced some new
lunched fashion products or opinions towards the prices. I love BOSS, a 35-year-old
male explained in his post:
I live in Ningbo, Tommy shirt here is ¥1000- ¥1200, so I was thinking about the
casual suit would be around ¥3000, but the fact is they don’t have this suit in two
shoppes in Ningbo. I had to phone the Tommy store in Shanghai, the answer was yes,
but ¥5200 get 15 % off, it was ¥4400. Why the price in different place was that
different? I could buy EA with such price~~~
With other members‟ replies of prices in other places, the originator of the post can
compare with these prices and will be clear about whether it is worth the price. Price
references can furthermore help user consumers make purchase decisions and know
more about the fashion market things.
Self-promotion
There were 47 (1 percent) self-promotion posts, which involved some individual
sellers promoted their products with online shop links. For instance, zetor1983 a 28-
year-old female posted some new arrivals from her individual shop with abundant
pictures and shop link:
My shop is having new summer arrivals. Here are the pictures of new clothes and
accessories, hope you like them, and welcome to my online shop on Taobao:
http://huidiefeifei.taobao.com/.
Thus the virtual community becomes a platform, which makes individuals able to do
free business promotion or advertisement. Since these people do not have the ability
to do promotion and advertisement, such platform offers an opportunity for them.
Through these discussions, users have promoted their business while others learned
more information and options of shopping online.
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Other fashion related topics
This topic included total 156 (3 percent) posts, which involved celebrity style, fabrics,
fashion market and discount information. Many posts have mentioned the celebrity
styles, for instance, they posted albums with latest pictures of Halloween stars‟ street
shots. Actually, plenty of members liked to see these pictures and to discuss and
follow their styles. Some members will post a product some celebrities have worn or
used in order to receive detail product information or evaluations. Finally, 550 (12
percent) unrelated posts were included in total posts; these were often personal sigh
and feelings about other indirect words.
4.1.3 Sub-categories Identify
To further identify the subcategories of tips and advice, researcher reviewed the
transcripts again, took memos of the content, noted the general draft subcategories,
and considered the classification schemes repeatedly and also discussed with others.
After extensive consideration and discussion, eleven subcategories are generated for
classification of tips and advice, and the results of categorising tips and advice are
presented in Table 4.3.
Table 4.3 the results of sub-categories of tips and advice
Sub-categories of Tips and
advice
Raw
score
Frequency of occurrence
Out of 1100 (%)
Personal style tips 436 40
Brand/product select 279 25
Retailer/store 84 8
Price consult 68 6
Brand/product distinguish 57 5
Brand image 54 5
46
Sub-categories of Tips and
advice
Raw
score
Frequency of occurrence
Out of 1100 (%)
Others 46 4
Celebrity style 26 2
Fashion trends 20 2
Way of purchase 17 2
Product maintenance 13 1
Figure 4.2 Sub-categories of Tips and advice
According to the figure 4.2, it is possible to say that user consumers are raising more
questions about personal style. For instance, they liked to ask others for advice about
how to match different clothes; what types of clothes are suitable for themselves. The
40%
25%
8%
6%
5%
5%
4%
2%
2%
2%1%
Sub-categories of Tips and advice
Personal style tips
Brand/product select
Retailer/store
Price consult
Brand/product distinguish
Brand image
Others
Celebrity style
Fashion trends
Way of purchase
Product maintenance
47
brand/ product select category also had a greater portion among tips and advice.
Some consumers posted several products which might be difficult for them to choose,
so that they have to turn to others for help, others might want to purchase a bag but
without deciding which brand to buy, they would mention some particular brands for
others to select.
4.2 Results of Online Questionnaire
The online questionnaire was conducted to collect the demographic information in
brand-clothing community in order to category the user consumers. After eleven
days, 60 valid questionnaires were received on the survey website. The
questionnaires were both posted a thread with a link in the brand-clothing forum and
sent to some forum members by short messages, it was difficult to received
responses as expected and only some of the members responded the questionnaire.
4.2.1 Questions analysis
Username
Usernames were collected for further analysis of individuals‟ types of posts they
have ever generated. In order to find out the detail of what kinds of consumers are
saying about fashion topics, several user samples were selected from the total
responses for further detail study.
Gender
Figure 4.3 below presents the gender proportion of respondents. It seems female is a
bit more than male in the community, but there is no big differences. This may
reflect two possible reasons which are that there are more Chinese females interested
in fashion than Chinese male, or Chinese female consumers like to talk about fashion
through virtual community which is a more indirect and introverted way.
48
Figure 4.3 Gender
Age
In terms of age, the figure 4.4 displays the majority of respondents were from the
group age 25-34, which was 60 percent in total. It can be explained that most of the
consumers after 25 years old are independent and have fixed incomes, which is one
of the basics of talking about fashion. Also the generation Y is mainly among the 25-
34 group who are grown up in a social media society, and are familiar with virtual
community.
Figure 4.4 Ages
40%
60%
Gender
Male Female
7%
18%
60%
13%
2% 0%
Age
under 18
18-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
over 54
49
Occupation
Consumers‟ occupations are from all walks of life, such as students, housewife and
working people in variety of fields. The occupations of particular consumers are also
analysed of small samples to see the detail relationship.
Location
As Figure 4.5 displayed, the majority of users are from East China and South China,
which stands to reason that south and east of China are the coastal areas, which are
the most economy developed areas compared with other parts. People from there
have comparatively higher average incomes and a higher quality of lives. Many
international retailers are interested in this area and have opened their stores or
planned to open more stores in this area, since it is a big potential market for
commercials. For the reason of no one is from Hongkong Taiwan and Macau is
because they don‟t use this website, it is a fashion virtual community which is only
popular in mainland of China.
Figure 4.5 Location
1615
68
1 25
0
7
02468
1012141618
Location
50
Education
As shown in Figure 4.6, 62% of the respondents had the bachelor‟s degree, these
group of people care more about fashion than other groups. They usually have decent
jobs and enjoy quality lives, for these people who have lower background of
educations may not have jobs as better as others have, in other side they may
consider more about other aspects of living things, but it was all relatively speaking.
For the higher education background consumers, most of them may be busy with
their work and they do not have much time to spend on virtual community or they
have other realm of thought and interests. Thus, marketers and retailers may take
some special action on this particular group of consuemrs to receive better marketing
effects.
Figure 4.6 Education
2%
3%
13%
62%
20%
0%
Education
junior high school and below
senior high school
junior college
bachelor's degree
master's degree
Phd and above
51
Expenditure
The expenditure on every month fashion purchase can be discovered to investigate
how different types of consumers related to different expenditure on fashion
purchase. The results (figure 4.7) present that most (60 percent) of the consumers
spend ¥1000- ¥4999 per month on fashion, the result is also influenced by economic
level of the country.
Figure 4.7 Expenditure
0%
7%
23%
60%
8%
2%
Expenditure on fashion per month
under ¥99
¥100 - ¥499
¥500- ¥999
¥1000- ¥4999
¥5000 - ¥12999
above ¥13000
52
Considered factors
From figure 4.8, we can see that consumers regard style as the most important factor
when purchasing fashion products, following with the comfort, quality and price.
Nearly half of the respondents did not care about the brand when making decision of
products. Almost every consumer would buy products with the style they like. The
result of price is understandable that not everyone has such economic strength to buy
products without caring the price. And this is a fashion community; members here
are at least a fashion follower that is why there were still many of them caring about
the trendy element. It can be also seen from the Figure 4.8 that quality and comfort
were two important elements for Chinese consumers; they cared comparatively less
about the brand and texture.
Figure 4.8 Factor considered in purchase
6056
38
57
27
38
58
style price trendy quality brand texture comfort
Factors considered in purchase
53
Types of purchasers
This question is important for classifying the consumers; it can demonstrate the
relationship between types of consumers and the purchase situations. It also tested
whether fashion innovators are among the first to purchase the products. The Figure
4.9 showed that 60 percent of them are the majority of purchase which are
understandable and reasonable for most consumers.
Figure 4.9 Type of purchasers
2%
15%
60%
20%
3%
Type of purchasers
First to purchase the product
Early majority of purchasers
The great majority of purchasers
Late majority of purchasers
Last to purchase the product
54
Types of consumers
The last question is the most important question, since the aim of the demographic
questionnaire is to categorise the consumers into different group. As the Figure 4.10
illustrated, consumers were divided into four groups, without doubt the biggest group
is fashion followers (42%), followed by fashion opinion leaders (30%) and
innovative communicators (22%), and the smallest group is the fashion innovators
(8%). In the later study, some samples are selected and particular relationship
between them is further explored.
Figure 4.10 Types of fashion consumers
4.2.2 Sample analysis
According to the Pareto principle, also called 80/20 rules states that approximately
80 percent of effects come from 20 percent of the causes. In this study, some samples
were required to be further analysed the detail relationship between consumers and
topics. 80/20 rules were applied to decide the number of samples. Because it can be
assumed that 20 percent of the samples can represent 80 percent of consumers‟
behaviour, 12 samples were selected from the total 60 respondent. The method of
selection is to categorise the consumers by the results of question 10 first, then
7%
22%
30%
41%
Types of fashion consumers
Fashion innovators
Fashion opinion leaders
Innovative communicators
Fashion followers
55
randomly pick up three samples from each category. Table 4.4 demonstrates the
demographic information of 12 samples selected from 60 respondents.
Table 4.4 Fashion innovators
No. (User name) 1 (taiyang789) 2 (deadfish22) 3 (hello_daniel)
Gender Female Female Female
Age range 35-44 25-34 25-34
Occupation Teacher Business Foreign company
staff
Location East China East China Abroad
Education Bachelor's degree Bachelor's degree master's degree
Factors of products
they care about
7 factors 7 factors 7 factors
Expenditure/month ¥1000- ¥4999 ¥5000 - ¥12999 ¥5000 - ¥12999
Purchaser type First to purchase
the product
Early majority of
purchasers
Early majority of
purchasers
Consumer type Fashion
innovator
Fashion innovator Fashion
innovator
Number of posts 46 142 245
Posts belong to
categories
Personal style
and Trends,
purchase, tips
and advice
Retailer, Purchase,
Personal style
Trends, retailer
and other fashion
related
topics( celebrity)
sub-categories of
tips and advice
Brand/ product
distinguish
It can be seen that fashion innovators are all at least over 25 years old which is the
age level of owning a job. They all have decent jobs and live in the economy
developed areas or abroad. They all have a high education background (at least
bachelor‟ degree). A common aspect of these people was that they all considered
every factor when purchasing products, it can be explained that fashion innovators
56
have a high standard of products. They all treated themselves as an early majority of
purchasers at least. All these factors are reasonable to prove that they belong to
fashion innovators and how the fashion innovator is like.
To further classify the posts they have ever posted, researcher traced all the posts of
three consumers, and the results were filled in the Table 4.4. Two of them have
talked about personal style, retailer, trends and purchases. Tips and advice about
brand / product distinguish and other fashion topics (celebrity) were also mentioned.
It is logical since fashion innovators are among the first consumers to purchase
products; they spent more money than others. They care more about purchase and
retailer topics, they are also the first to wear new fashion, and therefore, they must be
interested in trendy style and pay more attention to these topics.
Table 4.5 Fashion opinion leaders
No. (User name) 4(o.禍 o.紅顔) 5 (亲亲瞄) 6 (SISSI107)
Gender Male Female Female
Age range 25-34 25-34 25-34
Occupation Financial
sector
Health care IT
Location South China South China Southwest
Education Bachelor's
degree
Bachelor's degree Bachelor's
degree
Factors of products
they care about
all don‟t care about
texture, brand,
fashion
all
Expenditure/month ¥1000- ¥4999 ¥1000- ¥4999 ¥1000- ¥4999
Purchaser type The great
majority of
purchasers
The great majority of
purchasers
The great
majority of
purchasers
57
Consumer type Fashion
opinion leader
Fashion opinion
leader
Fashion opinion
leader
Number of posts 370 560 439
Posts belong to
categories
Trends and
price
Tips and advice,
trends, and Brand and
designers
Trends and other
fashion related
topics( celebrity)
sub-categories of
tips and advice
Personal style tips
As the Table 4.5 showed, consumers of innovative communicators is all over 25
years old, all of them have nice jobs and two of them live in south China. They all
have high education backgrounds. Above factors are quite similar with fashion
innovators, but the following aspects have a certain difference. In terms of
expenditure on fashion per month, they classified themselves in the great majority of
purchasers, the money they spent on fashion wais not as much as fashion innovators
did, as three of them spent only ¥1000- ¥4999 per month. One of them does not care
about texture when purchasing fashion products, compared with fashion innovators.
They did not have the standard of purchase as high as innovators have as well. After
analysis of all the posts of three fashion opinion leaders, researcher found that trends
is the common interested topic among three users‟ posts, other topics such as price,
brand and designers, tips and advice and other fashion related topics were also
interested by some of them. The discussion among fashion opinion leaders was
active which proved that they are the consumer group who are good at
communication.
Table 4.6 Innovative communicators
User name 7(他来了 66) 8 (bingshi1233) 9 (猫拖酱瓜)
Gender Male Female Male
Age range 25-34 18-24 25-34
Occupation Manager Company
employee
Businessman
58
Location East China North China East China
Education Bachelor's degree junior college Bachelor's
degree
Factors of products
they care about
7 factors 7 factors 7 factors
Expenditure/month ¥1000- ¥4999 ¥1000- ¥4999 ¥1000- ¥4999
Purchaser type First to purchase the
product
Early majority of
purchasers
Early majority
of purchasers
Consumer type Innovative
communicator
Innovative
communicator
Innovative
communicator
Number of posts 423 521 472
Posts belong to
categories
Retailer, Personal
style, Brands and
designers,
Tips and advice,
Retailers, and
Brands and
designers,
Personal style,
Prices, Trends,
Sub-categories of
tips and advice
Brand image,
Fashion trends
Innovative communicators are the combination of fashion innovators and fashion
communicators. It could be the combination characteristics of these two types of
consumers. As Table 4.6 demonstrated, one of the differences is that one consumer is
only 18-24, which seems uncommon. But there are still some possibilities for young
consumers, it can be assumed that such consumer has a rich familiar background, or
she already has a decent job and high incomes. The topics three innovative
communicators mentioned in their posts were diverse, almost contains all kinds of
topics which above two consumers mentioned. This equals to innovative
communicators are the combination of above two fashion consumers.
59
Table 4.7 Fashion followers
No. (User name) 10 (真豆包儿) 11 (61590832) 12 (percy0809)
Gender Female Male Male
Age range 35-44 18-24 25-34
Occupation Housewife Student Salesman
Location Abroad Northeast Central China
Education Bachelor's degree bachelor's degree bachelor's
degree
Factors of products
they care about
7 factors don‟t care about
brand, texture
don't care about
texture and
comfort
Expenditure/month ¥1000- ¥4999 ¥500- ¥999 ¥5000- ¥12999
Purchaser type Late majority of
purchasers
Late majority of
purchasers
The great
majority of
purchasers
Consumer type Fashion follower Fashion follower Fashion
follower
Number of posts 56 53 29
Posts belong to
categories
Purchases, tips
and advice
Price, tips and
advice
Purchase , tips
and advice
sub-categories of
tips and advice
personal style tips Price consult
Brand/product
select
Fashion followers ranged from different ages, occupations, educations and locations,
they considered different factors when purchase fashion products, their expenditures
on fashion products were distinct too. But they all belong to late majority or at most
great majority of purchasers. And they have all mentioned about tips and advice. One
consumer who spent ¥5000- ¥12999 per month on fashion asked more about brand/
product select questions in his posts, another one who spent much less (¥500- ¥999)
was concerned more about price consult topics.
60
5 Discussion
In the discussion part, data collected from content analysis was compared with the
previous research to investigate the features of Chinese fashion consumers. The data
collected from questionnaire connected to the content analysis was presented to
discuss each fashion consumers and the results of why there is such differentiation of
fashion consumers in China were evaluated. Then the virtual community was
discussed with Chinese fashion marketing. Finally, the reliability of data in the
research was provided.
5.1 Discussion of results
5.1.1 The comparison with previous research by Thomas et al. (2007)
The study on investigation of fashion virtual community carried out by Thomas et al.
in 2007 is similar in some aspects as this research, which has explored a fashion
virtual community and found out what consumers are saying about fashion. In their
research, Thomas et al. (2007) selected a fashion group FashionLOVERS and chose
the first 200 forum topical areas with minimum five posts to categorise these topics
using content analysis. In their findings, the categories were identified and the
fashion discussion topics were grouped into eight categories. Results of their analysis
showed that the four most popular topics among all the discussion were personal
styles, brand and designers, tips and advice and retailers. These four topics indicated
that fashion marketing was increasingly influenced and drove by consumers.
Compared with the study by Thomas et al. (2007), this research focuses on Chinese
fashion consumers. A popular Chinese fashion forum was selected as the sample.
Same approach was conducted to categorise the first 200 threads with minimum 5
posts in the forum using the same categories, Thomas et al. (2007) generated. The
results showed that the four most popular topics among Chinese consumers are tips
and advice, brand and designers, personal style and retailers. The results of
comparison of two studies are showed in the table 5.1:
61
Table 5.1 comparison of two studies
Category of topics In Thomas et al.’ research
(6623 sample posts in
FashionLOVERS were
classified in 2006)
In my research
(4590 sample posts in
Brand-clothing group
were classified in 2011)
Tips and advice 13.2% 24%
Brands and designers 20.6% 15%
Personal style 21.7% 14%
Retailers 11.0% 10%
5.1.2 Analysis of the differentiation
Two studies both shows the same four most popular topics but rank different. The
comparison of two different groups of consumers proves that Chinese consumers talk
more about tips and advice. For evident reasons, Chinese consumers are still lack of
fashion knowledge; they have a lower level of fashion sense compared to the world
level especially western consumers, so they asked more questions and need more
help on fashion. Brands and designers are among the second common topic, which is
the same as Thomas et al.‟s (2007) research. It confirms that “knowledge of brands is
clearly an important community value” (Thomas et al., 2006:601).
To further understand what Chinese consumers are asking, the tips and advice
category was further classified into eleven subcategories. Table 5.2 demonstrates the
four most popular subcategories among tips and advice topics which are personal
style tips, brand/product select, retailer/ store and price consult. Personal style tips
among the most common tips and advice manifests that the community members
care about their appearance and were anxious to enhance their personalized clothing
combinations by consulting others.
62
Table 5.2 most popular subcategories of tips and advice
Sub-categories of Tips and
advice
Frequency of occurrence
Out of 1100 (%)
Personal style tips 40
Brand/product select 25
Retailer/store 8
Price consult 6
Brand/product select is second most popular among tips and advice, which
underlined the importance of fashion related brands and products to consumers.
Obviously, Chinese consumers are also interested in brands and products, although
most of them do not have much brand and product related knowledge, they are keen
to know.
A mix of personal style tips and brand/product select tips and advice expresses that
the Chinese consumers are hungry to gather fashion information and especially
personal style and brands and designers. Chinese consumers also like to express the
uniqueness by most acquiring these two kinds of tips and advice. These tips and
advice subcategories are closely related to the appeal retailers and consumer
consumption in fashion marketing. Since consumers are asking and answering brand
related question instead of marketers, the same conclusion as the previous study can
be ensured that Chinese fashion consumers also have increased the control power of
marketing in fashion marketplace in China.
5.1.3 What is each type of Chinese consumers caring about fashion?
Chinese fashion innovators talked most about personal style, retailer, trends and
purchase. These members are the market mavens, they like to show off personal
styles and provide information about their rich experiences of purchase to other
members. Which is the point mentioned in Robertson and Kennedy (1968)‟s study
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that fashion innovators always like to try new things. Thus, marketers can test the
new products in the virtual community mainly this group of people, since they have
the strong influence in the virtual community, marketers can collaborate with them in
marketing fashion goods and brand communication.
Chinese fashion opinion leaders talked trends most frequently. This group of
consumers are good at communicating fashion information to other members. They
become fashion criterion in the virtual community. Same as several researchers
mentioned the features fashion opinion leaders have is that they are good at media
exposure and fashion information communication (Chowdhary and Dickey, 1988;
Goldsmith et al., 1991; Katz and Lazarsfield, 1955; Kim and Schrank, 1982).
Marketers can make use of this feature to help brand communication and product
promotion. Thus they should focus on their discussion and participate in, to better
understand what trends consumers prefer then apply it into their product designing
and make full use of this discussion for their business.
Chinese fashion innovators who combine above two groups of consumers talked
diverse topics in the virtual community. Baumgarten (1975) believe they have rich
experience of purchase and are willing to communicate their fashion knowledge and
experiences, since they have both characteristics; they are the major concerns for
consumers and marketers on fashion industry and fashion market field.
Chinese fashion followers are the largest amount of population in the fashion market,
retailers should never ignore this group. Although Workman and Jonson (1993)
believe this group has weak purchase behaviour than fashion agents, they cannot be
overlooked. Since Chinese consumers talked tips and advice most and they have
lower fashion sense, they must be longing for fashion information. For examples,
they ask about how to combine clothes with accessory, how to select colours to
match items, consulting prices of particular goods, and trends information. They are
easier to accept information which can help solve their problems. Workman and
Studak (2005) once said that fashion followers are concerning about the utilitarian,
64
marketers should consider this point and try to understand what most consumers‟
requirement and offer product related information to solve their queries and satisfy
their needs. Meanwhile, marketers can communicate their brand and products, which
is a significant mean to help retailers gain success in today‟s fashion market.
5.1.4 Virtual communities and Chinese fashion market
Chinese fashion retailers would benefit from virtual community, if they pay attention
to the effective management of virtual community and seize the opportunities
appropriately. Champy et al., (1996) mentioned that an appropriate virtual
community offers fashion marketers chances to gather critical marketing information.
Since some leader users will join such virtual community and communicate their
opinions, ideas of fashion and products, the discussion will influence other
consumers, as Okleshen and Grossbart (1998) also mentioned in their study. These
opinions and ideas are representative and authentic. Fashion product developers can
play a role in the virtual community to join the discussion and better manage the
community. But they should avoid over active performance, it may inhibit the
discussion, and restrain the real communication. The contributed discussion should
be useful for members, neither too tacit nor explicit, thus trust can be built.
Product brand or company information divulged in the virtual community can raise
member consumers‟ interest and boost the products promotion and marketing effects.
Product managers can easily gain market intelligence to design desirable products
and provide customised service; therefore reduce possibility of failure rate. As Kim
and Jin (2006) suggested, marketers can build virtual community depending on
consumers‟ perception to the brand. Thus virtual community can provide
opportunities to convey information of product development. Hence, companies must
handle well the communication.
Virtual communities are changing the potential marketing positions. The forum can
be a source to do marketing research, such as product design, concept examination,
65
pricing, and new product test. Kozinets (1999) has explained how complicated the
condition of virtual communities applied in business. Firms must adjust themselves
to the information economy and get used to the virtual communities. The changes
include integrating information from virtual community into product development
process. Another vital adjustment is the personnel company assigned in the virtual
community. Internal personnel should be emphasised to supervise the discussion
sometimes in demand to lead threads. Further adjustment is to involve mechanisms
to combine consumers‟ preference with product development process. Big chances
virtual communities bring are change the retailers (McWilliam, 2000). By applying
virtual community, organisations have one more great opportunity to develop their
fashion products and help their marketing research.
5.2 The reliability of data
To make the data trusted, researchers must minimize distortions and biases, in order
to acquire a systematic and indisputable content. Reliability makes analysts confident
with their data. Kaplan and Goldsen (1965: 83-84) put forward:”The important of
reliability rests on the assurance it provides that data obtained independent of the
measuring event, instrument or person. Reliable data, by definition, are data that
remain constant throughout variations in the measuring process”. Consequently, it is
principal for analysts that the classification procedure of the same phenomena stays
reliable even with different circumstances (Krippendorff, 2004). Weber (1990)
mentioned how to make data reliable is to let different individuals use a same method
to code the same content separately. Kassarjian (1977) provides the measurement of
reliability is “the ratio of coding agreements to the total number of coding decisions”.
Accordingly, two coders make 100 decisions individually, if the same decisions are
90, then the reliability is 90%. If there are more than two coders, the judgement will
be the radio of all coding agreement number to the total decisions they have made.
Reliabilities in the study were calculated as using numbers of agreements divided by
the quantity of observations. Discussion of discrepancy was carried out to be
resolved.
66
Table 5.3 Reliabilities of category
Category of content Reliability (%)
Brands and designers 93.7
Tips and advice 97.3
Retailers 95.8
Personal style 96.6
Trends 98.8
Purchases 95.1
Self-promotion 100
Prices 100
Other fashion topics (Celebrity style,
etc.)
97.5
Unrelated topics 100
Kassarjian (1977) believes that if the coefficient of reliability is above 85 percent, it
is acceptable, if under the coefficient, it should be doubted. Table 5.3 shows the
reliabilities of this study, and it can be believed acceptable.
67
6 Conclusion
The last chapter is to give a summary of this dissertation. Firstly, it answers the
research questions and gives some hypotheses of the research results. Then the
limitation and contribution of this study is conducted. Finally, the recommendation
for the future research and fashion marketing is provided.
6.1 Summary of Results
6.1.1 Response to research questions
Research questions are generated in Chapter one, the content analysis and the online
questionnaire were accomplished to solve the questions as below:
1. What are Chinese consumers saying about fashion in the particular virtual
community?
Within the nine categories of topics: brand and designers, tips and advice, retailers,
personal style, trends, purchases, self-promotion, prices and other fashion topics.
Tips and advice is the most frequent topic among Chinese consumers, following by
brands and designers, personal style and retailers. The tips and advice category was
further classified into eleven sub-categories. The most common subcategory topic
Chinese consumers saying are personal style tips, and then brand/ product select,
retailer/ store, price consult.
2. What types of consumers do these members belong to?
7% of Chinese consumers in the virtual community belong to the fashion innovators,
22% of them belong to the fashion opinion leaders, 30% of them are part of the
innovative communicators, and the rest of the 41 % of Chinese consumers are
fashion followers.
3. What are the differences between each type of Chinese fashion consumers?
Looking at the age range, Chinese fashion agents are generally young but above the
age of owing a job, and fashion followers are ranged widely from young students to
68
middle aged people. In terms of the occupation, fashion change agents normally have
decent jobs, but fashion followers are diverse from students, housewives to other
various backgrounds. Many of the fashion agents live in the economy developed
areas, such as east and south of China, but fashion followers are living with no
particular rules. Fashion change agents usually have high education degree, most of
them are bachelor‟s degree, and fashion followers are various in terms of educational
background.
Chinese fashion innovators and innovator communicators consider every factor when
purchasing fashion products. Fashion opinion leaders do not consider as much as
fashion innovators do when purchase fashion products. Chinese fashion followers are
focusing on less factors than fashion agents did. Chinese fashion innovators and
innovative communicators treated themselves as the first or early majority of
purchasers and they spent more money on fashion than other consumers. Chinese
fashion opinion leaders believed they were great majority of purchasers and spent
less than fashion innovators and innovative communicators.
Chinese fashion innovators talked more about personal style, retailers, trends and
purchases, brand/product distinguish of tips and advice, which are closely related to
the fashion purchase behaviour. Fashion opinion leaders talked more various topics;
they were active in communicating with others. Chinese innovative communicators
have the similar characteristics with fashion innovators. Chinese fashion followers
liked to talk more about tips and advice, to ask for advice of fashion, such as
personal style tips and price consult.
4. What kinds of insights can retailers and researchers gain from the fashion
virtual community?
Virtual community provides consumers opportunities to express their opinions and
interests, offers consumers power to control the fashion market. Marketers can
understand the requirements of each consumer group through the virtual community.
According to different requirements, marketers and retailers can make different
marketing plans to better suit the target consumers, in order to achieve better
marketing effects.
69
6.1.2 The hypothesis of the results
The reasons of the results can be hypothesised that Chinese consumers talked tips
and advice most is mainly because fashion market in China is not developed enough,
Chinese consumers are still lack of fashion knowledge compared with world level
especially western consumers. Since fashion industry is much more developed in the
western countries, especially the European countries.
Chinese fashion agents are mostly live in the east and south coast of China, because
these areas are the most developed places in China. People who love fashion and
purchase must have certain financial strength, eastern and southern consumers have
higher living standards and opener mind to accept foreign things. That is why fashion
agents are mainly from these areas.
6.2 Limitation
6.2.1 Questionnaire concern
60 samples were received for analysis, although the population of sample may be not
large enough to represent the behaviours and attitudes of all the Chinese fashion
consumers accurately, it displayed the typical consumers on some aspects. These
consumers who participated in the survey were most active users compared with
other members, they are generally typical consumers.
6.2.2 Sample concern
Although the member users in the bbs.trends.com.cn are general Chinese fashion
consumers, they are still a small group of fashion consumers from a forum. They
were gathered because they like using virtual communities, which is not typical
fashion consumers compared with the large amount of diverse fashion consumers in
China. There are some limitations for this small group of members to be the
representatives of all the consumers in China.
70
6.2.2 Consumer category concern
The consumer categorise is conducted by consumer themselves through asking
question: What do you think you belong to? Although explanations of each consumer
group are given, there were still some consumers unable to understand the
differences between different fashion consumers. It was possible to select the wrong
group they thought they should belong to. If the time of survey is enough, the
consumers categorise question can be divided into several consumer behaviour
questions. Then the researchers can categorise the group by themselves according to
consumers‟ behaviours, which is more objective, scientific and accurate.
6.3 Contribution
This study provides some detail of Chinese fashion consumers through investigating
a Chinese fashion forum. It divided the Chinese consumers into four types of fashion
consumers and to study each characteristic of these consumers. The study found out
what are the differences different Chinese consumers really care about on different
aspects of fashion, which helps marketers and retailers to target Chinese consumer
market and raise the efficiency of marketing in China. It also provides other
researchers and future researches a reference to compare and further study.
6.4 Recommendation
Companies and marketers should not only pay attention to the fashion virtual
communities but also take part in sharing information, offering consumers guidance
and direction of fashion related information. Retailers can make marketing plans
depending on different fashion groups, offer different group of consumers different
resources they need, thus to reduce the costs and increase the efficiency. Future
researches can focus on how to building fashion related virtual community with
techniques and consumer oriented social structure system. On the other hand, online
fashion consumer can be deeply studies with social media tools, especially for online
Chinese fashion consumers, since it has a great amount of populations and it is the
tendency of future consumers. Future researches on how to raise the effectiveness of
fashion virtual community applied by fashion retailers are required. For example,
71
entertainment value can be facilitated into virtual community to attract specific
fashion group consumers. The methods of successful adoption of fashion virtual
communities by retailers can be further studied. In terms of study, the quantity
sample of consumers can be enhanced, so that the study can be more accurate. The
methodology of this kind of study can be also tried to adopt focus group and
interviews to see different perspectives of consumers and market.
Word counts: 15117
72
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Appendix
Online Questionnaire
The questionnaire is posted on the brand-clothing forum in Chinese. This is the
English version of the questionnaire. Question 1 and 4 is completion questions,
question 7 is multiple choice questions, and others are single choice questions.
*1. Please indicate your user name in this forum.
*2. Please indicate your gender.
° Male
° Female
*3. Please indicate your age.
° under 18
° 18-24
° 25-34
° 35-44
° 45-54
° over 54
*4. Please indicate your occupation.
*5. Where are you living?
° East China
° South China
° Central China
° North China
° Northwest
° Southwest
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° Northeast
° Hongkong, Taiwan and Macao
° Abroad
*6. Your education background.
° junior high school and below
° senior high school
° junior college
° bachelor's degree
° master's degree
° PhD and above
*7. What factors do you consider when buying product? (Multiple choices)
° style
° price
° trendy
° quality
° brand
° texture
° comfort
*8. How much did you spend on fashion every month?
° under ¥99
° ¥100 - ¥499
° ¥500- ¥999
° ¥1000- ¥4999
° ¥5000 - ¥12999
° above ¥13000
*9. When a new product enter the market, I am among the?
° First to purchase the product
° Early majority of purchasers
° The great majority of purchasers
° Late majority of purchasers
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° Last to purchase the product
*10. What do you think you belong to?
° Fashion innovators
° Fashion opinion leaders
° Innovative communicators
° Fashion followers