SME fashion brands and social media marketing: From strategies to actions

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.