Developing UGC social brand engagement model: insights from diverse consumers

The evaluation and understanding of user generated content, social influence, and social brand engagement through social media have become a topic of major interest for both academics and marketers since the birth of online networking. The study looked at social media interactions involving user generated brand-related content and how this generates social brand engagement in a fashion retail context. The study followed an interpretivist approach based on qualitative design using thirty-two non-directive and semi structured interviews from the customers of top fashion brands in UK. These respondents were chosen using purposive sampling and thematic analysis was then performed using NVivo 11-Plus software. This study proposes a holistic conceptualisation of “UGC social consumer brand engagement” by considering (1) the identification, (2) the internalization and (3) the compliance of the social influence of UGC between user’s content creators and UGC consumers. The proposed framework contributes to research about UGC and brand engagement with a theoretical, generalizable interpretation of the phenomenon. Despite significant levels of public and private research, however, little consideration has been given to role of user-generated content (UGC) as a tool for enhancing social brand engagement in fashion industry. The contribution of this research is that this research divided social influence into three categories: compliance, identification, and internalization. Therefore, marketers can analyze social influence types in the context of their fashion brands, for example, if any brand already has enough social proof in the form of identification and internalization then it can create social engagement using social media platforms.