Role of Social Media Marketing in helping Luxury Fashion Brands to achieve Competitive Advantage: Case Study of UK Fashion Industry

By

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to sincerely thank my friends, family and colleagues for the endless understanding, guidance and patience, and most importantly, the support and friendship during my studies. The mentorship of these people has been paramount in facilitating me a well-formed experience which has always provided unswerving guide in achieving my goals. They encouraged me to go further with all my projects and helped me groom into an independent thinker and a good student. Finally, and most importantly, I extend sincere thanks to my family members, who provided utmost care and all the strength and encouragement. My faith and ambition has become stronger due to the prayers of my family who tolerated my temper and complains with patience. Without this unending support and encouragement, the completion of this enormous research work would not have been possible.

DECLARATION

I, hereby declare that this dissertation presents my own unaided effort and contains original work. Moreover, it is no illustration or supporting of University's opinions.

Name:Date:

ABSTRACT

In the current era, social media has turned into an omnipresent and significant phenomenon for social networking and apportioning of content. Still, the content that is brought forth through these websites continues to be undeveloped for the most part. Social media brings forth colossal riches of real-time capacity at an unremitting value. This dissertation deals with the role of social media marketing in helping luxury fashion brands to achieve competitive advantage. The design of the research will involve the use of qualitative research approach which is broad in nature of coverage thus ensuring that all sections of the research are covered comprehensibly.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTII

DECLARATIONIII

ABSTRACTIV

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Problem Statement1

Background1

Aims and Objectives3

Research Questions4

Electronic Database Searches4

Learning Process4

Theoretical Framework5

Chapter I: Introduction5

Chapter II: Review of Literature6

Chapter III: Methodology6

Chapter IV: Critical Analysis and Discussion6

Chapter V: Conclusion6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW7

Integrated Marketing Communication7

Social Media Usage among Consumers13

Social Media Usage among Companies15

Clothing as a Basic Human Need18

The UK Fashion Industry19

Social Media and Business Marketing20

Challenges Of Social Media Marketing21

Being relevant21

Management of comprehension21

Boom of social software and collaboration solutions22

Difficulties to consolidate the monitoring indicators22

Marketing Strategies in the Fashion Industry23

Product25

Price26

Place26

Promotion26

TV advertisements27

Publication27

Radio28

Transit: Bus, Bus Stop, Billboards, Subway28

Social media29

Sponsoring Events29

Billboards29

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY31

The Research Function31

Research Design31

Research Plan32

Qualitative Research33

Role of the Researcher33

CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION35

Results and Discussion35

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION41

REFERENCES43

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The current study deals with the role of social media marketing in helping luxury fashion brands to achieve competitive advantage. This chapter gives a description of the background, aims, objectives and chapter layout on which the entire dissertation is based.

Problem Statement

In any research study, the statement of problems pertains to the short description of the issues which require being addressed through a problem solving team and is presented for the solution of the existing problems and issues. Similarly, the current study will aim upon discussing the role of social media marketing in helping luxury fashion brands to achieve competitive advantage.

Background

In the current era, social media has turned into an omnipresent and significant phenomenon for social networking and apportioning ...