With a staggering 35% of the total French population using Facebook representing 23.4 Million users (1), of which 72% using on their mobile phones or tablets (2), and with at least half of them daily (3), it is no brainer to understand the increasingly important role of social media in the daily life of French consumers. It is foreseeable that French consumers are influenced by, and can influence other consumers, on their fashion purchase decisions. Using published sources of information; this paper aims to highlight the four main trends of social media that have an impact on fashion marketing in France. The first trend is about instant messaging from consumers to consumers. It is how consumers frequently and easily talk one to another about brands, products, opinions, likes and dislikes, etc. hence influencing any potential purchase decision of self or others. The second trend is about interactions between consumers and brands via social media such as Facebook or Twitter. Brands can communicate directly to consumers and consumers directly to brands, hence it is very time efficient for brands to know what consumers think, like or dislike about their products or marketing communications. For consumers, it is also satisfying to be able to voice one’s opinion and may contribute to the future success, or failure, of new products. The third trend is about brands collaborating with online communities to co-create new products. In this instant, brands will let online consumers express their desires, for example through mood boards, and then create a few samples of new products based on those desires. Online consumers can then vote for their preferred ones that will later be produced and sold online to the consumers. Such example can be found from a partnership between “La Boutonniere” website (which collects information from online communities) and “Anne Studio” (a woman fashion brand) (4). This technique can ensure a higher successful rate of new product launches. The fourth trend is about disguised advertising campaigns on social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter or YouTube. These platforms are offering to conceive and design online marketing communication campaigns for brands that fit with their target consumers’ environments on those same platforms. The aim is to communicate to the right audience without being intrusive and to blend in. These campaigns often mention the words “sponsored by…” to reveal their sources. In summary, these four social media trends illustrate the increasing important of social media in brand communications and brand building, not only from brand-to-consumer-to-brand, but also from consumer-to-consumer-to-consumer.

In recent years, the spread of social media and other digital tools and its massive acceptance have revolutionized marketing practices such as advertising and promotion (Hanna, Rohn and Crittenden, 2011) by changing the approach of communication between consumers and brands (Henkkig-Thurau et al. 2004) and the sources of information about products, services or brands for consumers (Kozinets, 1999). On the one hand, these changes have provided consumers of the additional power to influence other buyers by sharing ideas and experiences about products, services or brands (Ioanăs & Stoica 2014). On the other hand social media websites allow business to engage and interact with users by increasing sense of intimacy with consumers and building strong relationships with potential customers (Mersey et al. 2010). Therefore, the incomparable efficiency of social media has induced industry leaders to participate in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others, with the aim to succeed in online environments (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). Furthermore, brands are motivated to develop social network campaigns for gathering consumers’ personal information useful to targeting or personalising future marketing strategies (Noort, Anthenius and Verlegh, 2014). This situation have brought many authors, especially interested in luxury industry, to investigate on social media as a new way for luxury firms to communicate with consumers and influence their purchases. One of the main objectives for literature was to understand if luxury products, related to prestige, uniqueness and exclusivity values, could be express using channels accessible to everyone, such as social media. Indeed, in this era of the “democratization of luxury” (Atwal and Williams 2009), luxury brands are dealing with the challenge of using mass marketing tools and at the same time emphasizing the exclusivity dimension of their products (Okonkwo 2010). So as Hennigs states: “As the virtual environment is a place where images, videos and opinions circulate regardless of brand ownership, is it possible to keep a sense of exclusivity around a luxury brand?” (Hennigs, Wiedmann and Klarmann 2012 p. 30). In Italy, the digital population keep growing and the time spent in front of digital devices is increasing; people is becoming more familiar with e-commerce and as a consequence the communication of firms is more transparent (The Boston Consulting Group 2011). In this perspective, this paper aims to analyse the impact of social media marketing on brand equity and consumer behaviour within the Italian luxury economy. Our research has tried to understand this phenomenon from two perspectives; on the one hand, authors have observed digital marketing strategies of some luxury firms, emphasizing the way these brands use social network to promote their products, their special events or their stories. On the other hand, researchers have studied consumers’ approaches to social networks through a survey (Chisnall 1993) delivered to a sample of Italian respondents. The goal of the research is to show how social media have been used by five luxury brands and how they can influence luxury brand equity, by affecting Italian consumer behaviour. With this objective, the authors have analysed the composition of the sample that is active on social networks in order to gather useful demographic information about users. Moreover, this research has been important to discover the most popular platforms for Italian users and the response of some of the major international luxury brands in terms of contents shared on specific social networks. In addition, the survey has represented a great opportunity to understand the influence of social network on consumer behaviour, seeking to measure cognitive, affective and conative responses (Laroche and Mourali 005).

The Austrian scene differs greatly from the one in the Anglo-American region. Even the difference to the neighboring country Germany is a significant: the scene in Austria is dominated above all by fashion bloggers and to a lesser extent there are lifestyle and food bloggers; Austrians are considerably less oriented towards technical and political blogs. The most prominent and popular example probably is "Stylekingdom": this has been the most famous Austrian fashion site for quite some time and has been maintained since 2007. This page presents information about jewelry and fashion collections regularly. In addition, selected advertisements might be placed there which is of interest to companies because of the considerable reach of this site. "Mangoblüte" is one of the most popular luxury fashion blogs in Austria. Backed up with beautiful photos, the blog offers insight into a luxurious life by also displaying travelling in luxury resorts, eating in the best restaurants in the world and a private room that serves as a closet. Given the ubiquitous nature of the internet, American sites are also easily accessible to Austrians. One famous example is the site "The Style Rookie" which is mainly devoted to fashion. In the presentation additional examples will be presented and some comparisons will be undertaken

In recent years, utilization of social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for text, image, and video sharing in Jakarta, Indonesia, is becoming very popular. Many fashionistas - artist, singer, designer, and fashion blogger - take advantage of SNS to share what they are doing, what they are wearing, and even their personal life. Apparently, their glamorous life style has been attracting million of followers. High appreciation toward their posts in SNS is given by clicking ‘likes’ symbol as well as positive comments from the followers. This paper provides an overview of social network activity in Jakarta for promoting fashion brand. A netnographic approach was conducted to observe and analyze SNS’ content, which consists of photos, texts and hashtags, and followers’ comments. Since SNS’ account owner could have dual roles, i.e. as consumer and supplier, we categorize two types of account owner. First, fashionistas who launch personal account and, at the same time, have collaboration with fashion brand or have their own clothing line; and second, apparel companies who promote their product through SNS. We noted that apparel companies utilize SNS to launch new fashion products and to give detail information, which include photos, products size, and how to purchase, which is simply a business as usual. In the other hand, fashionista’s shared their personal style, favorite brand and designer, and fashion tips for the followers, such as mix and match fashion and where to purchase. Personal style is presented by wearing an outfit for a commercial events, e.g. product launching, gala show, etc.; and for daily use, e.g. fashion shopping, hang out with friend, and travelling. Fashionistas usually mention the brand or the designer of clothing, shoes, and bag that they wear in the photo with good recommendation, thus a positive electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) is conveyed to the followers instantaneously. Even though fashionistas’ activity is actually part of marketing practice that promote fashion brand, personal approach through their shared life style is obviously more appealing rather than direct promotion activity by apparel companies. It is proven by number of followers, likes, and comment from fashionistas’ followers which is greater than apparel companies. As the similarity, both apparel companies and fashionistas give knowledge sharing about fashion to the followers, and utilize commenting section to interact with them. In turn, e-WOM is also exchanged through discussion among followers on the commenting section; and the ability of followers to share content with other users. Then, mentioning hashtags – a number sign character (#) followed by a word or phrase related to the topic - is strengthen e-WOM because hashtags is clickable and searchable for SNS users.

This talk is based on research with my colleagues Anamaria Berea and Bill Rand at the University of Maryland's Center for Complexity in Business. We all know that fashions come and go. A fashion may be "hot" one year, copied by everybody the next year, and then gone soon after. Why is that? To help answer the question, we build a mathematical model that describes fashion adoption behavior. Based on a small set of reasonable assumptions, derivations using differential equations show the inevitability of a fashion rising and then falling. The mechanism of the model is based on the existence of an "in group" and an "out group." The in group may be thought of as the rich, celebrities, etc. When a fashion gets a foothold among the in group it is more attractive to both the in group and the out group. At that point the out group starts to adopt the fashion, and as a result the in group is less interested in it. Fewer in group members now adopt the fashion, and eventually even the out group finds it less attractive, because the fashion is less popular among the in group. Thus the adoption curve goes up, and then goes down, for both the in group and the out group. We also show, using derivations, that the in group peak must occur before the out group peak. We further examine this scenario using agent-based models, to explore the conditions that affect how quickly all of this happens. Our conclusion is that the ups and downs of fashion may not just be based on whimsy. They may result instead from rational decisions by customers seeking to identify with the in group.

The Salvatore Ferragamo Company, founded in 1938 by Salvatore Ferragamo in Florence, is very well known for creation and production of ladies shoes but has a leading role in the whole international luxury market. The company history is ancient and started before 1927, when Salvatore Ferragamo, leaving California, came back to Italy and got to Florence. At that time, Salvatore Ferragamo was already famous in the United States for having created the craftmade footwear for the American actresses. Called ‘The shoemaker of the stars’, Salvatore Ferragamo, very well known at that time, decided to come back to Italy to live and work in Florence , because of its great artistic and handicraft tradition. Since the beginning, the founder was significantly inspired in his work by the local culture. Palazzo Spini-Feroni, which is the company headquarters, is also a symbol of the city history and of the Italian traditional lifestyle. Since the founder’s death in 1960, Salvatore Ferragamo’s wife, Wanda Miletti Ferragamo, and their six children, headed the company. They have extended the Company business getting to complete collections lines either for men and women from “head to toe”, enhancing the distribution in more than 90 countries. The Company is nowadays one of the most important luxury group in the world, resulting from a perfect combination of tradition and innovation, of territorial anchorage and global projection, of handmade craftsmanship and ability to communicate and market-making, of technology and entrepreneurship. The values the founder believed in and the Company heritage, testified by the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo activities, further of being very important at intellectual and social level for Italian culture, represent an important asset of the brand identity. This is the ground on which it has worth to establish the brand’s challenges since the past and it is possible going onwards. This is a perfect example of a “Renaissance” case in fashion and marketing field.