Benefits and Challenges Social Media Marketing Can Bring to Fashion Firms - Essay Example

(102) The following study examines the importance of using social media marketing in order to identify the benefits and challenges that it could bring to fashion firms. A survey of 40 people was conducted as a means of understanding key points of view regarding the effectiveness of social media. Interviews with marketing and public relations professionals were also undertaken to support the literature. The findings suggest that successful social media marketing is transforming relationships and brands in the fashion industry through closer interaction and connectivity with their consumers. However, fashion brands also have to be aware of the difficulties that they raise by adopting the digital approach. Introduction (406) In recent years, social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter have developed a platform for people to connect and create a community for mutual interests. Social media not only allows consumers to interact and build relationships, it also helps to stimulate discussions on key ideas, thoughts and interests. Since social media has become widely used for communication and businesses have kept up with fast pace of the change in technology and incorporated this emerging, innovative platform into their marketing strategies. Businesses utilize social media to gain consumer insights and enhance customer engagement with the brand through networking. Social media marketing has become a significant element for digital marketing as it allows businesses to learn about customers and provide support in order to improve the consumer perception towards the company. (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2012) (P.535) Even though social media is identified as a low-cost media platform that allows businesses to communicate brand activities, the adoption of social media by fashion houses was a little slower as they fear that their well-developed brand images would be damaged by the transparency and openness of the brand information. While traditional advertising channels have more control on the output and minimize the risk of their messages being misinterpreted, such an approach invariably has its costs. (Meadows, 2012)(P.163) This study explores the importance of adopting social media as a marketing tool and what influences can impact the fashion industry. Objectives: 1) To explore how fashion marketing communications has evolved from traditional advertising channel into digital approach 2) To discover and research how social media can help fashion businesses nowadays; as well as discussing any challenges that might arise and influence them. The Club Monaco brand was chosen as case study as its social media marketing strategy has successfully allowed the brand to gain a global level of awareness and customer interaction. The brand was founded in Toronto, Canada in 1985 and acquired as a subsidiary of Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation in 1999. As such, it is a popular fashion and lifestyle brand among international shoppers and is distributed in more than 115 stockists ; spanning from the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, China, Seoul, Singapore and a litany of others. By using the brand’s highly acclaimed blog, Culture Club is the highlight of its social media marketing strategy and develops alongside other social media platforms to distribute the brand’s content. It also offers a glimpse into the brand’s lifestyle and shares a visual collective of what inspires various creative teams within the company (Wright, 2011). The evolution of fashion marketing communications (1144) Egan (2007) states that marketing communications (Marcoms) is meant to deliver the ideas, messages or values of the business to the target audience in order to establish a dialogue that can stimulate better commercial or other relationships. It utilizes various elements of promotional mix, advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing and sales promotion, in order to achieve this goal. Marketing communications has a long history of development and innovation since 3,000 BCE. Until the twentieth century, the marketing communications industry had not yet entered into the modern stage; where radio and television advertising were progressively taking over printed advertisement and the increased use of other marketing communications tools - such as public relations and sales promotion have been recognized. (Egan, 2007) (P.1-8) Advertising is a costly but highly visible facet of promotion tool. It allows the brands to deliver the essence and message of the product or service by using visual images such as sound, motion, color or written information to audiences via mass media or the Internet. Meanwhile, it not only enables a brand to generate sales, it also allows them to reinforce the brand image and gain awareness from the public (Posner, 2011, p. 161). It takes variety of forms, including print media, cinema, television, outdoor advertising and radio (Posner, 2011, p. 165). Although traditional advertising channels are highly important in the fashion industry, the advancement of the Internet has led to rapid changes in the industry. According to Papsolomou & Melanthou (2012), “ The internet implementation in the marketing process is inexpensive, delivers instant international reach, offer great real time feedback, and reaches millions of people for whom the web is the center of virtually all communications” (Page#?) Promotion via Internet, either from the brand websites, blogs or online viral videos has become the crucial form of advertising, promotion and brand building. A recent research from McKinsey confirmed that the online channel is expanding in all product categories. Since consumers are becoming more sophisticated, they are very likely to research products online via computers and mobile devices before they make any purchase decisions. In fact, the number of consumers who used their computers to conduct online research has increased from 41% in 2010 to 50% in 2012. Hence, digital marketing presents an open opportunity for businesses (McKinsey, 2013). However, due to the diminishing economic growth and retail sales across most of the globe, fashion companies look for every possible way to compete in this highly competitive industry. “Now they can no longer depend solely on their brand symbol but must focus on brand legacy, quality, esthetic value, and trustworthy customer relationships in order to succeed” (Kim & Ko, 2012). Consumers were no longer simply the user of products and services, but also play as an integral role in the production, branding and distribution processes and disseminate the advertisements that they particularly found interesting or amusing (Surchi, 2011). This means that companies are required to invest large amounts of money in PR and marketing in order to develop and maintain the customer base. The firm must also be aware of the need to reach a broader and younger target market; as Millennials, also known as Generation Y, are identified as the driver of current and future consumption. (Smith, 2011) (McKinsey, 2012) Meanwhile, the middle class consumers in emerging markets such as China, Brazil or India are younger in comparison with western middle class, and have an appetite for luxury items. Having grown up in the digital world in which tablets and mobile phones are a daily, essential tools for them to socialize and make purchase online, these individuals are now becoming more tech-savvy and less susceptible to old modes of advertising such as magazines, newspaper and TV (Binnie, 2013). Consumers are now required to access the information immediately at their own convenience (Mangold & Faulds, 2009) and fashion brands are reducing the reliance on traditional advertising channels (Papasolomou & Melanthiou, 2012). Therefore, as a means to manage customers as an asset of the business through effective communication, many fashion brands have placed their collective attention on social media for marketing activities. Social media is an online communication tool that facilitates conversation and the sharing of information, opinion, knowledge, or interests (Papasolomou & Melanthiou, 2012; DiStaso & Bortree, 2012). Examples include blogs and micro-blogs, video, pictures, rating, and social bookmarking (Kim & Ko, 2012). Unlike the traditional one-way communication, social media marketing is an interactive two-way direct communication that allows the brands to communicate their messages to target demographics without any time restriction, place and medium. (Kim & Ko, 2012) In addition, it enables the brand to receive immediate feedback and reactions about the products or services and reduce any misunderstanding towards the brand. In addition, it allows the brands to gain public awareness and engage in relationship building. Nevertheless social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have been evaluated as the most effective marketing communication tool for business take-off. The increasingly use of social media from luxury fashion brands emerged as early as 2009. At first, most of the fashion brands, particularly in the luxury category, were reluctant to use social media; since they thought that social media was too open for them and they were creating a channel for negative sentiment (PwC, 2013) that might influence the brand image as well as the perception of exclusivity (Morrissey, 2010). However, in November 2009, Burberry launched The Art of the Trench; a social networking site in which it invited users to upload photos of them wearing the iconic trench coats and vote and comment on those on the site. Gucci has also released similar social sites, such as Eyeweb, to promote its new sunglasses collection. Meanwhile, “It woke up the luxury fashion brands that they can do something social, be cool, and still be on brand”(Morrissey, 2010). According to the study on global online shoppers in 2012 by PwC, 49% of online shoppers used social media every day, 27% discovered brands through social media, and 38% followed their favourite brands and retailers. According to McKinsey (2012), social media is serving as information and entertainment portals for many young consumers that think that it is the most convenient way to share videos, photos, and connect friends and family. (See Appendix 1) As such, fashion companies should incorporate social media as the crucial communication channel in their digital marketing strategies in order to drive word-of-mouth marketing. They have to understand the reality that social media is now perceived by consumers as a more trustworthy source of information. Vast amounts of positive or negative information regarding the company could be disseminated by one consumer to another and this information is directly impacting on their purchase and post-purchase behaviour. Ignoring them might jeopardise the company’s reputation. Therefore, by selecting the appropriate online social platform and interacting with existing and potential consumers can be a powerful tool to differentiate the brand presence and stimulate favourable perception towards the brand (Hoffmann & Coste-Maniere, n.d.). Methodology This session details the research methodology for this study; including the description and explanation of the choices of methods, the collection and presentation of data, as well as the limitations of this study. A descriptive research methodology was used for this study. An online questionnaire was undertaken via Facebook of a sampling group of 30 people within an age range from 18 – 36. In order to obtain in depth information on the research topic, e-mail interviews with Club Monaco and Rupert Sanderson were also conducted to discover the effectiveness of using social media as marketing tool. The survey method is the most widely used technique in marketing research. Tull and Albaum’s 1973 study stated that the survey is a research methodology designed to gather the data and information from a sample group; in order to understand and forecast some aspect of the behaviour of the population of interest. “The questions may be designed to obtain information that is retrospective, concurrent, or projective with regard to time” (Baker, 2002). In this way, the questionnaire or an interview could be utilised as the survey instrument (Baker, 2002). Alreck and Settle’s 1985 study identified three purposes for undertaking a survey. Firstly, It allows the survey sponsor to influence and convince some of the audience. Secondly, it enables them to create or make adjustments on a product or service that can fit their target group. Lastly, they can understand and predict human behavior or conditions based upon the findings that the survey reveals (Baker, 2002). According to Baker (2002), there are some advantages of using surveys to conduct research. These are as follows: the survey is more comprehensive than most other forms of analysis, it is interpretive and allows opinions, it allows the stakeholder to collect large amounts of data from a large population economically and more easily than the other methods. Qualitative research interviews are defined as, “An interview, whose purpose is to gather descriptions of the life-world of the interviewee with respect to interpretation of the meaning of the described phenomena" (Opdenakker, 2006). There are distinct advantages in using e-mail interviews as compared to using face-to-face interviews. Firstly, they are more convenient for the interviewee to answer the questions without any noise disturbance and they have more time allowance to reflect and respond on the questions. In addition, interviewers do not necessarily to take notes and can always refer back to the questions and answers that have already asked (Opdenakker, 2006). The survey was created by using an online survey program; Survey Monkey. A total of 9 multiple choices and 1 open-ended questions were included in the questionnaire; which was possible to complete in less than 5 minutes. Respondents were asked about the usage of different social networking platforms, the importance and purposes of the use of social media etc. Questions regarding the demographic information such as age and gender were also included in the questionnaire. Participants in this survey include both males and females and ranged from university student to young and experienced professionals. All of the participants were experienced shoppers and familiar with the use of social media. The questionnaire was designed as complementary to the research question in different perspective in order to further enhance any conclusion made at the completion of this study regarding the importance of social media in fashion industry. 6 interview questions were asked to the industry expert via e-mail and serves as significant data sources for the study. The questions are relevant to the use of social media as fashion marketing communication strategy. The methodology of data collection for this study was the e-mail interview with marketing team of Club Monaco. Bampton and Cowton (2002) as cited by Opdenakker (2006) stated that e-mail interviews allowed to eliminate the cost and time in relation to the need of travel and transcription. The outcome of the conducted qualitative interview enabled to support the study with better understanding of experts’ knowledge and opinion regarding to the use of social media. Data Analysis This session outlines the data collected from the respondents, interviewees and the exiting literature on the topic. The responses from the questionnaire were presented in a pie chart and the outcome from the interview will be presented in direct quotations and paraphrased ideas from the transcript. All incomplete surveys were discarded from the analysis. The major limiting factor for this study was the sample size of the survey. The survey was sent out to 40 people; but only 37 people have completed the questionnaire. Due to the time constraints, the sample size captured is not large enough to be statistically representative. Nevertheless, it is still a useful directional indicator of social media impact on fashion industry. Findings (Case study: Club Monaco) The evolution of Club Monaco’s marketing communication strategy In the earlier marketing activities, Club Monaco has been focusing on using some common advertising media; such as editorial coverage in elevated fashion publications and international print and outdoor (billboards and bus) advertisements. Both have helped and supported the brand building and driven overall brand exposure and awareness. The development of its official website reinforced its brand positioning and acted as a source for global consumers to access the information of the brand and reviewed the products that were currently in store. Direct marketing through e-mail was also widely used to communicate with customers. In 2010, its brand imagery had changed and transitioned into an international lifestyle brand alongside with the rising trend of using social media platforms to make interaction and connectivity, the brand made its first presence in social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. However, by that time, the brand did not develop a social media marketing strategy in which the posts on Facebook were not consistent with the posts on Twitter to tell the brand’s story (Abramovich, 2012). Until the brand had realized that they had the need of evolving with the shift in media landscape and consumers were on demand of social media to interact and access the data and information, “It implemented a social media strategy to develop a global community of brand ambassadors on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest, as well as collaboration with opinion leading bloggers. Also, its social media strategy focused on the brand’s Culture Club blog, which relied on social media platforms to distribute the brand’s content. This not only allowed the brand to reach a younger and more impulsive target, but also to encourage the brand followers to engage with the brand and promote the brand through word-of-mouth” (Abramovich, 2012). Overview of survey and interview outcome Based on the primary research that was conducted with the questionnaire and interviews, the following outcomes have been found. Of the 40 participants that completed the survey, 45% use social media more than 3 hours per day. The above chart depicts a clear direction that the fashion companies have to exploit the situation by implementing a feasible social media strategy. Social media has played an important role in fashion marketing communication, as most of the respondent thought that it is the mainstream for fashion communication and the most effective way to widen the audiences and “create a platform to bridge the fashion industry with rest of the world” was to engage with social media as an outreach tool. Further, social media helps to communicate and maintain relationships with potential and existing customers; as well as easily bring the behind the scenes access to the consumers; in order to makes them appreciate more of the brand. This in turn allows them to deepen the understanding of the brand. Approximately 82% of respondents follow fashion brands and more than 77% discover new brands on social media. In addition, it is perceived as an opportunity for closer engagement where there is a more instant level of communication between the brand and consumers. For instance, Club Monaco used Sina Weibo as a social media marketing communication tool in China and found that it now had more interactions with consumers than ever before. Consumers are more willing to leave comments, raise questions of promotional offers, and share ideas of how they mix and match their clothes with Club Monaco’s products. This helps to drive brand awareness and recognition without incurring huge costs. In particular, one of the respondents also mentioned that consumers trust more of what their peers said rather than brands that has commercial interests and therefore social media can drive word of mouth marketing. Besides that, social media could also be seen as a forecasting tool to preview or predict the global market trends and understand what the consumers needs and wants in the future might be; so as to make any adjustments or improvements. Some of the respondent thought that it is also effective for advertising and promotion as the cost is relatively lower and the time of implementing a social media campaign (e.g Facebook or Instagram posts) could be shorter than implementing a print or outdoor campaign; as well as having a more instant effect. Also, social media campaigns could go viral easily; by disseminating one person to hundreds or thousands and catching customers’ attentions. For example, Club Monaco has collaborated with an influential blogger, Hypebeast, to create a video campaign to promote the men’s fall winter collection. The short video has gone viral after it has been posted on the blog and different social media platforms. Club Monaco has received lots of comments and enquires about the bomber jacket that was worn by a Hong Kong pop star in the video. Both the survey and interview found that social media plays an important role on influencing the customers’ purchasing decisions; since more than 72% are influenced by the social media and sales have been driven from Club Monaco example. While social media could bring lots of benefits to fashion industries, there are still some challenges that exist when these are adopting. First of all, the Marketing Assistant of Club Monaco claimed that there is still a group of stakeholders that they could not reach by using social media platforms; namely those consumers who are not familiar with the use of technology. Secondly, advertise in a new market via social media could be also a concern. For instance, Club Monaco has entered into Thailand market recently. They realized that social media is still not an active marketing tool within Thailand as yet. Hence, based on these two concerns, the possible solution could be considering using both traditional advertising and digital channels to reach consumers. Furthermore, as there are millions of Facebook pages or Instagram posts, it is challenging to maintain the contents and promote the brand as compared to a sea of others. It also takes time to develop and expand the audience of social media users. Meanwhile, fashion brands have to avoid excessive wall posts, pictures, videos or comments as it could lead to loss of followers, and therefore manage good online customer relationships instead of being blacklisted. Conclusion Given the data and collected findings of the study, fashion brands should embrace social media as part of their marketing strategies in order to stimulate communication, consumer loyalty and understand the needs and wants of their consumers. Due to the fast changing industry and the technological change in online platforms, ongoing data research and interviews with industry professionals and experts should be conducted in order to figure out additional benefits or challenges that will bring to businesses in the future. The study has provided advice for marketing and public relations professionals through the use of the case study of Club Monaco to support the extensive review of current literature on the topic and conclude the importance of strong social media marketing. Suggestions for Whistles and recommendation for practice can be applicable to similar fashion brand with the difficulties to adopt social media channel and used as a marketing communication guide for adjustment or improvement of the brand’s marketing strategy. However, as it is a subjective finding, it is not suggested to apply to all individuals and experts within the industry. Suggestions for another fashion brand – Whistles Insights that were gained from the case study of Club Monaco and findings could be applied to Whistles for further development in its social media strategy in the future. Whistles is a mid-market women’s wear brand in Britain. The adoption of social media by Whistles was slower than many other retailers; it created a Twitter account in 2010 and launched a Facebook page in 2011. In addition, Whistles claimed that it has a niche and loyal customer base unlike those mainstream brands such as ASOS or TOPSHOP; who are very active and aggressive on social media activities and possess over million followers, they are more concerned with the communication with their loyal customers and find out what they need and want via such an approach (Nagalingam, 2011). However, Whistles was not aware of the popularity of social media among consumers as well as the strength of using the online platforms to not only retain their loyal customers, but also attract new customers. Whistles has to understand that it is vital to embrace social media as it allows the brand and consumers to generate instant communication in their own convenience and ultimately achieve brand awareness and recognition from new customers. For instance, Whistles has entered into China and Hong Kong; however, they neglected the fact that large popularity in China are interacting online and researching brands on the Internet (KPMG, 2013). Further, some western social media platforms have been blocked in China. Therefore, fashion brands like Whistles have to select appropriate social media such as microblogging services like Weibo to reach new markets. Refering back to the case study of Club Monaco, there is no doubt that adopting Weibo, in particular for Chinese market, allows more interactions with consumers and drive word-of-mouth marketing if the main goal for Whistles is to communicate with its loyal customers. Moreover, as mentioned in the findings, social media could be seen as forecasting tool to predict the fashion market trend and understand what the consumers needs and wants, in which this has also aligned with the objective of Whistles to gauge customers’ tastes (Nagalingam, 2011) and therefore it proves that Whistles has the need to improve its current social media strategy in order to gain brand awareness among consumers. Critical success factors of social media marketing The insights gained from this study have drawn several conclusions of social media marketing. The key success factors in social media marketing have determined to provide a better indication on where the fashion brands can focus on. Mobile devices According to PwC report 2013, it forecasts that the manner by which consumers access Internet will change; as such there will be an increasing use of tablets or smart phones instead of the traditional PC. Hence, it is crucial to create social content experiences across multiple devices in order to drive consumption and engagement (Bosomworth, 2013). Commitment It is crucial to sustain everyday conversation and commitments with consumers in order to build the trust between the brands and consumers and prevent excessive short-term campaigns on social media (Bosomworth, 2013). Objectives It is crucial to define the objectives in adopting social media channel and understands what desired outcome the businesses want to achieve and the messages that the brand wants to communicate. Content The success of social media marketing relies on its content. Fashion brands have to listen to their consumers and find out what they like to know and discuss; what particular topic or information they would find interesting, enjoyable and valuable. In addition, focusing on communicating the brand essence and message to target audience. Then, create and post content that align with expectations. (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010) The successful content should be updated frequently without overwhelming the social media users and have created a community for interactions and connectivity. Appendix *Facebook and Instagram are the most popular choices of social media platforms. In particular, Club Monaco Marketing Assistant claimed that Instagram is more user-friendly and convenience to use. In addition, Sina Weibo is chosen as the communication tool to reach China market, as Facebook is blocked in China. Moreover, Twitter is the least effective social media platforms, as it is not as user-friendly as Instagram and the users from Twitters are not as receptive. * Overview of questionnaire result 4) & 5) From the above charts, Facebook and Instagram are more popular compared with other social media platforms, whereas Tumblr and Google+ are less likely to use for social networking among respondents. 9) Do you think social media is important to fashion businesses? Why? The survey found that majority of respondents think that social media is important to fashion businesses. This is because they thought that social media is the mainstream and the essential channel for fashion communication. People are using it for all kinds of communication purposes. This channel provide a platform for fashion brands to reach and wider the audiences, and help to communicate and maintain relationships with potential and existing customers easily. Fashion brands could gain better understanding of consumers from their feedbacks and ideas, meanwhile, to preview or predict the global market trend. While, some of the respondents considered social media as a more effective advertising tool to promote the latest trend, collections and promotional offers than e-mail. 10) Social media reinforce the interaction and connectivity. This is evident with approximately 98% of respondents using such platform to connect with friends, while 40% respondents would share their views and experiences on various products or services and only 13% would play games or participate in contests. Social media provides lots of opportunities for fashion brands to communicate with consumers and understand their wants and needs from their point of views and acts as an effective tool to reach wider audience without incurring huge cost. Appendix 1 Abramovich, G. (2012) Inside Club Monaco’s Social Strategy | Digiday. [Online]. 2012. 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