Digital communication in fashion companies: is it a gender affair?

The goal of the paper is to investigate the connections between the prevailing gender of top management in a fashion company and the use of social networks and digital media. Particularly, the main research question is “how does gender affect the relevance of Information and Communication Technologies in the Italian luxury fashion companies?”. For centuries, Italy has been the benchmark for the high fashion and luxury sector and while the ownership of the firms is often longer totally Italian, the majority of the production is still “made in Italy”. During the financial crisis, the luxury industry has not been affected by downturn much, also thanks to “Millennials”, who assign a symbolic meaning to luxury goods as they endow relevance to virtual windows created by social networks. The brands capable of seizing the opportunity of digital communication (i.e.: e-commerce; social network pages; sponsorships and commercial agreements with “influencers”; etc.) have overcome the adverse economic cycle rapidly. As digital communication is a resource for the future, is it a male or a female affair in the luxury fashion world? Is gender relevant for the development of social media? To answer to the above questions, we set a data sample of Italian fashion firms, operating in the luxury segment and equipped with one or more famous brands. For each firm, we collected, in addition to the main financial and economic ratios, some “digital” indicators (such as the number of followers or number of “likes”, usage of e-commerce, partnership with famous “fashion bloggers”, etc.) and some governance and management gender indicators. Applying statistical techniques to the data set, we demonstrated that the use of technology is not a male prerogative and that even if the use of ICT may positively affect the economic performances of a luxury brand, the management’s gender is not decisive in a firm’s choice to develop revenues through digital communication.