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THE FASHION WORLD’S DOMINANCE IN THE MAGAZINE BUSINESS Ghita Lahlou !2 The driving force of the magazine business market is fashion itself and beauty

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THE FASHION WORLD’S DOMINANCE IN THE MAGAZINE BUSINESS Ghita Lahlou !2 The driving force of the magazine business market is fashion itself and beauty. Beauty is a significant aspect in advertisements to enable sell products (Morris & Nichols, 2013). It is considerably connected to fashion (Moeran, 2008). Fashion is a commodity and cultural product, addressing different audiences. Some audience groups are out to showcase their wears, others to purchase them, and others to form a buzz around them (Moeran, 2006). These audiences include what is referred to as “fashion leadership,” encompassing purchasers, primarily from huge department stores as well as international press, entailing fashion magazines, which examines and comments on every season’s collections and introduces new trends to public attention. Therefore, to understand how the fashion world dominates the magazine business market, it is critical to understand the interrelationships between fashion creation and consumption: the fashion ideals and how attires are worn, between what has been called textual and lived bodies (Moeran, 2006). This report is facilitated by different nation’s fashion magazines, consumer trends, and marketing business market trends. Different media are critical to fashion marketing. However, the fashion world continues to dominate the magazine business market today. The continued dominance of fashion in the magazine business in today’s digital age is a puzzle that should be examined. Therefore, this study aims to explore how the fashion world dominates the magazine business market today. It explores three major fashion markets from different continents, including the USA (from North America), UK (from Europe), and China (from Asia). USA History of the American Fashion Magazine The first American magazine was published by Harper's Bazar in 1867 ("America's First Fashion Magazine," 2020). The publisher is a monthly fashion magazine. During the 1860s, it operated as the weekly Harper’s Bazar. The first issue’s magazine cover was different from today’s . The title’s forefront was also distinct since it was written using an ancient English style with ivy entwining between letters. Although the US was undergoing many critical events during the 19th century, the development of the early American fashion magazine reveals that 21stcentury women are not very different from 19th-century women. The magazine cover signified !3 that every person needed an outlet for unwinding. Even though people went through difficult moments like war, they desired something else to concentrate on. The magazine enabled women of the moment to concentrate on fashion and looks, rather than focusing on the events of the time, such as the Reconstruction Era ("America's First Fashion Magazine," 2020). In 1892, Vogue was founded in New York and published its first issue (Smith, 2013). It became an American-based monthly fashion magazine business covering numerous themes, including fashion, culture, and beauty. Headquartered in New York City, the company started as a weekly magazine business, advancing to become a monthly magazine after some years. The magazine aimed at New York’s upper-class persons, reflecting their lifestyles, including habits and clothing designs. They also targeted all individuals who desired to appear like them and their social relations (Smith, 2013). Vogue focused on fashion, including social affairs and sports content for its male audience during this time. It had a significantly slow growth during the time. One of today’s critical magazine in the US market is Vogue, although it has been a key player since the late 19th century and early 20th century. It is an American monthly fashion magazine founded in and operating from New York since its founding in 1892. It began as a weekly fashion magazine but became a monthly issue a few years after its formation. Its readership has grown essentially over time, allowing it to gain significant readership in the US. It covers the latest lifestyle, fashion trends, beauty tips, celebrity lifestyle, culture reviews, and runway news (Vogue US, 2021). Another critical player in the US fashion magazine market is Harper’s Bazaar. It is a New York City-based monthly women's fashion magazine (Harper’s Bazaar, 2021). Founded in 1867, the fashion magazine covers the latest fashion news, runway updates, beauty tips, wedding styles, and lifestyle. It was the first fashion magazine in the US, making it the oldest in country. The third vital player in the US fashion magazine market today is Elle US. Elle is a lifestyle and fashion magazine founded in France but is a critical player in the US fashion market. Founded in 1945, the magazine features the latest lifestyle updates, beauty tips, health and wellness, entertainment and fun, runway, and fashion (Elle, 2021). !4 The US Magazine Business Market Closely Follows Seasonal Events with Distinctive Fashion Trends One of the most significant ways the fashion world in the US has dominated the magazine business market today is by closely following seasonal events with unique fashion trends. Due to the indistinctiveness of fashion magazines from the fashion world, periodical editions (monthly or weekly) carefully follow the fashion world’s trends (Moeran, 2006). It is usual for editors to utilise seasonal fashion discourses to develop their magazine in advance. Most magazines’ March and September issues are dedicated toward the latest winter/autumn or summer/spring fashion collections exhibited in the US, especially in New York. However, this pattern is also observed in the UK, especially in New York Moeran, B. (2006). Between one to two trends are often selected for focus in the consecutive issue. Every season’s exhibitions are then accompanied by one special issue dedicated to beauty, as seen in runway model’s make-up as well as hair styling. Also, another show focuses on fashion accessories, such as handbags and jewellery. The rest of the four issues follow pre-developed systems. Some of them are associated with fashion aspects, such as love and romance (such as February’s Valentine’s Day), usually resulting in nightwear specials or swimwear specials (Moeran, 2006). It also features what people would prefer to wear during the July/August holiday. A notable seasonality emphasis in the fashion world is that in December, where magazine businesses feature gift items, such as fragrances, jewellery, and other accessories. This utilisation of seasonal trends by magazine businesses has put the fashion world at the forefront. Additionally, the items featured in magazines, articles or other advertising, become fashion items because they are customised relative to seasons, giving fashion a significant influence in the magazine business market. Indications have pointed out that the common two-season fashion model is being overtaken by more dynamic, unseasonal production schedules focused on customer needs and technological capacity to provide them (Moeran, 2006). However, the seasonal clothing distribution is critical for magazine businesses featuring magazine content on several related accounts, whether cultural or economic because it creates order on a probable chaotic mass of apparel that could be displayed to magazine audiences. Readers are guaranteed by the stable !5 seasonal development, where trend changes occur. That order is also a crucial component of magazines’ production processes because magazine businesses may be forced to abandon the existing annual system of issues and commit more time to plan increasingly varied content on periodic editions (such as monthly). This would create difficulties for magazine titles to sustain a steady monthly publication timeline based on current financial resources and workforce (Moeran, 2006). Still, it efficiently structures the pursuit of advertising material which constitutes the financial foundation impacting a publisher’s choice to introduce, sustain, and stop publishing a specific title. Because magazines are highly important to the fashion world, it is not convenient for the seasonal system of the fashion world to completely disappear unless advertisers determine that they can find an entirely different medium for marketing fashion. Magazine businesses borrow clothes from fashion houses, especially from preferred fashion house brands, depending on the advertising put on their pages. The story’s content relies on what is famous among audiences and sells in a particular market. Therefore, magazines suggest how fashion might be changed into types of clothes that work in the audience’s daily lives. Without apparel and photos through which fashion is displayed, and hence without the magazines themselves, the fashion world may not have much influence. Therefore, it is fashion magazines that merge producers and consumers. The US Magazine Business Market Targets the Right Audience with Interest in Fashion Trends Another strategy of how the fashion world dominates the magazine business is that these businesses target the young consumer segments, which constitute a significant proportion of the American population. A significant deal of research has been devoted to consumers’ media use for understanding the significance and impact of marketing information sources (Bailey & Seock, 2010). As consumers’ utilisation of information sources is on the rise, it is critical for marketers to delineate and use the information sources that target consumer segments prefer to reach them effectively and raise profits. Many consumers, especially young consumers, consider magazines crucial information sources (Bailey & Seock, 2010). Among these, female consumers !6 have more perceived value on magazines than their male peers. The same young consumers value similar features of information sources usually contained in fashion magazines, including brand-specific products and celebrity endorsements. Therefore, this consumer segment may be more expected than their older counterparts to collect information for buying decisions from fashion magazines. According to this finding, magazine marketers in today’s magazine business market find it meaningful to target young consumers in the US market. Magazine businesses have also continued defining attributes of fashion magazines that different generations desire to ensure they gain consumer loyalty as well as lifetime sponsorship. Customer loyalty significantly influences customers as well as repeat purchases (Khairawati, 2019). Thus, magazine businesses recognise the significance of customer loyalty and create strategies that favourably impact customer loyalty tendencies. Since several women spend a substantial deal of their disposable income on apparel products, fashion magazines are often used to target women and persuade them in their buying choices. Women may be categorised into various fashion consumer segments depending on their fashion leadership alignment, fashion innovativeness level, and opinion leadership. They can be classified as fashion leaders – those most expected to be experience exposure to fashion magazines and fashion followers – those who choose a particular fashion style once it becomes popular. These distinct groups have shifting desires regarding fashion magazine content. Fashion leaders are more likely to prefer fashion magazines that focus on new designers and designer apparel. On the ontrary, fashion followers may choose fashion magazines explaining how to utilise different clothing and accessories. Therefore, magazine businesses focus on these different aspects of fashion magazines attracting various consumer groups in the country. By recognising consumers’ leadership alignments and fashion innovativeness, fashion magazines have better understood how to market toward their appropriate customer group using tailored fashion magazines. !7 UK History of Fashion Magazine in the UK The fashion magazine in the UK dates back to Queen Anne’s reign, when women’s gazettes, small pocket pamphlets, and diaries were not uncommon (Sarkar, 2021). Gender in the fashion magazine was largely female centric. It was in 1732 that the term “magazine” was formally introduced (Sarkar, 2021). The term “fashion magazine” was launched during the rule of France’s Louis XIV. The early first publication was termed The mercue Galant. It portrayed demonstrated fashion plates reflecting the aristocracy’s designs, enabling clothe makers living outside of the court to know trends in royal fashion. The departmental store innovation resulted in more women’s magazines (Sarkar, 2021). As increased publications surfaced, the titles were nearly as long as the articles themselves. They had fashion pages and, at times, even demonstrations. However, it was during the Georgian Era in the 18th century when fashion magazines started to cease operations because retail experience began to make a significant mark due to the departmental store innovation. Accordingly, women could see images of ladies they resemble, who were engaged in daily leisure quests. However, most of the emphasis was on fashions that pleased men since most of the women’s social position revolved around representing their home, which constituted a single-family status, especially because of a man’s financial status. Oscar Wilde, the famous poet, and playwright edited the issue “The Ladies World” and chose to modify the name to Women’s World. A periodical emerged in 1891 entitled “Forget Me Not,” focusing on working-class women. In the 20th century, significant milestones were made due to advanced technology. New technologies paved the way to the transition from fashion plates to photographs. Movements in social change offered women more voice and stage in print and life. The entry of more men into fashion has significantly transformed the UK fashion magazine market. The growth of men’s fashion magazines began in the early 1980s (Bakewell et al., 2006). Since then, it has enormously grown in the UK today. It is regarded as “new man” advertising, where men are utilised as icons to endorse appearance issues and connect dresses !8 and lifestyle to success. It has changed the cultural custom where men are now being encouraged to view their social value as being influenced by their appearance. This change in focus from man the fashion magazine producer to man the fashion magazine consumer is considered an unavoidable advancement of a post-modernistic economy (Bakewell et al., 2006). Today’s fashion magazine consumer is interested in aesthetics and not utility. The transition to a servicegrounded economy in the UK has expanded the essence of appearance management (maintenance) as a critical part of high-quality communication and maintenance. Therefore, men are inspired to concentrate on their “power” to optimise their value as circulating exchange tokens and not viewing themselves as activating subjects. Men’s fashion attitudes have also been altered by other changes in the UK, including liberalised perceptions toward sexual identity and multiculturalism. Today, technology continues to develop, and the publications that are meaningful to both men and women are continuously expanding. With technology advancing daily, the question is if magazines will still be there in the future. But as long as there is fashion and men and women care about it, fashion magazines will persist (Sarkar, 2021). Furthermore, today, every popular fashion magazine has a website (Ruff, 2012). Any printed publication hardly does not have a digital presence, and there are numerous publications that are only web-based. They use digital technologies to attract their audience. Several fashion magazine brands influence multiple digital platforms to expand their overall readerships and create more brand awareness (Ruff, 2012). There are significant players in the UK fashion magazine today. British Vogue is a key leader in the UK fashion magazine market. It is a British version of the American Magazine Vogue, which entered the UK in 1916. Based in London, British Vogue is owned and its issues distributed by Condé Nast. It features the latest fashion trends, beauty content, fashion week news, cultural coverage, and celebrity lifestyle (British Vogue, 2021). Another critical player in the fashion magazine market is Stylist. It is a women’s magazine published in the UK since 2009 with weekly and monthly issues available through subscriptions. It features the latest fashion trends, wellness and entertainment updates, beauty, and lifestyle from a feminist stand point. Another critical player in the UK fashion magazine market is Cosmopolitan UK. Like British Vogue, Cosmopolitan UK is a British edition of the American Cosmopolitan. It features the latest !9 fashion news, relationship tips, beauty advice, health tips, and career advice (Cosmopolitan UK, 2021). The British edition of Cosmopolitan began in 1972 and was Cosmopolitan’s first magazine version to enter outside the US fashion magazine market. The Magazine Business Market Represents Authenticity of Fashion Trends One of the most significant ways the fashion world in the UK has dominated the magazine business market today is by portraying authenticity. According to Conradie (2011), magazines like Cosmopolitan UK present themselves as experts and advisors. Thus, they are constructed as belonging to the “in the know” realm of what women want. Hence, when they often publish issues about relationships, dieting and fashion, and celebrity style, they build femininity as largely interested in these topics. Moreover, because they are constructed as a distinctively feminine discourse, they seemingly choose and reconstruct their subjects to present them in an authentically female perspective. The choosing and reconstruction are primarily attained by the magazine’s editors who rely, to a significant extent, upon their intuitions regarding what sells and what will attract advertisers as well fashion magazine consumers. Additionally, Vogue’s magazine today is amply rooted in its historical perspective in the UK. Nunn (2009) established that historical phenomena could have a considerable long-term impact that can be felt today. During the Second World War (WWII), the growing involvement of women in factory production resulted in a significant increase in workplace incidents. The incidents in factories among adult females increased significantly between 1938 and 1941 (Cox & Mowatt, 2012). This was irrespective of the stance that women were in less dangerous work relative to men and were often less reckless than their male counterparts. The inherent logic for the increasing incident rates concerning women was the surge in the employment of more women in factories. However, one avoidable aspect of the problem was because women’s hair, worn long in today’s fashion, was subject to being stuck in the factory machinery. Firsthand reports of female workers being scalped were prominent. In response, Earnest Bevin, a British labor minister during WWII, wanted a Vogue editor to diminish the long hair fashion and make it less fashionable (Cox & Mowatt, 2012). The motive was premised on national interest for women’s safety by emphasising the trend to favour short hair. Tiggemann and Brown (2018) argue that fashion magazines are significant sources of people's unrealistic beauty and fashion !10 perceptions, especially women. Within a few weeks, accidents related to long hair being stuck on factory machinery declined remarkably. Accordingly, it appeared like the vogue’s impression on its magazine had significantly influenced fashion based on the workplace short hair trends. In the inter-war time, Vogue came from being a low distributor loss-making magazine business to becoming a considerably profitable venture. It could authentically influence fashion, especially among women’s fashion choices and lifestyle decisions in both the US and the UK. The rationale for the triumph remains the strategy of the fashion magazine in the UK today. It is mainly due to the development of a business approach that pursues not only to comprehend and target a distinct readership but also to offer an authentic connection to the fashion world on their client’s (advertisers') behalf. In implementing this approach, the editorial departments shift their role from being passive commentators to becoming actively involved in the fashion world as well as apparel industries. They establish competitive advantages that competitor firms and other media types in the long-established British magazine industry finds difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate. The UK fashion magazine market reveals that the fashion world dominates the magazine business market by offering an authentic image and message to target audiences – something that readers can relate with. Products or service offerings are often branded according to their claims’ authenticity and contribution to consumers’ needs (Shams et al., 2020). In those promotional initiatives, to maintain a unique position in target customers’ minds, brand positioning tries to communicate the message of authenticity (genuineness). This is how the fashion world uniquely meets consumer needs in the magazine business market. Authentic propositions concerning business’ offerings, the performance and actions of their members, and products or services, and delivering the authentic guarantee overall constitute a company’s positive image (Shams, 2015). The degree of perceived authenticity related to reputation and brand position differs among customers due to their different learning experiences and behaviours (Shams, 2020). From the UK case above, especially concerning Vogue, it can be asserted that the perceived magazine readers’ authenticity experience is a significant determinant of brand positioning and reputation to sway their thoughts regarding a preferred perception of the magazine business and its fashion magazine offerings. Focused on the perceived authenticity experience, relating to !11 brand position, doing business with a firm is often critical for stakeholders’ motivation. Magazine businesses’ brand positioning boosts audiences’ willingness to buy fashion magazines based on offerings relevant to customer’s needs and how distinct they are relative to the competition. Such interdependent communications have a significant effect on the audience’s perceived experience by relaying an authentic message. In strategic communication activities, it is vital to further consider the impact of authentic communications on audiences’ general perceived experience and to create and maintain an authentic impression in their minds (Ezeuduji et al., 2014). This perceived experience based on reputation and brand position, and created by fashion, contributes to the magazine businesses’ performance and sustainability. It is especially critical because of the magazine business market’s intensive dependence on its image in developing and maintaining a competitive edge. Moreover, differentiation tactics of brand positioning influence the fashion world in the magazine business market. !12 China History of Fashion Magazine in the China The history of China’s fashion magazine dates back to 1988. Elle was china’s first fashion magazine published that year. It is a Chinese edition of the American Elle Magazine. The fashion magazine became popular in 1993 with exciting and beautiful photos. Years later, Elle merged with America’s largest publishing group and formed Cosmo fashion magazine. Cosmo was China’s first focus on quality trends that carried the Chinese people's fashion dream (Dukut, 2014). The fashion magazine industry continued to proliferate due to competition in the country. Later, Ruili fashion magazine was launched. Ruili magazine was different from Elle since it provided top luxury brands, enhancing its readership base. Ruili’s market positioning enhanced China’s massive development. Its vigorous success paved the way for other fashion magazines in the country. With time since the growth of these fashion magazines, the fashion magazine market has flourished in the country. Since the development of Ruili and Elle, the Chinese fashion magazine market has developed rapidly. Since then, other brands have been published, such as Trends China. These have led to the development of make-up photography, enhancing the photography agency and other magazines, making the magazine business flourish in the country currently. Today, most people spend their time on online news, including social networks. However, some readers still read magazines, and others even read magazines daily. One of the critical actors in the Chinese fashion magazine today is Vogue China. Vogue fashion magazine became the sixteenth vogue edition. It is the Chinese edition of the American Vogue. The fashion magazine has gained popularity quickly, and it is visited by several Chinese. Its features local and foreign fashion news, trends, brands, and celebrity styles. Vogue China leads in fashion media publications on Chinese women's modern identity (Radclyffe-Thomas, 2018). Although, Vogue fashion magazine operates internationally, Vogue China plays a significant role in China. It is the most read fashion bibles in the country, enhancing Chinese creative businesses to developing and mirroring cultural ideals and preferences. In specific, the Chinese beauty ideal notions, beauty traits, and aesthetics are well constructed across Vogue !13 China pages. Vogue China is read by millions of Chinese women, making it the leading fashion magazine in the country. Another critical player in the Chinese fashion magazine market is Rayli. It is a female fashion magazine in China. This fashion magazine major in cosmetics and costume. It provides its audience with stylish and comprehensive fashion information making it the number one Chinese female fashion magazine. This fashion magazine has huge business success due to its precise market positioning (Wanxing, 2016). The Chinese audience likes the unique touch style of Rayli. The magazine uses Asian celebrities or models as their representatives. Its whole style is kindness and elegance. Rayli fashion magazine provides Chinese women with fashionable and practical information to reshape and develop their personal image (Wanxing, 2016). It uses attractive images and blended colour to encourage women to become better by choosing the kind of lifestyles that best suits them. The third vital player in the Chinese fashion market is Elle. It is among the most popular fashion magazine brands in the world, founded in France. The magazine has a website for Chinese women with pose and style (Olivier, 2021). It talks about fashion, fashion lifestyle, and beauty care, including culture, and music. The magazine has operated successfully for many years across cultures. It has spread and become popular among the Chinese (Chen, 2014). The fashion magazine uses good photographs, which is a clear reflection of its good fashion taste. They build their brand image through pictures, which conveys ideas to the target market. The magazine successfully markets its brand countrywide adapting its brand to the Chinese culture. Fashion Magazines Have Adapted to the Chinese Culture (Socio-economic and Political Systems) The fashion world has dominated in the Chinese market by magazine businesses adapting to the Chinese Culture, represented by its social systems. China has gained a reputation as a utility-based economy characterised by the massive production of low-cost goods (Hartley & Montgomery, 2009). Most importantly, social networks in china drive the economy, where producers and consumers make decisions influenced by others’ decisions in the network. What !14 influences consumption impacts production (Hartley & Montgomery, 2009). In this regard, the Chinese fashion world is ingrained in its socio-economic and political systems. In such a society, the meaningful functionality of apparel does not lie in its primary value. Fashion, in the form of clothing, for instance, is not for comfort. It has co-evolved with the Chinese social systems. Fashion is a systematic expression of status and wealth, and that is its actual functionality. An economy founded on supply material needs only is only imaginable as a fashion system founded on the requirement for bodily warmth. Therefore, as clothing expresses social structures, evolutions, and relationships, the Chinese economy is stimulated not by utility but by “conspicuous consumption” (Hartley & Montgomery, 2009). The processes and customs of the Chinese social order are differentiated from each other by the “invidious distinction.” In this respect, one side relates to the “honorific,” where obtaining status is all that is paramount. On another side, there is industry and utility, where fashion is a critical element of the Chinese lifestyle. Thus, a Chinese economy envisaged in terms of the vital industry is immersed in the invidious distinction. Like any other economy, the Chinese economy must display its social networks, social values, and competitive decisions. Socially connected competitive status decisions, including the fashion system, influence China’s economic activities within its complex open agent, network, and enterprise systems (Chai et al., 2007). These systems include the Chinese magazine business market. One way to consider how those values, decisions, and networks evolve in China is to examine one of the classic forms of conspicuous consumption, primarily the fashion world (Hartley & Montgomery, 2009). During recent decades, the country has quickly grown as a fashion market. Fashion practices and values have risen in production and consumption, as the creative sectors, particularly design, have immensely grown, attracting more policy, economic, and media (journalistic) attention. In China, the fashion world is an instance of how economic values are stimulated not by utility and efficiency but by “surplus values” or consumption and disutility as a function of wealth. In this respect, the dress in China is traditionally an expression of the wearer’s wealth. Because fashion is an expression of wealth in China or comparison, both fashion as a medium and media (magazines) are the means through which status, social structure, and !15 individual comparative edge can be socially networked and relayed. Every individual fashion decision, apparel ensemble, and individual “look” is filled with information, which expresses choices in the fashion system and an individual’s choice. This is how the fashion world dominates the Chinese magazine business market. This system is immensely supple and complex both in range and with time. The meanings conveyed through fashion in China are modeled like language, and fashion generates robust communication and superfine delineations. Additionally, because the fashion system is founded on individual preferences within it where decisions are determined through others’ choices, the description of a social network market is a dynamic, evolving system premised on novelty. These meanings are not by themselves exactly economic, but the economy is driven by the system itself – in what is termed as the “economy of attention.” Fashion magazine publishing growth in China reflects deeper transformations in China since the end of Mao’s Revolution in China (Hartley & Montgomery, 2009). China’s modernisation characterised by significant economic reforms and opening up to the external world has led to the increase of fashion consciousness as well as fashion values among consumers in the Chinese fashion magazine market. Vogue’s entry in China and its current presence might be considered the period when readers’ longings for fashionable photos and information concerning international style trends met with advertising clients’ and fashion professional’s needs for dependable and high-quality issues that can create a link with fashion magazine consumers to draw the Chinese society resolutely into the global network of fashion creation and consumption. Outsiders usually misconstrue the rise of Western-style fashion in Chinese society as an indication of a rising sense of individualism and freedom in China (Hartley & Montgomery, 2009). However, in China, particularly among the middle-aged Chinese, fashion is regularly recorded to support collectivism, not individualism. In acknowledging today’s society where there is mass production and consumption, several Chinese consumers do not operate with the perception of individuality, which characterises most of the Western mass-produced fashion products. Therefore, in China, fashion is not developed to indicate one’s individuality but to depict one’s success. !16 In defining the habits of middle-aged fashion consumers, especially, to make fashion decisions according to what the majority prefer to wear and to relate “wise” preferences to “popular” preferences for clothing, a specific Chinese desire to imitate perpetuates (Hartley & Montgomery, 2009). Accordingly, success is verified through the perception of “correct choice.” It suggests preferring a dress that everyone prefers to see others in a similar dress, as a mark of affluence rather than a depiction of disgrace. Individuals choose wisely when they make the popular choice. However, the assertion of an increasingly Western-style fashion market in China cannot be considered at face value. Chinese values and customers continue to prevail in the Chinese fashion magazine market. Therefore, economic reforms and modernisation have not perpetuated the indication of an individualised fashion magazine market. !17 References America's First Fashion Magazine. Historyengine.richmond.edu. (2020). Retrieved 24 April 2021, from https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/5054. Bailey, L., & Seock, Y. (2010). The relationships of fashion leadership, fashion magazine content, and loyalty tendency. 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DISSERTATION Guide for structure and content 10,000 to 12,000 words INTRODUCTION • • • • What your project is about – key questions/sub-questions What is the rationale for it – why did you choose that topic? What is the scope? (is this going to focus on the UK, on a certain sector etc.) Quick outline of the dissertation – chapter by chapter This is often quite short. CONTEXT Set the scene for your project – this may well include academic reading. This might explain: • What a sector is – eg what is a customer magazine? • Size of sector you are exploring • outline the historical background (eg when digital publishing started) • outline the geographical region (eg if you are looking at magazines in China) • You may be using statistics to show growth in a sector • or you may need to summarise general theory – eg waves of feminism LITERATURE REVIEW This reading will be more focused on the specific issues that you are exploring. From your reading you will probably find about four or five key themes that you will write about, with a few readings that you discuss under each one. These readings will summarise the sorts of theories and issues that you can apply to your research topic. They should give you ideas about what to research specifically. These themes act as headings through your literature review – and you will return to these themes once you have done the research. You will outline your plan for your research – this is your research design. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This will include the following sorts of things: • • Your overarching methodology (which we will have discussed in class) and how this will help you answer your dissertation questions How you designed and carried out your research to include: 1. Sample 2. How are you collecting data? (survey, interviews, focus groups, content analysis) 3. If you are doing a questionnaire, what are you going to ask? How have you structured it? 4. How you have you administered the research (eg managed content analysis, distributed a surveys via social media? Writing up transcriptions of recorded interviews) 5. How are you analysing the results? Describe the research using research method and data collection terminology (which we will look at in class) as this is a professional piece of research. You will need to refer to research methodology textbooks to explain your research choices in constructing your market research piece. ONCE YOU HAVE CONDUCTED THE RESEARCH FINDINGS and DISCUSSION • • You will summarise the findings from the research (eg summary of answers to the survey if you did one) Discuss these findings and consider what this data shows – drawing some conclusions from your data There are different ways to approach this and we will look at those in class. CONCLUSION This is a final summary of your dissertation. It does not include all your findings but summarises the key points including – this is not a long section: • • • • Three or four really key points from your findings Answer to your overarching question Recommendations for future research Recommendations for industry A word on wordcounts You can divide up your report by rough word counts to give a target for each section. There will be different nuance depending on your project but it is important to provide a reasonably balanced report. As a loose outline, reflecting the weighting for each section, you might think of the following sorts of word counts – but this will be different for each project so do not feel tied to these numbers. Introduction Context Literature Research methodology Findings and discussion Conclusion 500-700 750-1000 2500-3000 2500-3000 3000-3250 750-1000 . I have a few questions/suggestions: What exactly is your research question? Are you looking at the impact of magazines on local fashion? Or the importance of fashion magazines as a magazine genre? I am not exactly sure what question you try to answer with your dissertation/what topic you want to investigate. You make your life easier by choosing a specific question and a narrow focus for your research. • What is your methodology? You talk about case studies in your outline - you chose a historical perspective here (Are you doing archival research about the past?) Do fashion magazines really portrait (or have portrait in the past) an authentic image of beauty? In your outline you talk a lot about advertising and branded content – is this what you want to focus on and do a content analysis of advertorials? • Have a look at example dissertations on Moodle – they'll give you a better idea of how to properly structure a dissertation Also you need to provide a rational for why you focus on the UK, USA and China You repeat yourself in the Vogue section (USA); same is true for Harper's Bazaar What about different audiences of fashion magazines (not everyone reading Vogue for example will necessarily be able to afford the clothes advertised or discussed there)? You discuss the impact of digital publishing briefly in the UK section - doesn't this also apply to the other countries you are looking at? When you talk about the different magazines it would be good to provide some figures about readership and circulation – this helps the reader get a better idea about how important those magazines are in terms of actual reach (this contextualises your claims/analysis better) Is China the only country where fashion is used to display wealth? You might want to distinguish between high fashion presented in magazines like Vogue and mass market clothes . . I have included a title page o I have included an abstract summarising the project and its findings o I have included contents list o I have set the text double spaced o All tables and figures are clearly labelled and referred to in the texto All appendices are clearly labelled and referred to in the texto I have included an example of a consent form and a set of questions if relevant in the appendices (no transcripts need to be included in the appendices) - T have included a complete bibliography in Harvard referencing style in alphabetical order at the end o I have included a copyright form at the end (see back of Writing and Hand in Guide) - I have included a statement of authenticity at the end (see back of Writing and Hand in Guide)