Effect of brand prominence on fashion advertising images on Instagram: a computational analysis

Abstract

The main purpose of this research is to explore fashion images posted on Instagram and how users respond to those images. Guided by the persuasion knowledge model, a computational analysis of 29,557 fashion photos posted by 10 top-ranked global fashion brands in four major fashion categories (i.e. luxury, SPA, sports, and casual) is conducted to identify specific patterns of brand prominence and promotional intention and to investigate how those patterns are associated with customer engagement. Findings showed that brand information (i.e. size of the brand logo and brand name) tended to lead to lower engagement levels in general, although luxury brands showed the opposite pattern. More interestingly, while providing luxury brand information in the image invited positive responses, there seemed to be backfire effects when such information (i.e. brand name) was highly prominent. In addition, sharing promotional information was likely to prompt a lower level of interaction. Discussion of the findings and issues related to advertising research using computation analysis is provided.