Social media platforms and innovation in UK fashion retail firms: a TOE–affordance explanation

Purpose This study investigates how UK fashion retail firms use social media platforms to inform product and process innovation. Integrating the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework with affordance theory, it examines how platform-generated information is interpreted and applied to innovation-related decisions and the organisational conditions associated with these activities. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts an abductive qualitative design drawing on 60 semi-structured interviews with marketing managers across 12 UK fashion retail firms, conducted between June 2023 and April 2024. Interview evidence was supplemented by 328 archival artefacts, including company websites, online catalogues and social media content. Iterative qualitative coding, informed by Gioia et al. (2013), was used to develop empirical themes and theoretical interpretations. Findings The findings show how managers reported using social media information for product refinement, collaborative product development and changes to operational routines. These reported practices are examined through four analytical categories: product-incremental, product-radical, process-incremental and process-radical innovation. Incremental changes are more directly supported by the available evidence, while the magnitude of potentially radical changes remains uncertain. Platform features, including polls, analytics dashboards and creator interactions, provide opportunities for feedback collection, demand assessment and collaboration. Managers also identified technological compatibility, organisational readiness and cross-functional coordination as relevant to applying platform information. Ethics/general data protection regulation (GDPR) readiness is considered a proposed governance boundary condition rather than an empirically established influence. Research limitations/implications The study develops an exploratory TOE–affordance explanation of how social media information informs different innovation-related decisions. Its reliance on marketing managers' accounts, sector-specific setting and limited independent evidence of internal implementation constrain conclusions about causal relationships and innovation radicalness. The proposed relationships provide directions for further empirical investigation. Practical implications The Assess, Leverage, Invest, Govern, Network (ALIGN) managerial synthesis offers guidance on assessing technological compatibility, coordinating organisational functions, developing digital capabilities, governing platform use and accessing external knowledge. It is presented as a practical synthesis rather than an empirically validated framework. Originality/value The study contributes an exploratory explanation of how social media information is interpreted and applied to product and operational decisions under differing organisational conditions. It connects TOE conditions with affordance realisation while distinguishing empirically reported practices from proposed explanatory relationships.