Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing on Consumer Buying Decisions in Fashion Industry

This dissertation aims to investigate the effectiveness of social media marketing on consumer buying decisions in the fashion industry, with a case study on Burberry Plc. It explores the impact of social media marketing on consumer behavior and buying preferences, as well as the challenges faced by fashion marketers in their social media marketing practices. The study also provides strategies for luxury fashion brands to overcome these challenges and successfully utilize social media marketing.

DISSERTATION
(To investigate the effectiveness of social media
marketing on consumer buying decisions in Fashion
Industry, A case study on Burberry Plc)

Table of Contents
CHAPTER -1 INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................1
1.1 Title........................................................................................................................................1
1.2 Overview of the research problem.........................................................................................1
1.3 Rationale of the study............................................................................................................2
1.4 Potential contribution of the study.........................................................................................3
1.5 Research aims and objectives................................................................................................3
1.6 Research questions.................................................................................................................4
1.7 Structure of the dissertation...................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

CHAPTER -1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Title
“To investigate the effectiveness of social media marketing on consumer buying decisions in
Fashion Industry, A case study on Burberry Plc”
1.2 Overview of the research problem
With the advancement of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), the
business world has encountered a new phenomenon in the cyber world called social media
communication. Emergence of web 2.0 technologies is considered as the major advancement in
the history of commerce that came along with the social media networking channel. Such
revolutionized development had fostered the online communication; facilitate interaction,
content and video sharing and cooperation (Chitra and Sasikala, 2016). It had brought
significant changes in the traditional marketing channels, mediums and approaches that were
used by the marketers earlier. It shifted the power from the firms to the consumers because social
media democracy allowed all the users to keep in touch and contact each other via information
exchange regarding different products and services (Kaur, 2016). It encouraged marketers
changing their traditionally applied marketing and promotional strategies through the use of
social media sites and thereby matches new needs of consumers through regular online
communication. It had significantly changed the buying behavior of users through social media
advertisement and word of mouth publicity as well. It has totally changed the relationship
between companies and stakeholders. Social-Media marketing (SMM) is totally different from
the traditional marketing because advertisement is the one side communication channel, in
which, marketers just provide necessary information regarding their offerings such as quality,
price, discount offers, availability, color, size and others, consumers have no option to
communicate with the firm whereas under SMM, both user and company can communicate with
each other hence, it is a two-way marketing communication channel (Borah and Tellis, 2016).
Social-media has multiple of types such as weblogs, social media networking like
Facebook, sites for sharing videos like YouTube, micro-blogs like Twitter & others. Due to the
stronger connectivity, social media gains a high popularity in the world and enable firms to
popularize their commercial brand in the global market. Referring United Kingdom (UK), in
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January 2017, the total active social media users were reported to 42milion (64% of population)
and active mobile social media users were 37million (57% of population) (Social media users,
2017). The progressive use of web 2.0 technology is not only evidenced by the users but also
used by the companies as an advertisement tool for promoting their product portfolio. People use
social media sites for varied purposes such as for obtaining and transferring information so as to
make excellent purchasing decisions. SMM plays a great role in the marketing functions of
fashion industry wherein companies use different social media sites under its promotional
campaign, so that, they can access majority of consumers (Gainous and et.al., 2016). Burberry
Plc is a British firm that designs, manufacture and offer luxury fashionable cloths to the men,
women and children. It offers various products such as apparel, accessories, leather handbags,
watches, cosmetics and beauty products to the customers. It operates through its departmental
stores, franchisee, fashion outlets and online platform. In order to survive in the tough
competitive era, its marketing strategies have been turned towards use of social media rather than
traditional methods like print media, paper advertisement and others. It uses SMM to identify
buying intentions along with the stimuli and identify the impact of social-media marketing on
such factors so as to favorably influence the users and change his buying intentions into actual
purchase. Pictures of designer and fashionable clothing items, attractive advertisement, consumer
feedbacks and post-buying experiences of the users enable potential buyers to make right
purchasing decisions whether to buy a particular item or not to meet their own expectations
(Godey and et.al., 2016). Thus, the key objective of the study is to reveal that how effectively
social media marketing enable Burberry to influence the buying intentions of the consumers. The
research highlights the effectiveness of SMM on the users purchasing behavior to assess that
how social media sites encourage & motivate people buying preferences and choices to match up
their own needs and desires.
1.3 Rationale of the study
In the era of e-commerce, luxury fashion houses actively use social-media sites to
promote their goods offering all over the world and to millennial consumers. Numerous research
studies have been conducted by the scholars to investigate the effectiveness of social media sites
on the consumers shopping experiences & buying choices in different sectors such as retail,
fashion and others, still, none of the study had investigated its effectiveness for the Burberry
fashion house. Thus, by this way, the research mitigate such gap by examining that how well
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social media can be used as an effective promotional tool by Burberry Plc to gain brand
popularity all over the world. Rising popularity of social sites encourage scholars to investigate
the issue through an in-depth research. The study will examine both the favorable and negative
impact of its use on the Burberry’s performance. The research also addresses the key challenges
faced by companies in social-media marketing like security and others. Thus, conducting such
investigation will enable investigator to create an excellent marketing plan integrating social
networking sites to maintain strong relationship with the customers and attract more and more
users to buy the offered goods.
1.4 Potential contribution of the study
In the period of e-commerce, luxury fashion brands invest a huge capital in their
promotional offerings to gain crowded audience. Burberry’s social media marketing focuses on
gaining actively the attention of users towards its designer, unique and fashionable goods and
other items so as to achieve success. Thus, the current research will be extremely significant for
the marketers of fashion houses to examine the usefulness of social media marketing in their
promotional success. Moreover, they can make decisions to effectively promote their goods and
services offerings through social networking channels and overcome the possible challenges that
might be the results of unforeseen changes in the market. With the assistance of the study,
organizations operating in the fashion industry will be able to make smarter decisions to
accomplish high level of success through online promotion. Further, the current research study
will serve as a secondary source for the upcoming scholars and will provide a conceptual base to
their study in concerned field.
1.5 Research aims and objectives
Aim: To investigate the effectiveness of social media marketing on consumer buying decisions
in Fashion Industry, A case study on Burberry Plc
Objectives:
 To examine the properties of British luxury fashion house’s social media marketing
 To investigate the impact of Burberry’s social media marketing activities on consumer
relationship, buying intention & their purchase decisions
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 To investigate possible threats faced by fashion house marketers in their social-media
marketing practices
 To suggest the best strategies to British luxury fashion retailers to overcome the social
media marketing challenges
1.6 Research questions
1. What are the characteristics and features of luxury retailer’s social media marketing practices
in UK?
2. How does the social-media marketing channel affects buying preferences, purchasing
decisions and consumer relationship?
3. What issues and challenges often faced by Burberry’s marketers to promote their products and
services using social networking sites?
4. What strategies and actions do luxury fashion brands marketers needs to undertake to
successfully grow their business using SMM?
1.7 Structure of the dissertation
Chapter: 1. Introduction: Every study starts with the investigating the area of interest by
well presenting the research problem. It develop an initial idea in the mind of reader that what
the whole dissertation tells and in which direction, it has been carried down. This section clearly
presents the interest of the researcher with the targeted aims & objectives due to which the study
was conducted earlier.
Chapter: 2. Literature review: This is the second chapter which critically reviews the
relevant historical researches by researching number of articles, research papers, publications
and other secondary material. In this, various studies will be compared with each other to carry
out a comprehensive & informative investigation. Seeking out the existing or past researches
helps to avoid replication and provide an academic context and conceptual theoretical base to the
proposed study to mitigate the loopholes in the previous studies.
Chapter: 3. Research methodology: Following LR, the methodology section of the thesis
present the tools applied as a research philosophy & approach. Besides this, the techniques used
for obtaining sufficient amount of data for the purpose of detailed analysis & investigation will
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be presented.
Chapter: 4. Results, analysis and findings: This is one of the most crucial section that
provides highly realistic and relevant information regards to the area of the study that is
interpreted and examined by the researcher to find out the materialistic information about the
impact or effectiveness of social media marketing on the users buying choices, preferences and
decisions.
Chapter: 5. Conclusion: At the end of the thesis, all the strands or key findings from all
the chapters will be combined to give a justified and convincing answer to the problem
investigated. Proper justification is really important with full reasoning and with proper
evidences as well to ensure its reliability. Besides this, potential future areas or developments for
the current research topic will be presented where upcoming scholars can take interest to
investigate the issue in more detail.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Borah, A. and Tellis, G.J., 2016. Halo (spillover) effects in social media: do product recalls of
one brand hurt or help rival brands?. Journal of Marketing Research. 53(2). pp.143-160.
Chitra, K. and Sasikala, K., 2016. Social Media Marketing Strategies for Enhancing Brand
Awareness: A Study with reference to select Startups.Asian Journal of Research in Social
Sciences and Humanities. 6(9). pp.1081-1095.
Gainous, J. and et.al., 2016. Internet freedom and social media effects: democracy and citizen
attitudes in Latin America. Online Information Review. 40(5). pp.712-738.
Godey, B. and et.al., 2016. Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand
equity and consumer behavior. Journal of Business Research. 69(12). pp.5833-5841.
Kaur, G., 2016. Social Media Marketing. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies. 4(7).
Online
Social media users. 2017. [Online]. Available through: <
https://www.statista.com/statistics/507405/uk-active-social-media-and-mobile-social-
media-users/>. [Accessed on 12th July 2017].
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