The Use of Social Media to Promote Sustainable Fashion and Benefit Communications: A Data-Mining Approach

Li Zhao, Stacy H. Lee, Muzhen Li and Peng Sun
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Li Zhao: Textile and Apparel Management, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
Stacy H. Lee: Department of Hospitality and Retail Management, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA
Muzhen Li: Textile and Apparel Management, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
Peng Sun: The Climate Corporation, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-14

Abstract: Numerous brands utilize social media to capture consumers’ interests while promoting their sustainability goals. To understand how sustainable fashion brands communicate with their consumers, this study explored the visual and textual information sustainable fashion brands post on social media. Data were collected from sustainable fashion brands’ social media pages, and a total of 1525 images and captions and 140,735 comments were analyzed. By employing color theory and the theory of speech acts, HSV color analysis and the SVM classification model were used to extract information. The results showed that the images and captions posted by all three brands were consistent with their brand identities and sustainability goals. We also found that there were significant differences among the three brands when comparing posts employing expressive and assertive acts with posts using directive and assertive acts. These results indicate that social media users are more likely to leave comments when they read posts containing expressive and directive acts. These findings will allow fashion social media marketers to select appealing images and colors to engage consumers as well as to choose appropriate speech acts to deliver information to achieve their sustainability goals.

Keywords: social media; data mining; color theory; speech act theory; sustainable fashion brand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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