Dancing with Douyin: An Exploration of Content Marketing in Douyin’s Fashion Community.

Qi, Haochen

Abstract

Over the past six years, Douyin has become one of China’s most popular social media platforms (Zheng, 2023) yet academic work on it is still in its relative infancy. Many fashion brands have started marketing on Douyin, but there is a gap in knowledge on the extent to which traditional content marketing strategies are effective on this platform, not least given its unique content recommendation system (Su & Valdovinos Kaye, 2023). Previous research on content marketing has also lacked a focus on communication effects and customer perspectives. This thesis makes a contribution to the development of content marketing theory for Douyin by examining communication effects and customer motivations and, in the process, develops a new fashion brand content marketing model for Douyin. Using agenda-setting theory, it examines the impact of community content on customer engagement behaviour (CEB) to establish content marketing effectiveness. Thereafter, it employs uses and gratifications theory (Katz et al., 1973) to analyse the relationship between different levels of CEB and customer needs in the selected community. Finally, it develops a content marketing model for fashion brands on Douyin.
The research contributes to the body of work on content marketing by developing its explanatory features in relation to Douyin as follows. First, the application of agenda-setting and uses and gratifications theories from communication scholarship confirms the effectiveness of content marketing and demonstrates the influence of community content perceptions on CEB. The research finds that different motivations drive different levels of CEB, and branded content can significantly influence user perceptions and brand engagement. Second, the research refines the brand content marketing strategy of De Plessis (2015) to establish the Douyin Content Marketing Loop Model (DCMLM) more precisely suited to Douyin’s fashion community. Third, in relation to commercial practice on Douyin, the research puts forward three models to assist fashion brands in: understanding Douyin’s characteristics as a content marketing platform; devising content strategies for different marketing objectives; and comprehending a holistic content marketing process within the Douyin fashion community.
The research employs a mixed-method approach, including netnography and an online survey. The netnographic work includes generating observational data (popular video content and field notes) and conducting interviews with 12 Douyin content creation experts and 12 fashion community users. Qualitative data generated was analysed using a netnography-based method (Kozinets, 2019). Online survey data consisted of 607 questionnaire responses from community users and was analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).
Keywords: Douyin, Content Marketing, Agenda Setting, Uses and Gratifications, Customer Engagement

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Online Publication Date: Mar 27, 2025
• Deposit Date: Mar 14, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 28, 2025
• Award Date: Mar 27, 2025