Fashionfever-A study on the fashion bloggers’ influence on the MeWe-generation’s fashion consumption

AbstractDuring the recent years the fashion business has taken huge place on the Internet as a result of the emerging social media tools. One of these tools, which is the focus of this thesis, is the fashion blogs which over the past years become more popular and are today seen as a source of information and inspiration for fashion styles and upcoming trends. The boom of fashion bloggers resulted in less control by the magazines and fashion houses. Furthermore, the shift in generation that the world has faced shows that the people of 1980’s, so called the MeWe’s, are the ones who are taking over the society, such as the labour market.“The main purpose with this thesis is to examine and analyze the implications of the blog-development for fashion consumers in the MeWe-generation.”In order to perform my research I chose the qualitative approach where I interviewed ten women within the MeWe-generation. My purpose is to analyze the respondents' views and opinions in order to afterwards put it in relation to the secondary data collected. My goal has been to, as a result of the empirical materials, gain more understanding of the respondents’ views on in what extent they are being influenced by the fashion bloggers. Furthermore, the empirical study, analysis and the conclusion have been presented on the basis of following concepts within the theoretical framework: The MeWe-generation, Social Media, Blogs, Word of Mouth, Word of Mouth Marketing, Viral Marketing, Reference Groups, and Opinion Leadership.In conclusion, one could say that this study shows evidence that the MeWe-generation is being influenced by fashion bloggers. Their overall consumption behaviour is being affected by the frequently updated blogs and they are also gaining more trust towards the fashion bloggers since they can relate to them much more than to the models in the magazines. Also, as a result of the interactivity that occurs between the readers and the bloggers, a positive word of mouth is created which also increase the trustworthiness of the bloggers. Hence, one can say that by the way these fashion blogs are taking place in the MeWe-consumer’s everyday life, it is clear that they are here to stay and will remain their power of influencing them in their fashion consumption.Program: Magisterutbildning i fashion management med inriktning modemarknadsförin