MKT301: Social Media's Influence on Consumer Behavior - Zara

This essay explores how Zara utilizes social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to influence consumer behavior. It examines Zara's brand image building, promotion of new collections, and data gathering for market trends. The essay highlights Zara's engagement strategies on each platform, including visual content, customer conversations, and addressing consumer queries. It also discusses the impact of negative publicity and consumer activism on Zara's social media presence and overall brand perception, referencing a case of poor working conditions and its repercussions on social media. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of social media for brand promotion and the challenges of managing negative news in the fast-paced digital environment.

Consumer Behavior

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In the modern day business, social media is playing a very important role in their business
activities. The most important influence of social media is on the consumer’s behaviour. It
can be understood by the fact that there are larger numbers of people that are active on the
social media sites hence it is essential for the companies to have attractive social media plan.
This will help in attracting digital migrant and Digital natives. There are various social media
sites which have been used by different companies for changing their consumer’s behaviour
(Gamboa and Goncalves, 2014). Since the consumers are always interested on the
information that is shared by the firm hence it is essential that company chooses the best of
contents to promote their business. Consumers are making their decisions like the pre or post
purchase based on the data that is available on the online platforms. Social media is an
important platform where promoting rights, interests and consciousness can be easily done. In
this essay the Zara’s activities on Social media has been illustrated.
Fashion Industry is taking use of the social media sites so as to promote their collections and
hence is highly active on these sites. The same is the case with Zara which uses various social
media sites for different kinds of activities. The three most common social media sites which
company uses are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The most basic use of social media sites
done by Zara is to build their brand image at the same time promote the new collections that
have launched in the market. In the brand management any social media marketing plays a
very crucial role.
In the modern age of technology since the companies are adopting data driven approach
hence social media is acting a crucial platform from where data can be gathered regarding the
demands of the markets as well as the trends that is followed within the organisation. In the
larger domain it can also be utilised for collecting data with the help of reviews (Tuten and
Solomon, 2017). With the increase in online shopping trends it has become easier for the
company to promote through social media sites. This is illustrated by the fact that Zara shares
the link on the social media sites regarding their new collection which direct the consumers
towards their e-commerce page (Alalwan, et. al., 2017).
Zara takes use of Facebook for different type of operations. This can be understood by the
fact that Zara added more than million followers on their Facebook page. This made it one of
the most successful fashion retail brands having more than 26.4 million followers. It has
posted on Facebook for around 497 times having. More than 70% of their videos and photos
were accounted for just over 20% of the content. The major use of Facebook page was to

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show the collection that was new and trending. Zara’s visual content includes lookbook-style
pictures. This is because of the fact that they understands that their pictures having the cloth
collection will do the talking for them (Kumar, et. al., 2016). Their talking is done by the
engagement that is done through shares and likes.
Zara promoted their collection more than 236 times around 143 of them were pictures. The
organic post containing photos managed to achieve a higher overall engagement as compared
to promoted posts. This might be the reason why Zara chose to promote 87 videos from the
total of 126. These videos managed to attract lot of consumers which is illustrated by the fact
that it engaged more than 6 million views. They have also utilised Facebook for
conversations with clients. This is illustrated by the fact that Zara participated in more than
255 user conversations in which they received a positive feedback from around 81% of the
total audience (Ryan, Peruta and Chouman, 2013).
Zara also uses another big social media site Twitter for engaging with consumers. Zara is
having more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter. Around 79,026 followers just got added to
their account in the last year. The brand page noticed an increase of around 6.5% in their fans
tally. Zara’s Twitter strategy revolves around having regular communication with their base
clients. They also use their Twitter profile to answer the concerns and queries that gets
generated form clients. This helps them in having a proactive conversation with their clients.
On an average, it has been seen that Zara tweets more than 52 times a day out of which most
of their tweets (approx. 98%) are answers to any queries (Ravi, 2018). Twitter acts an
excellent place where they can gather details regarding the demands of their consumers. Zara
answered approx. 10,937 tweets against the total of 113,889. This makes their response rate
to 9.6%. From the data it is also seen that Zara on an average replies in 14-15 hours and
according to analytics, the highest frequency is in between 4am to 1 pm (Ravi, 2018). The
major tweets of their clients are regarding product damages, delayed deliveries, misplacement
or about the bad services provided by Zara (Lam, Yeung and Cheng, 2016). It also gets
external help from the profile influencers who are already big stars and is having more than
million followers.
Apart from this Zara also takes uses of Instagram as a social site. The type of social media
marketing Zara does Instagram acts a perfect platform. Zara has more than 25 million
followers on this platform of which 8.5 million were added just last year. In all its
competitors it is having the highest growth rate of 56% among all its competitors. They

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posted around 469 posts out of which 149 were videos and 340 were pictures and around 149
were videos. In Instagram they run their promotional campaigns posts which have received
over million likes. There are many influencers that are also present on Instagram and they are
also adding to their promotions. This also includes launching of new merchandises.
All these strategies help Zara in becoming the leaders among their rivals. It can be understood
by the fact that there are many people who are following Zara at different social media
platforms. This would help the company in reaching to the destinations where it is not present
physically. Social media has become an excellent place for brand promotion (Kim and Ko,
2012). One of the greatest benefits of using social media campaigns is that it makes the
marketing campaign unique and helps the brand in creating the buzz in the market in a very
short period of time. Since Zara is following fast fashion trends hence taking use of social
media can be highly beneficial. This can be understood by the fact that the nature of the
social media sites is that it spreads news like a wildfire (Alalwan, et. al., 2016). This
sometimes turns to be negative as the company had to look about the negative news that can
get spread at such platforms.
Zara owner Inditex faced a financial penalty over the issue of poor working condition in
Brazil. The government’s labour ministry accused it for widespread employment abuses in
supply chain. Since 2012, more than 7000 employees of the company were mistreated. The
poor safety major was noticed at 67 factories. This is evident from the fact that more than 84
accidents were registered as well as 22 cases of over time employment. It was also found that
one of its workers who were rescued was only 14 years old (The Guardian, 2015). The child
labour acquisition on it has forced the company to have a change in their working condition.
This incident raised many question on Zara way of working and its organisational culture.
Social media of Brazil reacted heavily on this report. Many of the ministers from Brazil
heavily criticised the company on various social media platforms. It was the result of such
mass protest that it had to close 31 companies of it.

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REFERENCES
Gamboa, A.M. and Goncalves, H.M., 2014. Customer loyalty through social networks:
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Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. Sage.
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to sale: The effects of firm-generated content in social media on customer behavior. Journal
of Marketing, 80(1), pp.7-25.
Alalwan, A.A., Rana, N.P., Dwivedi, Y.K. and Algharabat, R., 2017. Social media in
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Ravi, K., (2018) How Zara Built an Engaging Brand on Social Media. [Online]. Available at:
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The Guardian, (2015) Zara owner Inditex faces fines in Brazil over poor working conditions
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owner-inditex-fines-brazil-working-conditions-claim. [Accessed on: 07 June 2018].