Frontiers in Business, Economics and Management ISSN: 2766-824X | Vol. 11, No. 2, 2023 1 Explore the Influences of Social Media Content on Young Consumers Engagement and Purchase Intention in the Chinese Luxury Sportswear Market Shuqi Wang University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo, 315100, China Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of informative content, self-enhancing content, and remunerative content on consumers’ active and passive engagement and purchasing intention, based on the Uses and Gratifications Theory. The paper obtains corresponding conclusions through quantitative analysis by collecting questionnaires from young Chinese consumers. According to the survey data, this research indicates that remunerative and self-enhancing content will be more important drivers for active engagement, and informative content and self-enhancing content will have more significant and positive connections with passive engagement and consumers' purchase intention. This research also found that both consumer engagement and social media content will positively influence consumers' purchase intention, and consumer engagement demonstrated a stronger relationship with purchase intention. These findings will benefit scholars and practitioners working in the marketing field to target appropriate research groups. Keywords: Young consumers, Chinese luxury sportswear market, Social media. 1. Introduction The widespread use of social media helps both consumers and brands to utilize interactive methods to connect. According to Godey et al. (2016), around two-thirds of internet users regard social media platforms as their main channel to search for information from different industries. Consumers proactively take advantage of social media platforms to engage with their favorite brands. Thus, this phenomenon gradually transfers consumers from passive participants into active creators on social media platforms (Berthon et al., 2012). Additionally, the rapid development of social media also exerts positive influences on businesses. They can generate content to enhance their relationship with their consumers and expect to get positive responses. Among all the businesses, it is noticeable that the sports industry has rapidly grown in decades. The augmented consumption of sportswear brands is not only for playing sports but also for more sophisticated performance; Some consumers also need to experience the benefits of non-sports, such as the expression of charisma and status (Lim et al., 2016). The luxury market is also one of the industries that is grasping much attention from the public. More and more consumers intend to purchase prestige products with higher quality and status. Some professionals predicted that there will be a sharp growth in Chinese consumers' spending power, with an increase of $10 trillion in consumption growth between 2021 to 2030 (Birch, 2021). There is also an intersection between the sportswear market and the luxury market. In order to launch a luxury line of the sportswear brand, co-branding with a famous and professional designer is how sportswear is entering the luxury fashion industry. By introducing a sports line under their luxury brand, luxury fashion brands are expanding into the athletic sector. In China, the young generation is the primary group for luxury sportswear brands, and they are also major users of social media (Yu et al., 2020). To cater to these consumers, luxury sportswear brands also take advantage of social media platforms to engage more consumers. Willersdorf et al. (2020) claimed that consumers' engagement on social media platforms will accelerate the growth of luxury brands. Chu et al. (2018) also concluded that self-enhancing content generated by companies will grab more attention from GenZ consumers on social media platforms. Although social media platforms bring benefits to contemporary luxury sportswear markets, they also bring difficulties. One of these problems is how to consistently create compelling and appropriate content to increase consumer responses. Luxury brands rooted in tradition are now facing the onerous challenges of generating creative content to grab consumers’ attention, as the brand lifecycles are considerably short on social media (Chu et al., 2013). Besides, consumers are exposed to homogeneous content from different brands on social media platforms, which will not deeply impress consumers (Pentina et al., 2018). As a result, it is significant for marketers working in the luxury field to understand how to create differentiated social media content to engage consumers. Previously, researchers concentrated on how social media marketing efforts will influence brand equity and consumers’ responses based on a comprehensive framework in the luxury market (Kim & Ko, 2012; Godey et al., 2016). However, Lee et al. (2017) stated that unless marketing practitioners learn how to successfully produce their content to encourage client engagement, these social media marketing efforts will fail. Additionally, these studies focus on the niche market, namely, the luxury sportswear market, whose research is limited in academia. Thus, this essay aims to apply the Uses and Gratifications Theory to find how social media content affects the luxury sports younger fan base in China, and how social media content and consumers' engagement will influence purchasing intention separately. 2 2. Literature Review 2.1. The Current Luxury Sportswear Market The luxury market and sportswear market have been viewed as two separate markets with no overlap in the past. However, in recent years, the sportswear market has also extended its product lines into the luxury market. The luxury sportswear brands were developed from two directions. Some conventional luxury brands decided to produce luxury sportswear, and original sportswear brands also invested their resources in the luxury sportswear market (Lim et al., 2016). In terms of conventional luxury brands, they added sports lines into their existing product lines. For instance, Prada and Zegna have successfully expanded into the luxury sportswear market, and they applied “Prada Sport” and “Zegna Sport” for their sportswear products. Zheng et al. (2013) noted that consumers will be more likely to follow these brands because of their consistent design concepts and advanced technology. Regarding the original sportswear brands, they entered the luxury market using co-branding strategies. It means that these basic sportswear brands will cooperate with these well- known fashion designers working with luxury brands. For instance, Adidas chose to collaborate with Stella McCartney, a famous designer, to launch luxury sportswear products. As a result, the sportswear market has intersected with the luxury market to target common consumers. However, less research has been done in this field to explore how companies use social media content to encourage consumer engagement and purchase intention. Thus, this research will focus on this niche market. 2.2. The Application of Uses and Gratifications Theory Due to the rapid changes in social media, consumers' engagement has changed accordingly. To cater to consumers' demands, specialists in charge of social media need to spend more time studying consumer preferences and new market orientations (Kujur & Singh, 2020). This study has applied the Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), developed by Katz et al. (1973), to understand why the masses are more likely to turn to social media for help when they make decisions. Ngai et al. (2015) depicted that, initially, this theory was extensively used by researchers to investigate consumers’ motivations and behaviors associated with traditional mass media, such as television. However, with the rise of the internet and modern technologies, these researchers have seen the significance and reach of social media, eventually evolving into the social media marketing industry. Thus, this theory has been gradually applied to find out how brands can better interact with consumers by comprehending their specific needs to use social media (Dolan et al., 2019; Mudassir & Toor, 2017). Katz et al. (1973) mentioned five needs, allowing consumers to achieve their gratifications, including cognitive needs, emotional needs, personal integrity needs, social integrity needs, and tension release needs. Previously, experts from different industries have used this theory to implicate managers and other scholars on how to enhance consumer satisfaction. In this essay, the research will focus on luxury sportswear brands, as these brands are later adopters to incorporate social media in their marketing strategies to promote their services and products. What's more, many luxury sportswear brands, such as Arcteryx, are attempting to develop their profile on social media. It is necessary to conduct more research on how to assist brands to improve consumers' online experiences to get positive responses. Based on consumers’ five needs, this essay discussed the effects of three types of content, namely, informative content, remunerative content, and self- enhancing content to analyze consumers’ engagement and purchase intention in the Chinese luxury sportswear market. 2.2.1. Informative Content The rise of social media has gradually shifted consumers into active roles. It means customers intend to take the initiative to search for required information online from different types of content generated by brands (Wan & Ren, 2017). Informative content has been perceived as one of the primary resources used by consumers before they decide to purchase products because this useful and detailed information delivered by brands can help audiences have a better understanding of the products (Kujur & Singh, 2020; Lin & Lu, 2011). Informative content refers to a type of marketing content that companies generate to mainly introduce the new-launching products, promote specific products, and supplement the function of products (Bai & Yan, 2020). To have deeper insights into the social media trend, researchers have done some research on whether informative content can positively influence consumers' behaviors to help companies to reach their business goals. Research by Wan and Ren (2017) supported that informative content is regarded as the most effective content for facilitating consumers purchasing behaviors compared with other types of content, including persuasive content and promotional content. In the study, researchers conducted a quasi-experiment design. They used the difference-in-differences method on a specific data set to demonstrate companies' posts on social media platforms and product sales. Kujur and Singh (2020) also found that informative content exerts significant influences on enhancing consumers' engagement to help brands to maintain lasting relationships with their audiences, as this content can reduce consumers' uncertainties about the products and experience the brands' sincerity from the detailed information. They used an online survey to collect data from 430 young people between 18 to 29 years of higher education to find which types of content are more popular with these young generations. However, less research has been conducted to explore the influence of informative content on consumers’ responses in the Chinese luxury sportswear market. In the current Chinese luxury sportswear industry, there is also an increasing trend to take advantage of social media content to attract potential consumers. In addition to providing intangible prestigious products, luxury brands should focus on delivering valuable messages on social media platforms, including storytelling and symbolic meanings of the brands (Brambilla et al., 2022). Although emotional content as mentioned above has positive influences on connecting luxury brands with their clients, informative content can also play a crucial role in attracting consumers (Creevey et al., 2021). Thus, it is necessary to conduct deeper research on how to create information- oriented content for their audiences. 2.2.2. Self-enhancing Content Message design specialists suggested that self- enhancement appeal can be taken into consideration when creating advertisements or product-related content (Stathopoulou & Balabanis, 2019). Enhancement needs are depicted as people’s desire to reinforce their self-concept and 3 develop images meeting their expectations (Dimitriu & Guesalaga, 2017). Social media platforms provide venues for users to present their favorable images. For instance, famous luxury brands, such as Louis Vuitton, post content to encourage audiences to share their shopping experiences or stories with Louis Vuitton. In this way, consumers can boast online about their pride by showing their prestige and status signals. To have deeper insights in finding young consumers’ requirements to achieve self-enhancement, Chu et al. (2018) conducted an online survey to collect the data, and use confirmatory factor analysis to assess the model, finding that young WeChat users prefer to generate content for their purposes of self-enhancing because of the closely-tied social circles. Madan and Kapoor (2021) also claimed that young consumers intend to follow luxury brands that they cannot afford and watch their content on social media to satisfy their self-achievement. Although they found that young audiences prefer to take advantage of social media platforms to pursue self- enhancement, they have not found out how consumers will engage with luxury sportswear brands, when these brands generate self-enhancing content. Thus, this research will conduct further studies to find the results. 2.2.3. Remunerative Content To stimulate consumers’ desire to interact with brands, content writers should create more promotional campaigns through remunerative content, such as directly providing deals or offers. According to Kujur and Singh (2020), social media users will be more likely to engage with brands when they can get monetary or incentive rewards from brands. These users will give good comments and share the content on their social accounts. Some of them deeply influenced by remunerative content will actively participate in the brand communities and online forums (Alton & Banerjee, 2015). Chandrasekaran et al. (2019) have done specific research in finding the relationship between displaying different types of social media content and young consumers’ engagement on Facebook. They found that remunerative content will help to increase young consumers' comments but will not lead to an increase in consumers' likes. However, Kujur and Singh (2020) have not found a similar conclusion. They stated that content with incentives has slight influencers on young consumers' engagement, as young generations’ budgets or purchasing power are influenced by their parents. Thus, the coupons and discounts will seem less important to them. Although the relationship between young consumer engagement and social media content is uncertain, Alton & Banerjee (2015) contended that remunerative content can help brands gain more trust from consumers. Only if consumers trust brands can they have the opportunities to encourage consumers to respond to their activities. 2.3. Young Consumers’ Social Media Engagement To measure consumers’ engagement with brands on social media, marketers need to observe how consumers engage with brand-related content (Schivinski et al., 2016; Mishra, 2019). Young generations will actively search for brand- related content, attempting to interact with brands. Based on their behaviors, Fernandes and Castro (2020) classified consumer engagement into two types, which are passive and active engagement. Passive engagement means consumers simply browse the content and comments without manifest participation. In contrast, the behaviors of sharing content, giving feedback, and creating content will be defined as active engagement. Businesses on social media intend to see more active engagement, as consumers will be more likely to trust and follow the brands if they voluntarily share content, write their experiences under posts, or even generate content to help brands promote their products. More importantly, consumers will deeply recognize the brand image. Lau et al. (2022) conducted an online survey to get a purposive sample from 237 young luxury fashion consumers. In this paper, scholars found that if consumers actively engage with a particular brand on social media, which will leave negative impressions on the brand. Since consumers will search for information related to the quality of brands from comments and the value of these prestigious products at first, they will be more likely to be influenced by negative comments. Mishra (2019) also completed the research in finding antecedents of consumers' engagement with brands on social media. Data were collected with an online survey of the Facebook fan pages, and Mishra (2019) found that consumers with higher interaction propensity will be more willing to behave actively on social media platforms. Although these researchers have proved that social media content is an indispensable tool to help brands enhance audiences' engagement, they were not able to mention which type of content will play a more crucial role in promoting young consumers' engagement. Thus, this essay will mainly focus on this gap and gain more insights into how consumers view the effectiveness of specific content. 2.4. Purchase Intention for Luxury Sportswear Products In respect to purchase intention, consumers will primarily take the pragmatic and hedonic attributes into their account (Lim et al., 2016). For instance, consumers will buy economical and practical cars for pragmatic reasons, and buy expensive music players for hedonic intentions. In the luxury market, Hennigs and Wiedmann (2012) supplemented that consumers will spend money for products’ better function (i.e., quality and performance), status symbol, and exclusivity. Zeng et al. (2019) also mentioned that people’s interaction between promoting content and self-image will influence their purchase intention. These benefits that apply to the overall luxury market can also be logically extended to the luxury sportswear market. Although consumers' purchase intention will be influenced by different market segments, this research predicts that consumers will purchase that luxury sportswear mainly for the self-image of self-enhancement. Based on prior research, purchase intention was associated with consumers’ different levels of engagement and social media content (Kujur & Singh, 2020). Thus, luxury sportswear brands should do more research on how to increase consumers’ willingness to purchase. 3. Research Methodology This section aims to provide details of the research approach designed to achieve the objective of this paper. The research approach involves the purpose and scope of the research, the research framework, the research process, the research design, the creation of questionnaires, the procedure for selecting samples, and the method employed for data collecting and analysis. In the analysis part, this paper 4 incorporated quantitative methods to deal with the data. 3.1. Research Questions, Hypotheses, and Methods According to Brambilla et al. (2022), there is an increasing trend for luxury sportswear brands to incorporate social media content strategy into their integrated marketing strategies. Since consumers attempt to find diversified content on social media to satisfy their requests. On account of the significance of creating target social media content to attract consumers' attention, it is necessary to conduct more research in the emerging market, taking the luxury sportswear market as an example. To explore more results, this paper endeavors to find the answers to the following research questions such as: to identify the properties included in the social media content; to explore how each type of content will influence consumer engagement and purchase intention. The hypotheses and constructed model will also be placed in this section as follow: H1: Informative content will have a positive influence on consumers’ engagement and purchase intention H1a: Using informative content on social media will positively encourage consumers to behave actively. H1b: Using informative content on social media will positively contribute to consumers’ passive engagement H1c: Using informative content on social media will positively influence consumers’ purchase intention. H2: Self-enhancing content will have a positive influence on consumers’ engagement and purchase intention H2a: Posting self-enhancing content on social media will positively encourage consumers to behave actively. H2b: Posting self-enhancing on social media will positively contribute to consumers’ passive engagement H2c: Posting self-enhancing on social media will positively influence consumers’ purchase intention. H3: Remunerative content will have a positive influence on consumers’ engagement and purchase intention H3a: Content related to self-enhance on social media will positively encourage consumers to behave actively. H3b: Content related to self-enhance on social media will positively contribute to consumers’ passive engagement H3c: Content related to self-enhance on social media will positively influence consumers’ purchase intention. H4: The overall social media content will positively influence consumers’ purchase intention. H5: Consumer engagement will positively influence consumers’ purchase intention. As shown in Figure 1, the hypothesized relationships among social media content, consumer engagement, and purchase intention are presented. Figure 1. Research Model 3.2. Sample Collection and Data Collection To investigate the young generation's engagement, adults of 18-30 from different educational levels were the primary consideration for respondents. The respondents were mainly undergraduate and postgraduate students and approximately 50% of them worked as employees in different industries. As mentioned above, young generations occupy a large amount of social media users, so it is rational to choose them as target respondents. The data was collected by using an online questionnaire, and the content of this questionnaire referred to other researchers’ literature and was slightly modified to achieve the objective of this paper (Stathopoulou & Balabanis, 2019; Kim & Ko, 2010). This study classified items of the questionnaire on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Likert-type scales will improve the efficiency and accuracy when scholars decided to measure the intensity of people's perceptions. The other reason for choosing the five-point Likert scale is to ensure all the respondents keep focused on each question and answer it carefully and honestly. Overall, after excluding invalid data, 302 questionnaires were collected, and 270 of them have been analyzed. Among all the respondents, 46.69% of them were male consumers and 53.31% of them were female participants. The average monthly income for them is about 10000 RMB, and 69% of them spend 1-4 hours each week. 5 Table 1. Factor analysis of all the constructs Factors Items Factor loading Cronbach’s α Informative Content I always find that luxury sportswear brands post useful product-related content on social media. 0.809 0.707 When I feel confused about product features, I can usually find useful content on luxury sportswear brands' social media accounts. 0.804 I feel helpful when I see brands offering promoting and supplementing product information on social media. 0.823 Luxury sportswear brands’ social media content helps me keep up to date about products available in the marketplace. 0.788 Remunerative Content Luxury sportswear brands' social media content can offer me economic incentives (monetary incentives, giveaways). 0.812 0.837 Luxury sportswear brands' social media content can offer me job-related benefits. 0.774 Luxury sportswear brands' social media content can offer me personal wants. 0.794 Self-enhancing Content Luxury sportswear brands' social media content helps me realize that being rich is important, and I hope to buy more expensive products. 0.774 0.860 I realize that I want to spoil myself when reading luxury sportswear brands' social media content. 0.770 I feel more confident when viewing luxury sportswear brands' content on social media. 0.775 Consumer Engagement Active Engagement I like creating luxury sportswear brands-related content with hashtags on the luxury sportswear brands' fan pages on social media 0.789 0.854 I always give comments on luxury sportswear brands' related content on their fan pages on social media. 0.756 I like sharing luxury sportswear brand-related content on its fan page on social media. 0.811 I always take active participation in engaging in luxury sportswear brands related discussions on its fan page on social media. 0.793 Passive Engagement I intend to follow the luxury sportswear brands' fan pages on social media. 0.784 0.889 I like reading posts, comments, and reviews on luxury sportswear brands' accounts on social media. 0.809 I "like" posts on the luxury sportswear brands' fan pages on social media. 0.780 I like viewing pictures or videos posted on luxury sportswear brands' fan pages on social media. 0.770 Purchase Intention I have a strong possibility to purchase Luxury sportswear products. 0.760 0.848 I’m likely to purchase Luxury sportswear products. 0.757 I have high intentions to purchase Luxury sportswear products. 0.797 I will recommend luxury sportswear products to my friends. 0.794 3.3. Measurements This questionnaire was separated into three parts to engage participants. The first section was to measure the effectiveness of three types of social media content. Respondents were required to answer 12 questions provided with visual social media content examples from different brands. The second aspect with 12 constructs was developed to investigate consumers’ active and passive engagement behaviors and varying degrees of desire to buy. The last part was to have a basic understanding of respondents’ demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, level of education, occupation, income range, and the frequency of using social media apps to browse the brands' content. 4. Results 4.1. Properties of Social Media Content To validate these construct items, this research conducted exploratory factor analysis using varimax rotation to reduce 6 the ineffective and invalid data from the section of social media content. After excluding those items with lower factor loadings, three factors were listed in Table 1: informative content, self-enhancing content, and remunerative content. As shown in Table 1, the factor loading ranged from 0.757 to 0.823. To test the reliability of these factors, Cronbach's α laid between 0.707 to 0.889 was also illustrated in Table 1. Overall, in order to inspire consumers to involve in various campaigns, the brand's social media content should provide adequate product information, incentives, and self-concept related content. Table 2. Impacts of social media content on consumer engagement and purchase intention Independent Variable Dependent Variable β t-value R2 F Informative Content Active Engagement 0.381 7.119** 0.272 111.94** Self-enhancing Content 0.388 7.297*** Remunerative Content 0.401 7.582** Informative Content Passive Engagement 0.407 7.699** 0.247 98.42** Self-enhancing Content 0.430 8.258*** Remunerative Content 0.390 7.331** Informative Content Purchase Intention 0.420 8.005*** 0.283 118.692** Self-enhancing Content 0.450 8.728*** Remunerative Content 0.383 7.179* ***p< 0.001, **p< 0.01, *p< 0.05 4.2. Impacts of Social Media Content To find the effects of social media content on consumer engagement and purchase intention, this section applied multiple regression analysis using SPSS 27.0 to analyze the data. Informative content, self-enhancing content, and remunerative content were identified as independent variables, and consumer active and passive engagement were entered as dependent variables. Before conducting the regression, it is essential to ensure the reliability of all the factors. All the independent variables have been tested, and Cronbach's α for dependent variables was 0.854 for active engagement, 0.889 for passive engagement, and 0.848 for purchase intention. 0.814 was Cronbach's α for all the factors in this research. 4.3. Consumer Engagement When it comes to the impacts of social media content on active engagement shown in Table 2, informative content (β=0.381, t=7.119, p<0.01), self-enhancing content (β=0.388, t=7.297 p<0.001), and remunerative content (β=0.401, t=7.582 p<0.01) had positive impacts on consumers active engagement. Thus, these findings support H1a, H2a, and H3a. Based on the presenting data, remunerative content will be more likely to lead to consumer active engagement. Cheung et al. (2022) explained that consumers prefer to share this remunerative content to gratify their requirements for social interaction with their peers holding similar opinions. Regarding the effects of social media content on passive engagement, informative content (β=0.407, t=7.699, p<0.01), self-enhancing content (β=0.430, t=8.258 p<0.001), and remunerative content (β=0.390, t=7.331 p<0.01) had positive impacts on consumers passive engagement. Thus, these findings also support H1b, H2b, and H3b. In comparison with the other two content, self-enhancing content will play a more important role in consumers with passive engagement. Although Kim and Drumwright (2016) mentioned consumers driven by extrinsic motivations will be more likely to behave passively. It is also rational for consumers who are in the early stage of interacting with the bands to show passive behavior due to the attraction of intrinsic motivation (Kim & Drumwright, 2016). 4.4. Purchase Intention Self-enhancing content (β=0.450, t=8.728 p<0.001), and informative content (β=0.420, t=8.005 p<0.001) listed in Table 2 will have greater influences on consumers’ purchase intention, followed by remunerative content (β=0.383, t=7.179 p<0.05). Hence, H1c, H2c, and H3c have been proved. According to Zeng et al. (2019), consumers' purchase intention will be strengthened for those products that benefit them to improve and extend their self-image. This effect will be enhanced in the luxury market. Informative content, such as products recommendation, is also important to help consumers understand the high value offered by luxury sportswear. 4.5. Relationship Between Social Media Content, Consumer Engagement with Purchase Intention To address the last research question, multiple regression analysis with SPSS 27.0 statistic package was also conducted to find out the connection between social media content, and consumer engagement with purchase intention. As shown in Table 3, the relationship has been clarified. Compared to social media content (β=0.416 t=7.853 p<0.001), consumer engagement (β=0.54, t=12.683 p<0.001) has a stronger and more positive connection with purchase intention. Thus, these data proves that H4 and H5 are convincing. Although social media content is applied by luxury sportswear brands to achieve their marketing goals, the content seems less likely to leave an impressive impression on consumers. Some consumers might prefer to browse content for getting relieved 7 rather than develop relationships with the brands. However, if potential consumers have engaged with the brands, their behaviors have represented their willingness to follow the brands and become their consumers. Table 3. Relationship between social media content, consumer engagement with purchase intention Independent Variable Dependent Variable β t-value R2 F Social media content Purchase Intention 0.416 7.853*** 0.173 61.674*** Consumer engagement 0.54 12.683*** 0.291 124** ***p< 0.001, **p< 0.01, *p<0.05 5. Discussion This paper has examined the effectiveness of three types of social media content affecting consumers' engagement and purchase intention, focusing on the luxury sportswear market. In addition, the relationship between the effects of social media content on consumers' purchasing intention was also provided by the research. In terms of the relationship between social media content and consumer engagement, the corresponding results illustrated that self-enhancing content and remunerative content have positive and significant effects on consumers' active engagement. Regarding passive engagement, informative content will have a deeper impact on it, followed by self-enhancing content and remunerative content. What’s more, compared with remunerative content, self-enhancing content, and informative content have a higher possibility to stimulate consumers' purchase intention. This research also focused on the correlation between overall social media content and consumer engagement in purchase intention. The findings demonstrated that integrated social media content and consumer engagement will be positively related to purchase intention. From the theoretical perception, this research is one of the attempts to explore the Chinese luxury sportswear market. Based on the prior investigation, many researchers took the overall luxury market as their main consideration, whereas the niche and existing sports market in the luxury market have been ignored in the academic field. Further, there was numerous research conducted to seek the effects of social media marketing on consumer engagement and purchase intention. However, the significance of specific social media content can also not be neglected. Thus, this study aims to fill these gaps by finding the relationship between three types of social media content with consumer engagement and purchase intention. From a practical perception, this paper will instruct marketers working in the luxury sportswear market to focus on the effectiveness of each type of social media content. Since content strategy in each industry should be implemented according to the target consumers and their preferences. In a particular field, entertaining content will provide more value to consumers, but consumers following luxury sportswear brands will prefer to browse self-enhancing and remunerative content. Additionally, managers should also need to use differentiated types of content when they engage consumers and stimulate consumers' desire to purchase. To engage consumers, the generation of self-enhancing and remunerative content will bring more benefits to them. If managers want to encourage consumers to step into the purchasing process, they have to emphasize the importance of informative content. This study also has some limitations that require future research to improve. Firstly, this study merely focuses on the Chinese market without extending it to other countries. Since consumers from Western countries might have diversified opinions over this research topic. Secondly, this paper did not restrict which customer journey the participants were in. Since when consumers are exposed to a wide range of social media content, they will behave differently at different stages of the customer journey. Thirdly, the research focused on the overall luxury sportswear market. 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