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PurposeThe study aims to contribute to the knowledge on the role of the fashion bloggers in the product adoption process in both advanced and emerging markets. Specifically, the study investigates the impact of credibility, engagement and homophily on intentions to buy fashion products recommended by the blogger.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical research builds on an online survey with a sample of 402 consumers (189 Italian and 213 Taiwanese). The proposed model was tested through structural equation modeling.FindingsResults showed that homophily and the fashion blogger credibility positively influenced the engagement within the blog. Moreover, perceived similarity with the other blog's followers (homophily) and a higher engagement with the blog both translated in a stronger intention to buy the sponsored products and to spread a positive word-of-mouth about the fashion blogger.Practical implicationsThe study has practical implications since it identifies strategic suggestions for both companies that create partnerships with famous fashion bloggers and bloggers who have turned their diary-style websites into a business.Originality/valueThe study contributes to a better understanding of the influence exerted by blog engagement on intentions to follow blogger's recommendations. The study also examines credibility and homophily as antecedents of engagement, which have not been extensively researched in the past with respect to blogs.

We examine the impact of key personnel’s loss to competition on their former employers’ creative performance. Using archival data on the career histories of designers and the creative performance of their fashion houses between 2000 and 2010, we find that a house’s outward centrality in the network of personnel mobility—resulting from personnel departures—has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the house’s creative performance. This relationship is moderated by the house’s inward centrality in a network of personnel mobility stemming from hiring competitors’ employees, the tenure of its creative directors, the accomplishments of these directors, and the house’s status. Our results suggest that organizations can enhance their creativity by relying on ideas obtained through relationships with their former employees long after these employees left to work for the competition. However, this effect is contingent upon characteristics of the organization that may be associated with its capacity to absorb these ideas and its ability to signal legitimacy of the resulting output to the external audiences.

Purpose Big Data is disrupting the fashion retail industry and revolutionising the traditional fashion business models. Nowadays, leading fashion brands and new start-ups are actively engaging with Big Data analytics to enhance their operations and maximise on profitability. In hope of motivating and providing direction to fashion retail managers, industry experts, and academics alike, the purpose of this paper is to consider the most recent and trending applications of Big Data in fashion retailing with the aim of concisely summarising the industry’s current position and status. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper provides a brief introduction to the emerging topic of Big Data in fashion retailing by briefly synthesising findings from industry, market and academic research. Findings Most existing fashion brands are yet to fully engage with Big Data. The authors find that the main reasons underlying the application of Big Data analytics in fashion are trend prediction, waste reduction, consumer experience, consumer engagement and marketing, better quality control, less counterfeits and shortening of supply chains. The authors also identify key challenges which must be overcome for the most fashionable industry to be able to capitalize on Big Data to understand and predict fashion consumer behaviour. Research limitations/implications The brief synthesis provides a foundation for future investigations into the use of Big Data in fashion retailing. Originality/value This paper serves as an up-to-date introduction to how Big Data can transform fashion retailing and can act as a sound reference guide for fashion industry managers and professionals grappling with Big Data-related issues.

In the context of fashion/textile innovations towards Industry 4.0, a variety of digital technologies, such as 3D garment CAD, have been proposed to automate, optimize design and manufacturing processes in the organizations of involved enterprises and supply chains as well as services such as marketing and sales. However, the current digital solutions rarely deal with key elements used in the fashion industry, including professional knowledge, as well as fashion and functional requirements of the customer and their relations with product technical parameters. Especially, product design plays an essential role in the whole fashion supply chain and should be paid more attention to in the process of digitalization and intelligentization of fashion companies. In this context, we originally developed an interactive fashion and garment design system by systematically integrating a number of data-driven services of garment design recommendation, 3D virtual garment fitting visualization, design knowledge base, and design parameters adjustment. This system enables close interactions between the designer, consumer, and manufacturer around the virtual product corresponding to each design solution. In this way, the complexity of the product design process can drastically be reduced by directly integrating the consumer’s perception and professional designer’s knowledge into the garment computer-aided design (CAD) environment. Furthermore, for a specific consumer profile, the related computations (design solution recommendation and design parameters adjustment) are performed by using a number of intelligent algorithms (BIRCH, adaptive Random Forest algorithms, and association mining) and matching with a formalized design knowledge base. The proposed interactive design system has been implemented and then exposed through the REST API, for designing garments meeting the consumer’s personalized fashion requirements by repeatedly running the cycle of design recommendation—virtual garment fitting—online evaluation of designer and consumer—design parameters adjustment—design knowledge base creation, and updating. The effectiveness of the proposed system has been validated through a business case of personalized men’s shirt design.

In recent years, the textile and fashion industries have witnessed an enormous amount of growth in fast fashion. On e-commerce platforms, where numerous choices are available, an efficient recommendation system is required to sort, order, and efficiently convey relevant product content or information to users. Image-based fashion recommendation systems (FRSs) have attracted a huge amount of attention from fast fashion retailers as they provide a personalized shopping experience to consumers. With the technological advancements, this branch of artificial intelligence exhibits a tremendous amount of potential in image processing, parsing, classification, and segmentation. Despite its huge potential, the number of academic articles on this topic is limited. The available studies do not provide a rigorous review of fashion recommendation systems and the corresponding filtering techniques. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first scholarly article to review the state-of-the-art fashion recommendation systems and the corresponding filtering techniques. In addition, this review also explores various potential models that could be implemented to develop fashion recommendation systems in the future. This paper will help researchers, academics, and practitioners who are interested in machine learning, computer vision, and fashion retailing to understand the characteristics of the different fashion recommendation systems.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the emerging crowd-funding phenomenon, that is a collective effort by consumers who network and pool their money together, usually via the internet, in order to invest in and support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Successful service businesses that organize crowd-funding and act as intermediaries are emerging, attesting to the viability of this means of attracting investment.Design methodology approach - The research employs a \"grounded theory\" approach, performing an in-depth qualitative analysis of three cases involving crowd-funding initiatives: SellaBand in the music business, Trampoline in financial services, and Kapipal in non-profit services. These cases were selected to represent a diverse set of crowd-funding operations that vary in terms of risk return for the investor and the type of payoff associated to the investment.Findings - The research addresses two research questions: how and why do consumers turn into crowd-funding participants? and how and why do service providers set up a crowd-funding initiative? Concerning the first research question, the authors' findings reveal purposes, characteristics, roles and tasks, and investment size of crowd-funding activity from the consumer's point of view. Regarding the second research question, the authors' analysis reveals purposes, service roles, and network effects of crowd-funding activity investigated from the point of view of the service organization that set up the initiative.Practical implications - The findings also have implications for service managers interested in launching and or managing crowd-funding initiatives.Originality value - The paper addresses an emerging phenomenon and contributes to service theory in terms of extending the consumer's role from co-production and co-creation to investment.

Digital fashion may instill transformative power into the fashion industry as it can simultaneously deliver fashionability and sustainability. Renowned for their innovativeness and creativity, luxury brands embrace digital fashion and achieve market success, indicating the future of digital fashion. This research aims to empirically investigate consumers’ general perceptions and evaluations of digital fashion and to specifically examine consumers’ purchase intention of luxury brands’ digital fashion. A total of 214 responses were collected from a U.S.-based research company’s consumer panel. Data were analyzed by using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results revealed that the general attitude toward digital fashion is influenced by four factors: the two specific attitudes toward outfitting avatars and dressing real people’s on-screen bodies in virtual spaces, the perceived social value of digital fashion, and consumer environmental involvement. Furthermore, the general attitude and perceived social value of digital fashion directly affect the purchase intention. This study attempts to extend established theories into the emerging digital fashion context and provides insights and suggestions for digital fashion marketers, particularly for luxury fashion brands.

Background:The Patras branch of the Hellenic League Against Rheumatism sought to demonstrate to the public and local stakeholders that individuals with RMDs and other disabilities can conquer their illnesses and lead fulfilling lives.Objectives:To accomplish this goal, the branch hosted a fashion show called “Looking the Life with Courage” with the cooperation mainly of local associations of patients with disabilities. Among the other goals were:1.Ton increase knowledge of RMDs and disabilities2.To increase awareness of our branch and other disability associations and3.To raise a certain amount of money for charitable purposes.Methods:Press releases, a social media campaign, and—most importantly—word-of-mouth are how we publicize the event. The event included:1.In the beginning, a small tribute of the Olympic flame touching, in honour of all disabled people and all the Paralympians who honoured our country with gold medals by the well-known designer of haute couture Mr. Mike Nikolatos.2.A fashion show by patients with RMDs and people with disabilities and only 2 professional models, wearing wonderful evening clothes from a very well-known fashion store.3.Bridal show with a specially designed dance show by the Dance Sports Hall Dance School, with excellent choreographies by its dance teacher, Dionissia Soulele.4.A spectacular fashion show, with couture clothes, by the Designer, who also served as the event’s director and the artistic director.The fashion show concluded with the fashion designer receiving an award from the President and Management Committee of HELAR/ELEANA of the fashion designer for his valuable contribution for both his significant contribution to the field of disability fashion and his groundbreaking ideas about animal welfare. He is the first fashion designer in Greece to use environmentally friendly fur substitutes in place of natural fur, saving animals from suffering and death.Throughout the evening, the participants relived Greek and international favourites through a delightful musical voyage.Results:The fashion show was a great success. More than 500 people attended the fashion show. About 4,500 euros were raised for charity. We got the chance to communicate with local governmental and municipal authorities once more. We succeeded in raising awareness of RMDS and other disabilities once more, thanks to extensive media coverage from influencers, TV shows, social media, and press clippings.Conclusion:The show focused on diversity, strength, and movement. The patients experienced such high psychological satisfaction that they realized they had nothing to be envious of in terms of non-disabled people. We managed to have better cooperation with other associations.REFERENCES:NIL.Acknowledgements:We appreciate all of our partners: The Vice Regional Commissioner of Western Greece,Ch. Bonanos, The President of the Patras Carnaval, I.Kouri, the Women’s Union of Patras, the Inner Wheel European, S. Avgerinou, the Soroptimist Club Callipateira, Mrs Maria Manousaki, the Inner Wheel Northen Rio, M. Asimakopoulou, the Animal Welfare League, A. Demopoulou and the Association of Young Artists, E Analytis and our sponsors. Specially thanks to “The Diamonds events”, A.M.Rogdaki, for their help in decorating the venue.Disclosure of Interests:None declared.

PurposeThe emergence of social media platforms has revolutionized how brands develop partnerships with social media influencers (SMIs). However, users are seeking more meaningful engagement with SMIs, and little is known about how brands can shift their focus from transient engagements to continued engagement that builds long-term brand–consumer relationships. Extant research has provided inconsistent findings regarding consumer engagement behavior. To address this knowledge deficit, we contribute to the consumer engagement literature by developing and testing a conceptual model that explores and explains the relationships between the factors that influence continued engagement intention (CEI), a form of behavioral intention.Design/methodology/approachA literature review was conducted to identify gaps and develop a theoretically informed conceptual model and hypotheses. Survey data from 604 Instagram SMI followers were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling using SmartPLS 3.3.3 to assess the structural model relationships and conduct post hoc analysis.FindingsThe findings suggest that it is important to positively influence consumer responses to elicit CEI. Furthermore, homophily attitudes toward SMIs moderate the relationship between SMI experience and CEI.Practical implicationsBrands must work with SMIs to create positive SMI experiences and develop CEI. Furthermore, SMIs should focus on brands that fit their lifestyles to enhance homophily attitudes and forge CEI.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by combining social exchange and flow theories to develop and test a holistic framework for examining CEIs regarding SMIs and brands. The findings show that creating positive SMI experiences benefits brands seeking CEI.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate what type of knowledge enhances the frequency of strategic renewal for organizations operating in high velocity environments. It also investigates whether strategic renewal frequency is beneficial, rather than harmful in such environments. Design/methodology/approach The study followed a two-step data collection process involving pilot interviews and an on-site survey data collection procedure. The authors first conducted face-to-face pilot interviews with 16 fashion retailers lasting 30 min to 2 h. They then tested their hypotheses by using a sample of 152 South Korean fashion retailers, as the fashion industry is a prototypical high velocity environment. Findings Firms that have a higher rate of strategic renewal frequency outperform those with a lower one. Moreover, the frequency of strategic renewal mitigates the ill effects of lack of legitimacy not imbued by a franchisor’s backing. Finally, firms can increase the frequency of their strategic renewal efforts by accessing knowledge from their main customers more efficiently. Originality/value The results of this study provide a refined picture of the role of knowledge acquisition efficiency and strategic renewal frequency in the pursuit of competitive advantage in high velocity environments.