Title: SME fashion brands and social media marketing: from strategies to actions

Authors: Artha Sejati Ananda; Ángel Hernández-García; Lucio Lamberti

Addresses: Departamento de Ingeniería de Organización de Empresas y Estadística, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Avenida Complutense, 30, Madrid, Spain; Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale, Politecnico di Milano, Via Lambruschini 4/b, Milan, Italy ' Departamento de Ingeniería de Organización de Empresas y Estadística, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Avenida Complutense, 30, Madrid, Spain ' Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale, Politecnico di Milano, Via Lambruschini 4/b, Milan, Italy

Abstract: Fashion industry, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), is an important contributor to European economy. This study analyses data from six Spanish and Italian SME fashion companies' in order to understand how fashion brands implement their social media marketing strategies. The research includes a qualitative study, combined with a content analysis of brands' posts on their Facebook brand-pages. The results suggest that perceived importance of social media as part of corporate marketing strategy is the main driver for brands' social media marketing implementation, and that brand awareness is the main objective SMEs would like to achieve. The three Spanish brands and one Italian brand appear to take a transactional marketing approach, while the other two Italian brands adopt a hybrid transactional/relational approach. SMEs focus primarily on representation actions; more specifically, promotion and sales.

Keywords: social media; social media marketing; SMM; marketing strategy; social media marketing activities; social media marketing actions; web-based communities; brand communities; SME fashion brands.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2017.089350

International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2017 Vol.13 No.4, pp.468 - 498

Received: 28 Apr 2016
Accepted: 24 Jul 2017
Published online: 19 Jan 2018 *

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