Cross-platform Analysis of Customer Brand Engagement with Fashion Brands: A Multi-group Perspective

This study offers significant contributions for comprehending customer brand engagement (CBE) on social media by addressing two main objectives: analysing the dynamics of CBE (antecedents, dimensions and outcomes) in the context of fashistry and investigating the moderating result of different social networking platforms on the levels of engagement. A cross-sectional survey of 508 participants following fashion brands on social media in Delhi NCR (India), was examined using PLS-SEM via Smart PLS-4. The findings reveal that social identity and entertainment are key drivers of CBE, while information availability indirectly influences CBE when moderated. This study distinctly illustrates CBE as a second-order construct comprising cognitive processing, affection, activation and social connection as four lower-order constructs. It shows how CBE outcomes such as brand loyalty, brand advocacy, e-WOM and repeat purchase intention are strongly navigated by CBE. The key contribution is the substantiation of how various social media platforms relatively moderate CBE, thus approaching a pivotal gap in scholarly work by unveiling platform-specific deviations in engagement levels. For this, a rare multi-group analysis involving more than two groups was employed.