Luxury fashion brands versus mass fashion brands: data mining analysis of social media responses toward corporate sustainability

Today’s consumers are increasingly concerned with social and environmental issues, leading to more conscientious consumption decisions and practices. As the core consumers’ characteristics are vastly different between luxury and mass fashion brands, it is expected that consumers’ social media responses would be highly varied as well. Therefore, this study aimed to explore consumer social media behavior when exposed to corporate sustainability messages and discover potential differences in responses between luxury and mass fashion consumers. To achieve the objective of the study, 89,290 raw data were obtained from Twitter through Python. Given that there might be differences in consumer responses toward corporate 378 sustainability messages between luxury and mass fashion brands because of distinctively different characteristics in their target consumers, this study explored 380 consumer social media behavior and looked for potential differences in responses 381 between the two groups of consumers. After analyzing over 89,000 tweets and 382 retweets made by 11 luxury and 11 mass fashion brands as of March 2017, the 383 study found several interesting results. Overall, the analysis of Twitter messages suggests that luxury fashion brands are less communicative with consumers about their sustainability activities than mass fashion brands. This indicates fewer tweet and less loud, yet effective in what they communicate might be luxury brands’ strategies. Indeed, the findings do show that consumers look for leadership in luxury brands, as they tend to like or retweet more messages generated from luxury brands when their messages are focused on sustainability.