Abstracts Category : Other

Online consumer behavior

by Antonia Schneider

The objective of this study is to investigate the effects on consumer engagement with the fashion industry, resulting from the planned changes in Instagrams service to businesses, from offering sole branding opportunities to allowing brand feeds to turn into sales acquisition channels. Through literary and empirical research tendencies that consumers cognition and affect are prone to change on all three engagement levels of the CEBSC model were identified. Key finding of this study is that the industrys demand for an improved customer journey on the social network, diverges from the overall private users demand to rather explore than shop. Nevertheless, very fashion loyal consumers are likely to appreciate a seamless shopping experience. Further research should therefore focus on these specific consumer segments in order to identify their exact behavioral deviation. As a solution to the diverging demand this study suggests that Instagram provides users with the option of opting-out from its shopping service, in order to maintain potential consumers closely in their purchase decision-making process, while not scaring regular Social Media users away.Advisors/Committee Members: Martinez, Lus Fructuoso.