Abstract:

The cosmetic industry has seen an explosive growth in the past few years. Although many beauty conglomerates are leading the forefront of the global cosmetics industry, the beauty standards by them set are usually Eurocentric in nature. However, it all changed when Fenty Beauty was introduced to the world. The brand took the world by storm when they introduced an idea that resonated with a large community of makeup enthusiasts.Despite being in its infancy stage, the brand has made plenty of ripples to change the industry for the better through its inclusivity approach. The present study aims to gain a greater understanding on the brand’s social media engagement with their followers on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as well as classifying the brand’s followers according to the social identity theory. Qualitative content analysis was applied in the present study gain a better understanding of Fenty Beauty’s social media engagement efforts with their followers. The coding scheme implemented is adopted of Bales’ Interaction Process Analysis (IPA) Model to study how followers of the brand react to social media posts made by Fenty Beauty. The findings of the present study will be useful to the cosmetic industry as it will proof the potential of social media as a powerful marketing tool. The findings of the present research will be beneficial to companies in the cosmetic industry and marketing practitioners provides an insight as to what motivates online users to engage and interact with a brand.The results of more positive socioemotional responses than negative socioemotional responses. Hence, the followers’ of the brand are classified as in-group. Instagram has proven to be the best platform to engage with followers as it had the significant highest social media engagement compared to the other SNS studied.