The Usage of Social Media Text Data for the Demand Forecasting in the Fashion Industry

The fashion industry faces different challenges in the field of demand forecasting. Factors such as long delivery times in contrast to short selling periods requires precise demand figures in order to place accurate production plans. This paper presents firstly the idiosyncrasies of the fashion industry and shows current fashion forecasting approaches. Then, the idea of applying social media text data within the demand forecasting process is presented by showing works of integrating user generated content in different application fields. Following the research question on the predictive value of social media text data for the fashion industry, the research objective and the methodology are formulated in a last step.