Use of Social Media in Small Businesses to Ensure Successful Development of Relationship Marketing in the Fashion Industry.

Use of Social Media in Small Businesses to Ensure Successful Development of Relationship Marketing in the Fashion Industry.

Introduction

Research Topic

The fashion industry is a competitive business, therefore being in the industry requires one to be on-trend. However, due to evolution in the industry, many trends are changing, and acquiring new customers is one of the most challenging and expensive tasks. It is evident that earning a possible customer’s attention, making a convincing argument, and lastly, enabling the additional sale can add up to very high expenses when each step is taken into consideration. Thus, the development of relationship marketing is significant, especially in small businesses, to keep up with the stiff competition. Social media platforms have been recognized as the foundation of many fashion house’s marketing strategies. Smart businesses need to identify just how widespread social media exists in their buyer base to keep up with the competition. In 2019, social media users were found to be 3.48 billion, where 7.6 million averaged to active accounts. Moreover, a user uses an average of 142 minutes in a day to go through different social media platforms. This time is quite plenty for businesses to catch an eye for a potential customer in their brand. The role of social media in the fashion industry continues to be stronger as each year passes by. As many people continue to venture into social media, it is essential for small businesses to join different popular social media platforms to stay competitive and successful.

Social Media and Relationship Marketing Background

The first step to understanding this phenomenon is to understand the importance of social media in small businesses in the fashion industry. Everyone recognizes that the use of social media is very beneficial in the growth of a fashion business. Through social media, a business will be able to create its brand image and increase customer awareness. Moreover, a business will be able to connect with customers. Since the aim of the use of social media is to close the gap between the brand and the customers. Also, it will allow businesses to advertise new products, developments, offers, and sales to targeted customers as soon as they develop. Furthermore, small businesses in the fashion industry will be able to create targeted advertisements through social media to a specific demographic. Therefore, a small business can use social media appropriately to increase its growth and recognition. A business must post regularly, post varied content, pay attention to various features, create a consistent marketing message, and engage with customers to build its brand. This way, the use of social media will be quite useful in the development of relationship marketing in the fashion industry.

According to research, there exist many barriers to build a long-term and stable relationship with customers in the fashion industry. Moreover, due to the current existence of the internet, it is easy to create a customer relationship with a large crowd but very difficult to reach a single customer. Since the web grows day by day all over the world, it is characterized by fast growth and several new ways of creating relations in the area around business-to-customer markets. It is evident that the online platform has a bright future, and its growth is continuous. Therefore, this is an open opportunity for businesses to venture into social media to develop relationship marketing. Relationship marketing is beneficial to small businesses because it fosters the relationship between the business and the customers, therefore assuring mutual benefit for both the customers and businesses. Social media helps businesses to recollect their core values, implement their marketing strategies, and reconnect with their customers. The success and durability of the fashion business are based on a strong relationship with their clients, therefore ensuring that your customers are satisfied is one of the factors of maintaining customers. It is very crucial to use the internet in developing business-customer relationships.

Research Objectives and Questions

To understand the use of social media to develop relationship marketing, we must look at successful businesses that are using social media platforms. Hence, our main research question concentrates on business people who use social media in the fashion industry to improve their relationship with customers. We aim to answer the research question by identifying these business people who will give us their views on the best social media platforms that assist in the development of relationship marketing. In our second research question, we look into the efficiency of social media platforms in guaranteeing the growth of the business-customer relationship. Here, we will research on businesses that have been successful in the development of their customer relationship. We will base our study on Dior and Burberry, two successful fashion brands in America. Here we will be able to determine how effective the use of social media has been in the development of relationship marketing in the two industries. Our third research question will concentrate on how businesses implement the use of social to develop their relationship with consumers. Here, we will also look at how Dior and Burberry used social media to establish a strong customer base. We will also research on how social media can be improved in the future so that small businesses can find it easier to relate with their clients.

To answer our research questions, we analyze and review existing literature and recommend several theories. We use quantitative methods in data analysis based on the top knowledge of the Dior and Burberry fashion houses. We implement a regression analysis to test whether social media platforms have an impact on relationship marketing in the fashion industry. This information is supported by other scholarly studies conducted before mainly on the development of relationship marketing through social media platforms. We also do interviews with both the CEOs of Dior and Burberry to find out how effective social media has been to their companies. We also conducted interviews with their brand ambassadors and various employees in the companies. We made multiple observations in our stay over the companies that contributed to answering our research questions. Lastly, we used Qualtrics to conduct our survey and collect data from various online fashion platforms. From these platforms, we can determine whether their customer base is strong or weak and what criteria they use to attract customers. We argue that it is essential to use social media platforms in growing customer relationships with businesses and expect to provide helpful business insights. We also encourage further research to be conducted on the area, as we believe that social media is a growing platform hence has an ever-increasing future potential.

Key Findings

According to other research, we found that 13% of internet users are interested in the fashion industry. These users have purchased clothes in the last month and are interested in keeping up with the latest fashion trends. Therefore, fashion businesses targeting this group have to develop a deep understanding of all their interests from what they do, to why and how they do it. In line with the research, 85% of fashionistas say that articulating themselves is an important reason to use social media, hence these group is likely to stand out in a crowd. Therefore, they are the perfect people to target for brands when looking for customers. Small businesses looking to grow their relationship marketing can use these internet users to develop their brand through socializing appropriately and effectively. Interestingly, in analyzing the role of social media, we found out that it is an essential variable in terms of developing relationship marketing as well as growing a business brand. Through this growth, a small business can maintain a strong relationship with its clientele and improve. It’s brand successful by beating competition, which is evident in the fashion industry. Many researchers found mixed results on the use of social in growing customer relationships.

In the next chapter, the Literature review, we review the vast existing literature on the usage of social media in the development of relationship marketing by concentrating on the determinants of practical usage of social media. We will develop a coherent argument and structure that will lead to the justification of our study, thus conclude by suggesting our hypotheses. In the third chapter, Methodology. We will describe the methods used to conduct our research to allow our readers to gain viability. We will explain the variables, samples, and analyses employed. We will also conclude on the best methodology used to answer our objectives and research questions. In the next chapter, we will present our results and relate them to the existing literature review. We will also suggest how our results are unique in comparison with other studies that have been conducted. In the fifth chapter, we will conclude our findings and draw the consequences of our research to the relationship marketing literature and the social media platforms. We will complete the section by giving explained details on the limitations of the study and giving suggestions on future research areas. In our final chapter, conclusion, we will state our overall findings, then discuss and interpret their meaning. This chapter will also consist of recommendations.