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STRATEGIC ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA – PERSPECTIVES FROM THE LUXURY FASHION INDUSTRY
Social media have altered the communication landscape and significantly impacted brand communications in the luxury fashion industry. Research suggests that with the rise of social media, brand communication has been democratised, and the power has shifted from those in marketing to the individuals and communities that create and consume content, redistributing it across a variety of channels (Kozinets, Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010; Kumar & Sundaram, 2012). Yet the implications of social media are still largely unknown among practitioners and managers. Moreover, there is a lack of effective frameworks for developing, analysing and comparing social-media strategies (Effing & Spil, 2016). Scholars have just started giving their attention to the subject of ‘social-media strategy’ as such, highlighting a gap in our knowledge, which this study seeks to address. The aim of this research is to understand the role of social media as a strategic brand-communications tool in the luxury fashion industry. Firstly, the main theoretical contribution is the development of a conceptual framework that enables an understanding, explanation and description of the process of building a social-media strategy. There has been a call for this type of research from a managerial perspective, across multiple platforms and objectives, and this work provides much-needed insights. Secondly, the findings provide valuable managerial insights. The conceptual framework emerging from this research is a managerial tool that can be used to tackle the process of building a social-media strategy and to identify its key elements. In particular, the framework can be deployed to guide and evaluate the process of creating a social-media strategy. With the help of the framework, managers can harness their resources successfully and identify the factors that need to be considered. Moreover, the framework aims to guide managerial action towards a sustainable social-media approach that helps to build competitive advantage for global luxury fashion brands in the longer term.
