The Dialogical Potential of Facebook: The Case of Fashion Brands

Abstract

The main goal of this study is to examine the communication that fashion brands make through Facebook. It is intended to ascertain if the fashion brands use a communication strategy based on dialogue with their followers. In order to reach the objectives indicated above, a content analysis has been carried out (quantitative methodology) of 326 publications made through Facebook by H&M, Zara and Ralph Lauren between January 1st and June 30th of 2017. The main results of this work show that, although Facebook has a wide dialogical potential, fashion brands do not use it to a great extent. Although we consider appropriate to have analyzed only the social network Facebook given its importance, this situation could be considered as the main limitation of the present study, since the fashion brands could, or not, be taking advantage of the dialogical potential of other social networks, such as Twitter or Instagram. It could be considered that this research stands out for studying a series of variables that allows organizations to know if they are using the dialogical potential offered by digital communication.