Effective Fashion Blogs and Their Impact on the Current Fashion Industry

Despite the fact there is plenty of academic material, concerning with the use of social media and blogs in business, very little research has been done in the area of fashion blogosphere in sense of exploration the character of contemporary most popular/efficient blogs and their potential use in fashion marketing and brand management. This thesis firstly summarizes the emergence and current nature of social media and their impact on business communication in general and subsequently in fashion industry. In order to provide proper understanding of current fashion industry the nature, basis principles of operating and challenges are explained as well as its recent transformation due to emergence of Web 2.0 and ICT´s, and sociocultural changes. In the second part of the literature review the position and potential use of social media and especially blogs in fashion industry is demonstrated, including the explanation of the lack of proper research concerning this problematic, and relevance of this research. The central aim of this research is summarized into general Research Question; “What determines an effective blog in contemporary fashion blogosphere?”, and further specified in three Sub-Questions, concerning identity and background of current popular bloggers, culture of spaces of their blogs and nature of actual or potential presence of public relations. Those areas are explored through inductive content analysis, which was chosen as an optimal methodology for this research. Collected data are summarized into several categories, representing common patterns for all analyzed blogs. Concerning identity of bloggers; no background in fashion industry and young age of analyzed bloggers were found as the key findings of this area. Concerning culture of spaces; personal approach, first time experience, and dominance of visual over written content were found as the key findings and patterns shared by all those blogs together with multidirectional discussions present in commenting sections of those blogs, and slight preference of Twitter over other social network sites. Lastly, concerning those blogs as a tool of fashion marketing and brand management; no obvious forms of public relations was visible at majority of those blogs, however features with certain potential for purposes of marketing and brand management were found. In the second part of the thesis those and other found patterns are explicitly presented, illustrated on examples, and discussed within the wider context of theoretical frame. Additionally limitations of the research and collected data are admitted and areas for future research are suggested. In the concluding chapter key knowledge of social media, blogs, fashion industry, and fashion blogs are summarized together with the key finding of the research. Final summarization leads into the conclusion, concerning nature of analyzed blogs and their implications and possible use in fashion public relations, marketing and brand management.