"what do you think of the return of dungarees?": social media interactions between retail locations and their customers

Social media presents new digital interaction opportunities and challenges to urban retail locations such as shopping malls, centres and streets. Platforms such as Facebook facilitate online communication with, and between, customers that is not possible through traditional media and marketing techniques. Using data gathered from the Facebook pages of six urban retail locations over 12 months, this paper considers the possible factors that shape online customer engagement and conversation. In particular, we present a thematic analysis of content in shared posts, and discuss how characteristics of a retail location and the structure of the consumer community shape these posts. Our findings are used to form suggestions to further investigate engagement between customers and retail locations via social media.