How was social media influenced Zara market Dissertation

How was social media influenced Zara market - Dissertation Example ZARA, the brand of Inditex group, has skyrocketed for success despite its contrasting model of business than typical fashion brands. The primary and secondary research based was conducted to assess the performance of successful ZARA in social media. The results revealed that customers value social sites of ZARA at a higher rate than competitor’s brand. The dominant reasons for this following remained the value attributed to customer driven fashion which in turn results in increased customers’ love for brand. The results have also revealed the potential of another inch of success for ZARA. This can be gained by moving a mile towards sales generation impulse at social media sites. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 1. INTRODUCTION 3 1.1. BACKGROUND 3 1.2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES 8 1.3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS 8 1.4. METHODOLOGY 9 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 10 2.1. SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS ROLE IN THE BUSINESS 10 2.2. CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA 14 2.3. IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CUSTOMER 15 2.4. MARKETING AND SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY OF ZARA 16 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 20 4. DATA ANALYSIS 22 6. LIST OF REFERENCES 36 7. APPENDIX 40 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. BACKGROUND Within the technological development and its intervention in businesses, the move of social media is being defined as driver of strategic imperative. Social media has resulted in massive wipe out of distance barrier across the world. Different social mediums have been developed for different purpose such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google Plus, and so on. Each social medium is targeting different and overlapping set of user base. The core of wide range of benefits from social media remains in the increased power of customers towards business. Therefore, businesses also have to expand their presence to almost all social mediums in order to expand reach to the customers on the virtual world. Among different organizations that have received impact from the social media, the ZARA is also one o f them. ZARA is fast fashion brand of the Spanish group Inditex. ZARA contributes nearly 66.11% o the total revenue of Inditex (Inditex, 2012). ZARA foothold in different market is as follows: DIVISION MARKETS NO. OF STORE AMERICA 18 219 EUROPE 43 1296 ASIA AND REST OF WORLD 25 410 (Inditex, 2012) Other highlights about ZARA are as follows: (Inditex, 2012) ZARA has set an example for businesses as it has become multibillion dollar brand without massive advertisement like other competitors (Parekh, 2013). ZARA only employees 0.3% of its revenue on advertisement and generates its success from word of mouth (Bhagwat, 2011). This word of mouth is generated from the highly fashion sensitive customer base of ZARA which constitute following age group and characteristics: (Sardar, 2013) This word of mouth and customer reviews from the business model of ZARA in contrast to the traditional model as follows: (Sardar, 2013) The social media has also impacted ZARA like other brands in the fashio n industry. However, as a matter of fact that fashion retailer ZARA has always been in deviation to the typical trend of fashion retailer and have managed to won the game of competition, the social media standing of ZARA is also different and light than other brand (Bulman, 2010). According to the Akahoshi (2012) ZARA is a social brand for the reason that it has applied information from the social media to refine and update innovation and art in its products. The distribution of fans for ZARA for the last six months for