Evaluation of the Impact of Social Media Communication on Purchase Intention of Millennials in Chinese Fashion Industry

This research aims to evaluate the impact of social media communication on the purchase intention of millennials in the Chinese fashion industry, with Zara as a case study. It will use a mixed method research design to analyze qualitative and quantitative data. The research will address the gap in previous literature and highlight effective strategies to retain and acquire millennial consumers.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Marketing
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Abstract
This research had proposed to evaluate the impact of social media communication on the
purchase intention of the millennials in the Chinese fashion industry. Zara had been chosen as
the case study of the research. The research had proposed specific objectives where it aimed
to evaluate the casual impact of social media communication on the purchase intention of the
consumers. The research has proposed a mixed method research design where both
qualitative and quantitative data will be used to derive both in-depth answers and statistical
data. The evaluation of the past literature had been able to identify the gap in the previous
literature and the objective of the research had been developed based on it.

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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction..........................................................................................................................4
1.1 Background of the research..................................................................................................4
1.2 Research problem.................................................................................................................5
1.3 Research Purpose.................................................................................................................6
1.4 Research objectives..............................................................................................................6
1.5 Research Question................................................................................................................6
1.6 Research hypothesis.............................................................................................................6
1.7 Summary..............................................................................................................................7
2.0 Literature Review.................................................................................................................7
2.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................................7
2.2 Social media communication...............................................................................................8
2.2.1 Types of social media....................................................................................................9
2.2.2 Social media marketing...............................................................................................11
2.3 Consumer purchase intentions...........................................................................................12
2.4 Social media communication and consumer purchase intention.......................................14
2.5 Literature Gap....................................................................................................................15
3.0 Research Methodology.......................................................................................................15
3.1 Research Philosophy..........................................................................................................16
3.2 Research Approach............................................................................................................16
3.3 Research Design.................................................................................................................17
3.4 Data collection and analysis...............................................................................................17

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3.5 Sampling method...............................................................................................................18
3.6 Reliability and Validity......................................................................................................18
3.7 Ethical consideration..........................................................................................................19
References................................................................................................................................20

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Topic: Evaluation of the impact of social media communication on the purchase intention of
the millennials in the Chinese fashion industry- “A case study of Zara”
1.0 Introduction
This research will aim to examine the influence of social media communication on the
purchase intention of the millennials. Chinese fashion industry will be chosen as the sector as
it is most demanding and changing in nature. Zara is one of the market leader in the global
fast fashion industry and has developed a strong presence in China (Zara.com 2019). The
company will be considered as the case in the research. Millennials generation consists of the
largest consumer segment in the global market and consists of 80 million people with the
purchasing of more than $170 million (Zoeller 2019). This generation is very demanding in
nature and the marketers have been forced to make changes to the way they have been
delivering messages to the target consumers. This research will address this aspect of the
research understand the necessity and influence of integrating marketing communication.
1.1 Background of the research
There has been rapid development in the direct marketing since the past three decades
where web 2.0 has amalgamated with the marketing activities to develop integrated
marketing communication. The shift from the traditional philosophies of marketing to the
modern marketing approaches resulted in a shift where majority of the organization switched
to relationship marketing from transactional marketing. Social media communication was the
partial solution to the structural inadequacy and realisation of the different consumer
segments that their communication can be achieved more effectively and efficiently
(Schivinski and Dabrowski 2016). Marketers use social media communication strategies to
develop an effective brand identity by using effective tools such as advertising, event
marketing, personal selling, promotion and publicity. Companies use social media to leverage

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a sustainable competitive advantage in the market by creating positive awareness, image and
develop relationship with marketing channels. Moreover, it facilitates in identifying the
potential consumers.
Global apparel market is worth $1.34 trillion excluding the jewellery and footwear
market where women contribute to more than 50% of the spending (Common Objective
2019). The top ten companies in the industry only account for 10% of the overall global sales
of the fashion products which depicts the intensity of the competition in the industry
(Common Objective 2019). The Chinese fashion industry is one of the largest global market
and falls second only to United States. Moreover, the industry is mainly driven by the change
in needs and wants of the consumers and goods have a short shelf life. This means that
integrated marketing in different platforms is essential for promoting and launching of new
products for increasing awareness of the consumers on the product line for various
organizations.
1.2 Research problem
The millennials are one of the most important target consumers in the market and in
respect to the fashion industry catering to the needs of this consumer segment affects the
sustainable competitive of these companies. Therefore, it has become significantly crucial to
integrate message across all platforms to engage with the consumers across all platforms.
Moreover, the average purchase of a millennial is higher when compared to the other
generation and they are more technologically savvy. This means that in order to provide the
consumers with all the necessary information, the companies have to reach the target
consumers at every touch point. Fashion industry, on the other hand, experiences rapid
change due to the changing nature of the fashion trends. The role of companies in the fashion
industry has major significance and this research would address this aspect in the research as

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modern industry has become more customer centric than before. Zara is one of the major
leaders in the industry and lie within the top ten fashion companies in the world. Zara has
been successful in China and the research would aim to understand the various strategies
implemented by the companies to retain the millennials.
1.3 Research Purpose
The main purpose of the research is to highlight the importance of social media
communication in retaining the existing millennial consumer in the Chinese fashion industry
where Zara has been chosen as the case study. The research aims to bring awareness among
the companies in this industry so that they can emphasise on using the different social media
communication strategies in influencing the purchase decision of the millennial consumers.
In order to accomplish Zara has been chosen as the case for analysis as it is one of the market
leaders.
1.4 Research objectives
 To examine the impact of social media communication on the purchase intention of
the millennials in the Chinese fashion industry
 To highlight the effective strategies needed to retain existing and acquire new
millennial consumers
1.5 Research Question
 What is the impact of social media communication on the purchase intention of the
millennials in the fashion industry?
 What are the effective strategies needed to retain existing and acquire new millennial
consumers?

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1.6 Research hypothesis
H0: Social media communication does not enhance the purchase intention of the millennials
in the fashion industry
H1: Social media communication enhances the purchase intention of the millennials in the
fashion industry
1.7 Summary
This section of the research has provided a brief overview of the background, research
purpose and objective. The research question and the research hypothesis has been developed
which aims to address the importance and influence of social media communication in
purchase intention of millennials. The research problem has been defined which would
facilitate in understanding the research context. The next section in the chapter will analyse
the past literatures consisting of peer- reviewed journals and articles to identify the gap which
would be addressed in the research.
2.0 Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
The advancement of technology and emergence of the web 2.0 have resulted in the
increase in interconnectivity between individuals on the online platform. This change has
enabled the marketers and the consumers to interact and collaborate on the internet. Social
media has been one of the major contributors to this phenomenon as it facilitates the
consumers to generate content and interact via these platforms (Gunawan and Huarng 2015).
This has resulted in the development of various online communities that share relevant
information on the global level in a faster way. The rise of social networking has resulted in
free flow of information among the consumers. These changes has provided the organizations

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with the opportunity of utilizing the social networking platforms to communicate their story
to the consumers and develop effective customer relationship management strategies (Barger,
Peltier and Schultz 2016). Moreover, these platforms provides the opportunity to the
companies to improve the trust level of the consumers towards the organizations. Therefore,
it is key for the companies to develop a business model that facilitates adaptation of social
commerce. Social commerce has encouraged the interaction of the consumers to different
marketers on the social media platform. This part of the research will critically evaluate past
literature on social media and its impact on consumer purchase intention to understand the
perspective of different authors and gap in the literature.
2.2 Social media communication
As stated by Gunawan and Huarng (2015), Social media and web 2.0 that these
terminologies are closely interlinked with each other and they differ in terms of their
usability. Web 2.0 has developed internet as a new platform for gaining knowledge and
sharing information where content modification is quite frequent and it is exchanged in
collaborative and participatory manner by users. Barger, Peltier and Schultz (2016) states
that social media has been developed based on elements that are interconnected to each other
and they are content, communication and social interaction. Social media has generated a
new landscape which has assisted in information socialization. Thus has resulted in
enhancement of the communication flow where it has become easier to spread information
due to the existence of vast online audiences (Erkan and Evans 2016). It facilitates in
communication at both local and global level which has resulted in a global impact.

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Figure 1: Components of social media
Source: (Erkan and Evans 2016)
Zhang and Benyoucef (2016) has referred to social as behaviours, practices and
activities among the communities who gather on online platform to share knowledge,
opinions and information using media that is conversational. Social media is a two
communication media as compared to the traditional form of media which expedites
communication flow by encouraging feedback and contribution. Social media describes the
various new ways individuals have engaged with content on the online platform which
implies that social is user centric. This means that it facilitates in the process of commenting,
editing, sharing and creating.
2.2.1 Types of social media
Social media can be divided into five distinct categories which are used as outlets to
develop relevant content and communicate with users at global level. These categories are
media sharing, microblogging, social networking sites, social news and blogs (Chung, Lee

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and Han 2015). These social media platforms has been used by different individuals based on
the unique feature and experiences.
Social networking sites
As stated by Maier et al. (2015), social networking site is a generic to describe the
platforms responsible for linking and connecting people having similar backgrounds and
interests. It enables users to connect to each other, for instance, Facebook, MySpace,
SnapChat and Instagram are popular social networking websites where there has been
significant increase in subscription over the past decade. These platforms have few
characteristics which define them such as users can develop customized and interactive
profile that are public, private or semi-public within the given bounded system (Aichner and
Jacob 2015). On the other hand, these platforms can be considered as platforms that provides
wealth opportunities to establish a closer relationship with brands through several functions
such as plug-in applications, groups and fan pages. Surveys and studies conducted in the past
highlight that majority of the consumers buying decisions are influenced by different social
networking sites.
Social bookmarking and new sites
Reddit, Scoop.it and Digg are few of the social news and bookmarking sites which
are quite similar to each other and is one of the online community trends. These sites provide
the users with the options of controlling their new streams by allowing global users to vote on
various content so that they can gather interest content and revisit them if they wish to.
Aichner and Jacob (2015) states that individuals are able to customize, control their new
streams and special attributes of social news sites such as democracy which creates value
among the users. These provides options to different readers to interact each other and leads
to empowerment.

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Media sharing sites
Batrinca and Treleaven (2015) states that media sharing sites are those that provide
outlet of uploading storing and sharing multimedia files such as videos, music and pictures.
YouTube and Flickr are such media sharing websites which provides myriad opportunities to
the users to engage with other users by developing useful content and sharing it with others.
Instagram is a social networking site but it can be also considered as a media sharing site as
users portray their messages through images.
Blogs
Fardouly and Vartanian (2016) states that blog can be defined as online journals
maintained by group of individuals which are addressed to a large group of audience. Blogs
are effective hubs for the use of other social media marketing tools such as pictures,
hyperlink and videos which can be integrated into these platforms. It also provides variety of
social features such as blogrolls, trackbacks, subscriptions and comments.
Microblogging
As stated by Jin et al. (2016), microblogging is a real-time information network which
is quite similar to blogging which limits the post sizes to facilitate faster communication.
Twitter is one of the major microblogging websites which solves more than billion queries
every day. These microblogging sites have been providing leverage to the companies by
creating buzz among the online communities. Twitter has been used by many companies tap
into influencers, customers and business prospects which has assisted in relationship
management and achieving organizational objectives.

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2.2.2 Social media marketing
Barger, Peltier and Schultz (2016) has described social media marketing as utilization
of social media platforms as a tool for marketing and communicating with the consumers. As
stated by Ashley and Tuten (2015), it is the process through marketers and business
organizations are empowered to promote their products, services and business websites by
interacting with large communities which may not have been available through traditional
marketing channels. Traditional form of marketing have lost its effectiveness as it is
expensive and cannot be narrowed down to reach potential target consumers. However, social
media websites consists of users having similar thoughts, ideas and needs so it is easier to be
an aggregator of different social communities.
2.3 Consumer purchase intentions
Consumers are referred to as individuals that purchase services and products.
However, there is significant difference between a buyer and a consumer. Buyers are the
personnel who are acting as the institutional or industrial purchasers of products and services.
On the contrary, consumers are ones purchasing the products for ultimate use and consists of
the end users. Jeng (2016) states that businesses encounter bottleneck when the marketers are
unable to send the message effectively to the potential and existing consumers. Transparency
and accessibility of information has significant impact on the decision making process of
individuals. This is the reason it is essential to examine the friction points and hurdles faced
which has been holding prospect consumers form purchasing or repurchasing of products.

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Figure 2: Five stage decision making model
Source: (Rana and Paul 2017)
The above model have been presented to elaborate the critical aspects of buying
behaviour of consumers. The model consists of five stages .and they are problem recognition,
search of information, evaluation of alternatives, final decision and post purchase decisions
(Rana and Paul 2017). The first stage is problem recognition which initiates when the
consumers recognizes the difference between the actual and desired state of affairs which is
invoked by an external or internal trigger of need generation. When the need is generated
within the consumer, it results in search of information where the consumer evaluates the
various options available in the market (Zhang and Benyoucef 2016). This results in study of
all the possible options and judging the options that are likely to provide the best outcome as
per the requirement of the consumers. These sources can be divided into external and internal
sources. The internal search results from the previous experiences of the consumers which
their future decision making. This means that even though the consumer accumulated
information from the market but the information stored in the memory is generally used to
evaluate the different alternatives. The next stage is evaluation of the different available
alternatives in the market that would provide best possible solution as per the consumer needs
(Wang and Yu 2017).
The consumers develop criteria based on their needs which is used for examining the
choice alternatives. In order to check the reliability of information, consumers tend to verify
the products by evaluating the experience and reviews of other consumers. Individuals
require experience so that the outcome matches to their desired expectation (Alavi et al.
2016). Indirect and direct experiences act as indicators during the overall purchase process.
The presence of direct experience is less when compared to indirect experience as it may

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result in negative experience due to lack of experience in some of the products. The
consumers develops intentions, choice and attitude based on the evaluation of the products.
Zhang and Benyoucef (2016) suggested that during evaluation of products consumers
develop preferences among different brands but there are two factors that could interfere
between the purchase intension and decision. These factors are unanticipated situational
factors and attitude of others. Negative attitude of other individuals towards the purchase
intention results in readjustment of the purchase intention of the consumers. This means that
consumers are affected by the reviews and blogs of different products published on various
websites.
Unanticipated situational factors consists of factors that may alter the purchase
intention which means that preferences and purchase intention are not the reliable predictor
of understanding the purchasing behaviour of the consumers (Wang and Yu 2017). However,
these stages does not move in sequential processes but are rather cyclical where there are
loops between processes. The final stage is the post purchase decision making process where
the consumer evaluates the experiences based on the dissatisfaction or satisfaction level
(Alavi et al. 2016). This evaluates the effectiveness of the decision making process which
could results in two potential outcomes, dissonance or satisfaction. This means that if the
consumers feel dissonance then devaluation of choice occurs and consumers initiates the
process of searching and obtaining information for future purchase decisions which results in
triggering of new behaviour. On the contrary, in the other case the consumer decides to make
repeat purchase the products meets the expectation of the organization.
2.4 Social media communication and consumer purchase intention
The evaluation of the decision making process of the consumers and essence of social
media it can be stated that social media marketing is one of the critical touch point in decision

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making process. Companies are engaging on the social media platform to create awareness of
the brand, engage with the existing consumers and driving traffic to other marketing
properties. Social media has been considered as the means of providing the consumers with a
voice (Barger, Peltier and Schultz 2016). The companies are using these platforms to
compete in providing information to the consumers but the consumers have limited capacity
in grasping information. It poses challenges for different organization to develop adequate
message so that it can effectively reach the target consumers. However, as it is a two
communication medium exchanging of information without any limitation of boundaries is
one of the key roles of social media platform (Schivinski and Dabrowski 2016). This means
that marketers have less control over the content on the social media websites as consumer
reviews and discussions result in transparency of the companies.
2.5 Literature Gap
The evaluation of the past literature shows that majority of the research has focused
on consumers as a whole and there are no studies that have addressed the impact on the
millennials as consumer purchase intention depends on their attitude, the way the information
is valued and how exposure affects these particular segment of consumers. This study would
evaluate this limitation in the past researches to understand the impact of social media
communication on the millennial consumers in the market. Moreover, as majority of the
previous literatures have used a single research design, this study has proposed to use a mixed
design to address the limitation.
3.0 Research Methodology
Research methodology provides a detailed description of the instruments, frameworks
and methods that will be used to collect data and perform analysis on it. Saunders research
onion has been used to define the methods and instruments in different stages of the study. It

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has unfolded the different methods needed to effective accomplish the purpose of the
research (Kumar 2019). The objective of the research directs the research design to be used
in the research where explanation of the cause and effect relationship, description of
behaviours and prediction are the key objectives. However, in this research, the main purpose
of the research is explanation of the causal relationship between social media communication
and purchase intention of the consumers. This is the reason that a mixed method research
design will be proposed that will facilitate in conducting both quantitative and qualitative
data analysis methods. Experimental research design will be used to measure the relationship
between the two variables.
3.1 Research Philosophy
Research philosophy includes a set of ideas, values and assumptions which explains
the development of knowledge at every stage of the research. There are multiple assumptions
made in every stage of the research, even though the researchers are not aware of it.
Assumptions are made based on the encountered realities (ontological assumptions), human
knowledge (epistemological assumptions) and influence of values on the study (axiological
assumptions) (Saunders et al. 2015). Pragmatism, realism, interpretivism and positivism are
the different types of research philosophies. In this current research, pragmatism will be used
as the research philosophy as both positivist and interpretivist approach is required to address
the research questions. As per the pragmatist philosophy, there are numerous of interpreting
a research problem which results in the existence of multiple realities and ways of resolving
an issue (Silverman 2016). This means that concepts and theories are valid in pragmatist view
if it has appropriate validation through actions. In this research pragmatist view will be used
so that quantitative analysis can be performed to evaluate the cause and effect relationship
and qualitative analysis can be used to highlight the different strategies required to retain the
existing millennial consumers.

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3.2 Research Approach
Research approach is the method of collecting data and using reasoning to evaluate it.
There are two types of research approaches, deductive and inductive approach. The different
layers of research onion are interlinked with each other which means that the research
approach will be chosen based on the research philosophy. In this research, as pragmatism
has been chosen as the research philosophy, both inductive and deductive approach will be
used (Sekaran and Bougie 2016). The difference between inductive and deductive approach
is identified by the significance of a hypothesis in the research. The deductive approach is
used to test the existing theories discussed in the literature review and validate it using
statistical analysis. The inductive approach is used for developing new generalisations or
theories by observing the phenomenon. The inductive approach will be used to analyse the
qualitative data and the deductive approach will be used to identify the causal relationship
between the variables.
3.3 Research Design
Research design has been defined differently by diverse authors where majority of the
researchers consider it as the process of choosing between qualitative and quantitative data in
research. On the other hand, some has consider it is as the method of choosing data collection
method and gathering it. There are mainly three types of research designs, exploratory,
descriptive and explanatory research designs (McCusker and Gunaydin 2015). In this given
study, sequential explanatory has been chosen as the research design where initially data
analysis will be performed to generate significant findings and then the qualitative data
analysis is conducted to validate the results from the quantitative analysis. Explanatory
research design will facilitate in measuring the cause and effect relationship between social
media marketing and purchase intention of the consumers. This research design will also
facilitate in describing the phenomenon and providing valuable recommendations.

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3.4 Data collection and analysis
There are two types of data collection method, primary data collection and secondary
data collection method. In this research, primary data collection method will be used.
Quantitative and qualitative data will be collected through survey and interview respectively.
The quantitative survey questionnaire will consist of the highly structured close ended
questionnaire. The close ended questionnaire will consists of demographic questions on
nominal scale and the questions of social and purchase intention will be on 5 point Likert
scale which will be based on interval scales (Andone et al. 2016). On the other hand, the
qualitative questionnaire will be semi structured based and open ended which will derive in
depth answers on the research questions.
Data analysis will be performed using statistical analysis and coding. The quantitative
data will be analysed using inferential statistics where SPSS (statistical package for social
sciences) and Ms Excel will be used (Andone et al. 2016). The data collected will be
represented into frequency tables and charts. Regression analysis and Pearson’s correlation
method will be used to measure the relationship between social media communication and
purchase intention of millennials. Coding will be used to examine the patterns within the
qualitative data and link it with the theories.
3.5 Sampling method
In this research, the target population will be the population in China and the
sampling frame will choose population between the age group of 22-36 as the millennial fall
within this category and the sample size will be 100 respondents. The research will use
stratified random sampling to choose population and perform a cross sectional study
(Palinkas et al. 2015.). On the other hand, the qualitative data will collected from employees
working in fashion organizations in China.

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3.6 Reliability and Validity
In this reliability of the data will be measured using Cronbach’s Alpha which will
measure the internal consistency and scale reliability. It also will test the autocorrelation
within the elements in the research (Heale and Twycross 2015). On the hand, validity will be
measured by pilot testing where the questionnaire will be send to 10 people to analyse the
appropriateness of the questionnaire.
3.7 Ethical consideration
The research will adhere to the ethical guidelines and processes. The research will
also follow the data protection act of 1998 by preserving the anonymity and privacy of the
respondents. An informed consent will be generated so that the participants are aware of the
research purpose and they make voluntary contribution to the research (Quinlan et al. 2019).

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