The Hive Effect and Breakout Strategies of Fashion Brand Marketing under the Herd Mentality

Abstract

With the popularity of social media and e-commerce platforms, consumer decision-making is increasingly influenced by group behavior, resulting in the phenomenon of “convergent consumption”. Against this background, this study focuses on the phenomenon of herd mentality in fashion consumption in the digital era based on social psychology theories. Through experiments and questionnaires, this study found that explicit social pressure (e.g., sales ranking) has a 42% stronger influence on purchase intention than implicit cues; the herd effect of KOL is 2.3 times higher than that of the general group; and the sense of social belonging plays a key role as a mediator in the combination of “explicit pressure + KOL” (β=0.68). These findings not only enrich the application of social identity theory in the field of consumption, but also provide practical guidelines for brands to strengthen the follower effect by accurately designing social proof signals, or differentiate themselves by cultivating subcultural identities. The limitation of this study lies in the cultural homogeneity of the samples. In the future, the present study this paper can expand cross-cultural comparative studies and explore the boundaries of the effect under different product categories.