During a 2022 survey carried out among luxury consumers, 65 percent of respondents from China stated that social media was an important source of fashion-related information. The same was true for 24 percent of respondents from Italy and 38 percent of respondents from the United States.

During a 2022 survey carried out in the United Kingdom, more than one out of three responding fashion and lifestyle buyers stated they turned to Instagram for inspiration when buying fashion and lifestyle products while less than 20 percent of respondents said they turned to Facebook. With around 13 percent, both TikTok and YouTube follow as the third and fourth most frequented social media platforms serving as inspiration for fashion and lifestyle consumers. The source defines fashion and lifestyle products as apparel, accessories, health and beauty, and home and interiors.

In 2019, fashion brands performed best on photo-sharing platform Instagram. On average, fashion brands posted 0.96 posts on Instagram per day and generated a 0.68 percent engagement rate per post, which was a higher engagement rate than on Facebook or Twitter.

According to a study conducted in 2022, Instagram was the most popular social media platform for users to directly purchase fashion items on, with 66 percent of respondents reporting using the app for this purpose. Facebook and YouTube ranked second, both reported by 43 percent of respondents.

During a 2022 survey carried out in the United Kingdom, nearly one out of three respondents stated that they made a purchase based on recommendations on social media in the month prior to the survey. Almost as much - around 30 percent - stated that they did so in the previous six month and another 20 percent in the previous year.

During a 2022 survey carried out in the United Kingdom, 30.06 percent of fashion and lifestyle consumers stated that their most enjoyed format for content on social media platforms were spontaneously created static posts. Pre-recorded videos came right behind in the ranking for favorite formats, with a share of 29.86 percent. The third most popular format were live videos with 21.53 percent of responding consumers preferring them.

According to a 2021 survey carried out among consumers in the United States, Facebook and Instagram were the social networks most used to learn about, discover, and buy fashion apparel products in the U.S.. Across the two platforms, slightly over half (51 percent) of users said the content they saw on their feeds resulted in a purchase.

According to a survey conducted by Rakuten Insight in February 2023, 74 percent of respondents from China aged between 16 and 24 years used social commerce to purchase clothing. 48 percent of the same aged respondents in Japan have purchased clothing on social media as of February 2023.

During a 2022 survey carried out in the United Kingdom, roughly one in three fashion and lifestyle buyers said they preferred engaging on Instagram. Almost 22 percent of respondents preferred Facebook whereas among another 14.5 percent, Youtube was the most popular platform.

In the third quarter of 2021, leading fashion luxury brands invested roughly 400 million U.S. dollars in social media marketing in the United States. By far the most popular social channel was Instagram, garnering more than 326 million dollars or 83 percent of the total Media Impact Value (MIV®). YouTube and Twitter followed, with 33 million and 23 million, respectively.

During a 2024 survey, 88 percent of respondents from India and Indonesia stated they believed social media influencers were a useful source of information on fashion and clothing topics. In Germany, the share stood at 44 percent.

In 2023, the social media platform Instagram was their source of inspiration for fashion, according to 42 percent of women in Germany. Facebook followed in second place, with 27 percent. The platforms YouTube and Pinterest also made it into the list of the most popular platforms. However, both were named by only around 20 percent of women surveyed.

Of U.S. online shoppers who claimed to be influenced a lot by social media when shopping for clothing, 41 percent reported use of TikTok Shop, TikTok's online marketplace that allows users to buy products directly on the TikTok app. In comparison, 28 percent of users influenced a lot by social media when clothes shopping have tried TikTok shop and reported disliking it.

This statistic shows which social media platforms luxury consumers use to engage with luxury fashion brands in the United Kingdom (UK), according to a survey published in November 2013. Of respondents, 9.2 percent said they used Instagram to engage with luxury brands.

This chart indicates the social visibility scores of selected apparel brands on social media networks in July and August 2016. The Spanish brand Zara reached a result of 100, representing the highest possible score. H&M's social visibility score, measuring the volume of discussions generated on social networks, was 53.89 points. The Swedish fashion company H&M generated gross sales of an amount of 25.5 billion dollars for the year 2015.

A 2022 survey of fashion company executives revealed that nearly seven in ten fashion brands were using social media in order to engage with their consumers, while 56 percent were using email marketing, followed by 36 percent using paid search, like Google advertisements.

According to a Rakuten Insight survey conducted in Vietnam in February 2023, clothing was the most purchased category on social media, as stated by 72 percent of Vietnamese respondents. Cosmetics, beauty products, bags, and shoes were the second most popular items on social platforms, followed by fashion accessories.

A worldwide survey conducted with affluent consumers in the first quarter of 2024 found that younger consumers engaged more frequently with luxury related brands and services on social media. Consumers in the younger age group were more likely to engage with brands on social media, with about six in ten of persons aged 18-39 following a brand, in comparison to just four in ten of those aged 40 and above.

A survey conducted by Rakuten Insight in February 2023 found that 68 percent of female respondents in India purchased clothing items on social media. Furthermore, about 47 percent of male respondents reported having purchased bags and shoes on social media platforms.

Zara, Spain’s flagship fashion retailer and part of the larger clothing company Inditex, is a well-known brand globally. The success of this globally-present store can be reflected in the number of social media users that follow its various accounts. In the financial year 2022, Zara had more than 59 million followers on Instagram, as well as approximately 1.5 million on Twitter and 1.6 million on WeChat, widely used among Chinese users.

Inditex and its brands

Zara had roughly 1,900 shops worldwide, ranking it as the most common establishment of the Spanish clothing company Inditex. The brands Bershka and Stradivarius followed in second and third place respectively, each with over 800 stores worldwide, meaning Zara had more stores than the other two brands combined.

Spain: benchmark for world’s fast fashion

Inditex ranked as the world’s second largest apparel and accessories retailer in 2021, with over 32.5 billion U.S. dollars' worth of retail sales. Unlike its sales revenues, the Spanish group saw a steady decrease in its number of stores worldwide, which in 2019 stood at nearly 7.5 thousand, but had fallen to approximately 5.8 thousand in 2022. Spain was the country that enjoyed the highest number of Inditex stores that year.