Omnipresence Of Online Social Media In The Fashion Industry

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The omnipresence of online social networks in today’s world has reversed the traditional ‘push-pull’ marketing model that fashion retailers were previously accustomed too. Social networks have prominently impacted the fashion industry by creating a two-way interactivity between companies and consumers and enabling brands to reach customers on a global level at a minimal cost (Lee, 2009). Blogs, virtual communities and online social networking sites have empowered ‘regular’ people from all over the world by providing them with a voice that has the potential to impact other millions of consumers’ purchase decisions (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). According to a recent report by the Search Engine Journal, 72% of all Internet users now connect through social media, with 23% of facebook users accessing their page at least five times a day (Jones, 2014). This reflects the prominent place social media has taken in people’s daily lives, hence explaining why 86% of marketers in 2013 indicated placing a very high value on social media for their business (Stelzner, 2013). According to Nielson, a leading global information and measurement company, approximately 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision (Nielson, 2013). As a matter of fact, one-third of shoppers surveyed in a study by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) revealed that a brand or product was discovered through social media and that the later influenced their opinions during the buying process (Quinn, 2013) and 72% of consumers trust online recommendations as much as real-world personal recommendations (Olenski, 2012).
Despite the statistics and undeniable mounting presence of social media in consumers’ lives, academic research to this date has on...

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...he Harvard Business Review, 53% of consumers on Twitter recommend companies or products in their tweets (Allen, 2013). It was additionally found that 87% of online fashion conversation takes place on Twitter (Bloom, 2013). Instagram has been chosen because of its recent emergence and surging popularity. After growing at an exponential rate since its creation in 2010, Instagram with 90 million monthly users eagerly sharing photos, has led to social media conversations increasingly shifting from text to pictures (Bayless, 2013). Lastly, fashion blogs were chosen because the number of women who read blogs on a daily basis has grown 300% in the past four year and 44% of women claim that their the favorite bloggers influence their purchase decision (Olenski, 2012). It is also of a special interest to the author of this thesis, who actively follows multiple fashion blogs.

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