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Social Media Marketing Strategy – A Case Study

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Social Media Marketing Strategy – A Case Study of an
Italian SME Fashion Brand

Artha Sejati Ananda (arthasejati.ananda@polimi.it; aananda@tige.ior.etsit.upm.es)

Politecnico di Milano
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Lucio Lamberti
Politecnico di Milano

Ángel Hernández-García
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Abstract
Industries have been comfortable in incorporating social media as part of their marketing
strategy tools. The fashion industry is not an exception. Italy has been known as a major
center of the European fashion industry, with SMEs playing an important role in this
sector. Adopting an exploratory approach, we present a single case study of how an Italian
SME luxury fashion brand conducts and implements its social media marketing strategy.
The research methodology mixes qualitative and quantitative approaches, including a
survey and Facebook and Twitter content analysis, respectively. The work is based on a
conceptual framework on social media marketing strategy synthesized from extensive
social media marketing literature. Our findings suggest that most strategic actions
implemented focus on promotion and sales process marketing activities. Other quite
significant actions relate to company image and values content delivery, as well as
engaging key influencers or personalities as means to influence customer. This paper
provides valuable theoretical and empirical initial insight for framing social media
marketing strategies and their actions. This work also sets the basis for future venues on
measurements of social media impact on marketing outcomes.

Keywords: Social media marketing, Marketing strategy, Social media marketing action,
Fashion brand, SME fashion, Luxury fashion

1. Introduction
It is safe to say that industries are now comfortable with using social media as part of
their marketing strategy. Fashion industry is not an exception to this. Social media have
been considered as a perfect tool for fashion brands to visualize their image and engage
their customers online (McCrea, 2013), and therefore the adoption and use of it among
fashion companies or brands have become ubiquitous.
Despite its fast catching up, little is known at an academic level about the specificities
of fashion industry when approaching social media marketing (SMM) strategies.
Moreover there is still very limited availability on scholarly works on SMM usage among
SME fashion industry, and more specifically within the SME luxury fashion sector. The

1
dominant current studies of SMM adoption and strategy focus on internationalized large
luxury fashion brands –e.g., Phan et al. (2011), Kontu and Vecchi, (2014) or Ng (2014),
who assess SMM usage among brands such as Burberry, Calvin Klein, DKNY or Coach.
Italy has been known as a major center of the European fashion industry and it has
many worldwide leading brands in luxury fashion, e.g. Gucci, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana,
to mention some of them. In Europe, fashion is a vibrant industry, and also an important
contributor to the European Union (EU) economy. Small and Medium Enterprises
(SMEs) have made up a major part in the European fashion industry (EU, 2012).
SMEs are an important player in Italian industry. The success of the “Made in Italy”
during the 80’s and 90’s in the international markets is mainly based on SMEs (Zanni,
2014). This is mainly due to the role of the industrial districts of local networks of SMEs
which represent the specific Italian model for economic development, and which
distinguishes Italy from other countries. These industrial district products dominate the
Italian fashion industry (Chiarvesio et al., 2004). Within the luxury segment, the Italian
luxury goods industry is based on local craftsmanship, and many of the vertically
integrated brands or companies started from the traditional small-business structure with
the support of local artisans (Lennon, 2010).
This work is seeking to explore how European fashion brands use social media to
develop and implement their marketing strategy in various social media platforms, in
particular among the SMEs of the industry. As such, by chosing an Italian SME fashion
brand as an example of European fashion brand, our research questions in this paper are:
1. How is the SMM strategy (in accordance with plans, decision, objectives, and
actions) of a SME luxury fashion brand?
2. What are the main SMM strategic actions employed by a SME luxury fashion
brand?
Adopting an exploratory approach, we present a single case study of an Italian SME
luxury fashion brand as an example to deepen our understanding on how fashion brands
implement their SMM strategy and translate them into strategic actions in various social
media platforms. For the purpose of our research, we underline that the scope of the
fashion industry we refer to here covers industry in apparel and clothing fashion, as well
as associated accessories.
In this paper, we explore Brand X, which is a Florence-based SME company that
produces and markets high-end luxurious leather bag and accessories. This research is
part of an ongoing research. We expect that our work will foster further studies that
examine whether the SMM strategy and actions employed by SME fashion brands, and
on larger scale the European fashion brands, are resulting in their expected marketing
outcomes.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2 offers a review of the literature
covering SMM strategy, the current state of the art of the use and adoption of SMM in
the fashion industry, and the conceptual framework for this research. Section 3 explains
the research methodology conducted for this paper. Section 4 presents the results of the
empirical study. Section 5 discusses the findings from the research. Finally, Section 6
presents the concluding remarks, the main implications for academics and managers, and
suggests avenues of future research.

2. Theoretical Background
2.1. Social Media Marketing Strategy
Despite the high number of articles from practitioners, there are still limited sources of
scholarly works on corporate SMM in general, and SMM strategy in particular –examples
of such existing literature are Weinberg and Pehlivan, (2011) or Kenneway and Rapple
2
(2012), amongst others. Summarizing the literature on general marketing strategy, digital
or internet-enabled marketing and social media/web 2.0 marketing, social media
marketing strategy (SMMS) is an integrated means and set of actions by which a company
or organization expects to achieve its marketing objectives and meet the requirements of
its target market through the use of social media tools and capabilities. Basically, SMMS
deals with plans and decisions around the firms’ target market, marketing mix, and social
media mix. In this sense, social media marketing strategic actions (SMMA) comprise the
marketing actions, activities, behaviors or tactics within the social media mix for a given
SMMS. Although social media as tools are ubiquitous nowadays within marketers’ world,
integrating social media into the marketing mix is still an issue among brands (Niessing,
2014).
Among the limited available studies related with SMMS, Mergel (2013) classifies
social media tactics based on observed social media adoption in public service sector.
Another example is the study by Constantinides (2009), who proposes a classification of
the role of social media applications, based on how corporations can use social media as
part of their marketing strategy tools portfolio. His approach builds on the types of social
media applications and their relation to marketing objectives. In the specific area of
SMMS among SMEs, Pentina and Koh (2012) explore the emerging patterns and develop
a taxonomy of SMMS in general SMEs based on cluster analysis of SMM tool and usage
(reason or objective, employed tactic, and benefit). However, these studies fall short on
the analysis of the different social media strategic actions implemented by companies.

2.2. Fashion Industry and Social Media Marketing

In the past, the fashion industry was commonly defined as a small subsection of the
clothing industry; it was formerly simply associated to haute couture or the elite design
elements of fashion (Pratt et al., 2012). Haute couture literally translates to “fine sewing”,
which means very high-quality, custom made clothing (Solomon & Rabolt, 2009).
A slightly wider definition of luxury has often been used to indicate a common
concern of the horizontal marketing of goods having design as the premium factor, while
still focusing on goods that have very high selling price to manufacturing cost ratio.
Nueno and Quelch (1998) highlight that the idea of luxury does not merely apply to
premium priced products; it encompasses a set of distinctive characteristics, namely
consistent delivery of premium quality, heritage of craftsmanship, recognizable style and
design, exclusivity, emotional appeal, global brand reputation, association with a country
of origin, presence of elements of uniqueness and lifestyle of the creator. Newer terms of
luxury define the category from the point of view of the consumer, focusing on the
experience of luxury embodied in the goods and services they buy, not in ownership or
possession itself (Brun et al., 2008).
The increasing use of social media as a marketing tool has affected the fashion and
luxury goods industries as well. Earlier views of social media may dilute the luxury
brands’ equity through mass accessability of social media may have hampered luxury
brands to embrace SMM. Today, it seems that the desired brand image cannot be
achieved by relying on one-way communication only, but requires engaging in social
media and incorporating consumers (Phan et al., 2011). The luxury industry has gradually
recognized the importance of using the Internet and social media.
However, despite the increasing and generalized use of SMM and the raising interest
of research in the relations betwen social media and consumer behavior, little scholarly
works analyze the fashion sector. Besides, there is still a dearth of scholarly sources
existence in the subject of marketing strategy perspective within this sector. Within the
limited available works, luxury fashion brands have attracted the most part of scholars in
3
the social media marketing field. For instance, Kim and Ko (2010) present a study on the
impact of social media marketing of luxury brands on customer relationship and purchase
intention. Some other research studies social media adoption by the luxury fashion
brands; for example, Hansen (2011) presents a research on interactive online and social
media adoption among luxury fashion brands, and Phan et al. (2011) conduct a case study
on social media and luxury brand management focused on Burberry, which was among
the first luxury brands that embraced social media. In the specific studies of SMM
activities, most scholar works examine large global luxury fashion brands –e.g., Kontu
and Vecchi (2014), or Ng (2014). There is little to no available research exploring the
strategic use of SMM among SME fashion brands, in particular within the luxury SMEs.

2.3. Research Conceptual Framework

This paper is a working research and the concepts are based on our previously developed
conceptual framework (Ananda et al., 2014). The framework has been developed from
synthesis of theories, concepts and best practices on SMM and SMMS literature. This
framework enables the mapping of actions to the different SMMS (i.e., strategic plans,
decisions, objectives, etc.) in which the actions are subsumed. The framework is mainly
derived from Constantinides’ (2009; 2014) and Mergel’s (2013) classifications, as well
as Andzulis (2012), Saravanakumar and SuganthaLakshmi (2012), Pentina and Koh
(2012), and Lorenzo-Romero et al. (2013).
The framework proposes ten categories of SMM activities:
1. Public relations (PR).
2. Promotion process.
3. Engaging online opinion leaders, key influencers, and personalities as a means
to influence customer.
4. Personalizing customer experience and customization of products.
5. Engaging the customer as creator of product reviews, advertising concepts
and as co-producer or as source of innovation.
6. Engaging customers to participate in call to action for participatory
promotion.
7. Engaging with competitors in social media.
8. Customer support.
9. Social media mix: selection of social media platforms’ features.
10. Market intelligence.
The framework is a general framework for SMMS, and our research explores the
applicability of this framework in the fashion industry, especially in luxury fashion SMEs.
Building on this framework, we conducted a literature review on the strategic actions
taken by companies in general sectors related with their SMM use and implementation,
focusing in business to consumer (B2C) companies. The review was undertaken on
conceptual, empirical works, and best practices sources. Table 1 below lists the SMM
actions we observed within each category.

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 Table 1 – Social Media Marketing Strategy Activities
SMM Activities
Main References
Categories Examples of Strategic Actions
 Providing or sharing corporate
website or a content link in
social media
 Publishing company’s contents
on results/innovation/
news/success stories
Ascend2 (2013);
 Posting contents on customer
Andzulis et al.
appreciation (e.g. thanking and
(2012);
Public greeting)
Page (2014);
Relations  Casual socialization and greeting
Phan et al. (2011);
contents
He et al. (2013);
 Integrating application or posting
Ahn and Kim
content that is not directly related
(2013)
to the brands field of expertise
but is associated with brand’s
Representation
value
 Promoting or inviting customers
to offline events

 Social shopping: Product

promotion or providing Saravanakumar
electronic product catalog and
 Exclusive preview to product SuganthaLakshmi
promotional campaign (2012);
Promotion &
 Offer location-specific deals Curran et al.
sales process
 Live-streaming and reporting (2011);
 Rewarding fans by providing Phan et al. (2011);
upcoming product sneak-peeks
or discounts

 Employing seeding to
influencers then encourage them
to share their experiences
 Celebrity endorsements as
advertisement means
Engaging
online opinion
Saravanakumar
leaders,
and
influencers,
SuganthaLakshmi
Engagement/ and
(2012);
value-added personalities as
Sterling et al.
proposition a means to
(2013)
influence
customers

5
 SMM Activities
Main References
Categories Examples of Strategic Actions
 Encourage customer´s brand-
experience
 Employing embedded
Using social
configuration or applications to
media for Blazek et al.
allow mass customization
personalizing (2012);
 Engaging customers to share
customer Phan et al. (2011);
their experiences or employing
experience and Parent et al. (2011)
customizable application (e.g.
products
electronic greeting cards) related
with a special event

Engaging the  Crowdsourcing in gathering

customer as ideas for product design or
source of companies’ profile related Parent et al.
product  Encourage regular customers to (2011);
reviews and participate in the review process Mangold and
development, and to share positive opinions Smith (2012);
innovation, or
Engagement/ as co-producer
value-added  Seeding through employing a
contest whereby the firms give Dou et al. (2013);
proposition Engaging
the products or free trial Parent et al.
customers to
 Inviting positive reviewers to (2011);
participate in
become brand advocates Mangold and
call to action
 Engaging customers to Smith (2012);
for
participate in a Corporate Social Cristache et al
participatory
Responsibility (CSR) campaign
promotion (2013)
through a contest

 Sharing competitors’ contents

Engaging with Vullo (2013);
 Follow/join competitor´s account
competitors
 Provide Q&A (e.g. through
website or by providing a special
Customer social media account ) Lorenzo-Romero
support  Publishing contents to address et al. (2013);
issues raised by customers about
products or services.

Social media  Language setup

mix:  Creating a group or community Pentina and Koh
Networking administering of people of similar interest in (2012);
social media social network Hsu (2012)
account(s)
 Monitoring customer voices Pentina and Koh
Listening-in Market  Mining customers´ (2012);
(passive way followers/fans/friends/network
Intelligence Andzulis et al.
actions) for future prospects (2012)

6
3. Research Methodology
3.1. Research design and data collection
Brand X is a medium size company produces leather bags and accessories based in the
city of Florence, Italy, with around seventy to one hundred employees and a revenue of
€28million in 2014. Florence is a city in the Tuscany region, which has long history of
many fashion ventures starting from small artisanal shops. It is a residence of not only
major global fashion brands, but also fashion houses that serve niche markets. The local
fashion houses in Tuscany owe their success to the capacity of combining entrepreneurial
attitude, creativity and craftsmanship. Its fashion industry shares a strong connection with
the local craft districts, mainly with that of leather processing. In fact, Tuscany has shares
of 20% of textile exports, 12% of clothing exports, and as much as 40% of Italy’s export
of leather goods (Pratt et al., 2012).
In designing our case study of Brand X, we rely mainly on primary sources, ranging
from qualitative survey and questionnaires to quantitative data extracted from social
media platforms’ databases. We also use secondary sources, such as the brand’s corporate
website. The research methodology therefore mixes qualitative and quantitative methods.
The qualitative part includes a semi-structured interview and completion of a
questionnaire by Brand X’s Marketing and Communication Manager. From the interview
and questionnaire, we obtained their overall marketing and SMM strategy plans around
their target market, marketing mix, and social media mix. From the questionnaire, we also
identified the brand’s objectives for their SMMS implementation.
The quantitative part includes collection of the different SMM actions and activities
based on content analysis from the brand’s social media platforms’ (Facebook and
Twitter) databases via their respective Application Programming Interface (API)
provided by Fashionbi. Fashionbi (www.fashionbi.com) is a Milan-based company
providing social media services to professionals and researchers that focuses on fashion
and luxury brands worldwide. Facebook is a type of social networking platform that has
become a flagship platform of SMM and has been used widely by fashion brands. For
Facebook, we chose to emphasize on Facebook brand-page (sometimes referred to as “fan
page” because users join the page by “liking” or becoming a “follower” of the page)
which was employed by Brand X for their Facebook account. Twitter is a type of
microblogging social media platform. Facebook and Twitter were two of Brand X’s
application platforms used for their social media marketing.

3.2. Data Analysis

As stated in the previous section, we employed a mix of qualitative and and quantitative
analyses both for the study of SMM strategies and SMM activities. We intrepretated
qualitatively the written response we received from the survey interview, for the decision
and plans of SMMS, and quantitatively for the SMMS objectives. Content analysis of the
SMM activities was conducted on the Facebook and Twitter’s public posts data of Brand
X to classify and quantify the strategic actions.
On Twitter, Fashionbi collects the actions of a brand by their posts (tweets) and the
brand’s responses to others on their own Twitter’s account. From Facebook, Fashionbi
collects the posts by brands and brands’ actions or public responses to other Facebook
accounts (such as commenting or liking). In Facebook, user-responses on other accounts’
public posts are visible for the brand and brand-page’s followers. For the purpose of our
study, we only observed the posts by the brand on its own brand-page.
Activities and actions inherent from the posts’ contents –either in the form of text,
picture, or video– were then classified and coded qualitatively according to our
conceptual framework –we refer to Table 1. The list of actions stemming from our
7
framework listed in Table 1, was set as a basis to identify the SMM activities of Brand X.
For Facebook brand page, we analyzed all the public posts by Brand X on their own fan
page. Each post then classified according to their type of activities. Same method applied
to Twitter’s posts. Each post (or tweet) and other actions by the brand, such as replying
or re-tweeting other accounts’ tweets or their followers’ tweets, were analyzed and
classified.
In this study, some notes and exceptions are made: “social media mix” or networking
SMM activity, such as creation or administration of social media platform accounts, is
considered as higher level plans –or strategic decisions–, and it is not directly observable
from the posts’ contents. Furthermore, our research focuses on active types of SMM
actions; therefore, and given that actions that relate to “market intelligence” are mainly
passive –they aim at monitoring the voices of customers or audiences– they might not be
observable from the posts’ contents, either.
During the analysis, we also found some actions that were not yet listed nor identified
in our preliminary list of actions. Those actions were then coded and classified according
to the appropriate type of activity. As a result of the analysis, we gathered Brand X’s key
SMM activities. Finally, we performed an analysis on customers’ responses to the actions:
likes, shares, retweets, and replies.

4. Results and Findings

4.1. Marketing Strategy Overview
Brand X produces leather bag and accessories and targets the luxury and high-end
markets. They claim to use only high quality fabrics and materials. For their product
development, they state that the strongest component is the use of research and innovation
with a balanced mix of tradition, innovation, and craftmanships.
Their current distribution channel focuses mainly on Italy, but they also distribute their
products to other countries such as the United States and the Asia region. Other than
offline brick and mortar stores, they also operate through their online store.
For corporate image and positioning of the brand to buyers, retailers, and consumers,
Brand X commits to tell the story of the "Tuscany way of life", casually but in a
sophisticated way, and is attentive to even the smallest of details of craftmanships. Their
products emphasize the value of “Made in Italy” and “hand-crafted”, typical of Florentine
workmanships.

4.2. Social Media Marketing Strategy

Brand X have been implementing SMM for about two years. Brand X’s main reasons and
objectives for implementing their SMM strategy are the consideration that it helps
achieving brand awareness and increasing brand reputation, gaining new followers and
people who are interested in the brand, and to be nearer to the younger target market.
Other than those reasons, Brand X aims at maximizing the reach of their target market
and reaching new market or potential customers, increasing sales, using social media as
a customer support tool, and conducting market and buying lead research.
In their SMM strategy implementation, Brand X declared strategic actions are mainly
activities related with promotion and sales process, customer support, and market
intelligence. Brand X also puts emphasize on public relation activities, such as: posting
contents on value and culture of the brand, news about the brand, socialization contents,
and offline events. Other than that, Brand X is also engaging key influencers,
personalities, or public figures as a mean of customer influence, and following their
competitor acounts in social media.

8
 Brand X uses Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Pinterest, and Linkedin as social platforms.
Facebook is viewed as an important tool in terms of audience reach. Twitter is considered
effective for informing about real time events. For Brand X, Pinterest and Youtube are
well-suited to tell “stories”. Despite the fairly intensive use of social media as marketing
tool, Brand X has not implemented any key performance indicators measurements for
their social media marketing strategy. Brand X has been realizing the importance of social
media as part of corporate marketing strategy, but they admit that their corporate
managers and decision makers are not yet aware of the importance of social media.

4.2.1. Brand X’s marketing activities in Facebook

We collected Brand X’s Facebook brand-page activity along one year, from March 2014
to February 2015, with a total of 136 posts analyzed. We analyzed all the posts in Brand
X fan page and categorized their type of actions as specified initially by Table 1. Some
posts could be mapped to more than one type of actions. After classification there was a
total of 152 actions.
From our assessment on SMM activities of Brand X on its Facebook brand-page, most
actions are oriented toward promotion and sales (54% of the total number of actions).
Other relevant actions relate to public relations, engaging online opinion leaders, key
influencers, personalities, celebrities or public figures, and customer support (Figure 1).

Figure 1 – Brand X’s social media marketing activities on its Facebook brand-page

Figure 2 summarizes the breakdown of each the actions from the analysis. Among the
actions related to promotion and sales, Brand X emphasized sharing contents on their
offline stores or offline promotion events. This type of action is the most prevalent (24%
of the total). Other significant actions include sharing contents on the value and culture
of the brand, providing catalog or link to e-commerce website, and sharing brand-related
personalities, influencers, or public figures posts.
Brand X also shows their expertise and brand values by providing contents from the
offline store or promotion events, for example by showcasing their artisans or conducting
workshops on making of bag or leather accesories. Regarding social shopping (either
promotion or providing catalogue/link to e-commerce) Brand X frequently associates it
to special events or seasons –e.g., holidays. Brand X also uses their Facebook brand-page
to conduct customer support activities, such as answering customers’ inquiries or
responding to customers’ complaints, with a lower level of intensity.

9
 Figure 2 – List of social media strategic actions deployed by Brand X on its Facebook brand-
page

Figure 3 – User responses to SMM actions on Brand X’s Facebook brand-page (average
responses per post for each type of actions)

In term of user response and engagements with the actions employed by Brand X, most
users or customers on Brand X’s Facebook brand-page respond by “liking” the post. The
number of shares and comments is much lower than the number of likes. Figure 3
summarizes the user responses in terms of average number responses per type of action.
The actions with most average number of likes refers to contents on offline stores or
offline promotion events. Other actions that generate responses in terms of number of
likes were: sharing personalities, key influencers, or public figures postings about brand,
10
and social shopping (either promotion or providing catalogue/link to e-commerce
website).

4.2.2. Brand X’s marketing activities in Twitter

Brand X’s data collection about Twitter activity covers a one year span, from March 2014
to February 2015, with a total of 134 tweets. We analyzed all the posts or tweets
(including re-tweets or replies’ contents) in Brand X Twitter’s account page categorized
their type of actions as specified initially by Table 1. As same as in Facebook, some posts
could be assigned to more than one type of action, and therefore the final analysis includes
141 different actions.

Figure 4 – Types of social media marketing activities from Brand X’s Twitter

Most of Brand X’s Twitter activity focuses on promotion and sales (58% of the total).
Other relevant actions include public relations; engaging online opinion leaders and other
key influencers, engaging customers as source of product reviews, development, and
innovation, personalizing customer experiences and product, and market intelligence
(Figure 4).
Figure 5 details Brand X’s actions in Twitter. From Figure 5, Brand X makes intensive
use of Twitter for product promotion (37% of the total; see an example in Figure 6). As
opposed to Facebook, Brand X’s Twitter activity shows that the most common promotion
and sales actions relate to product awareness –instead of providing links to the e-catalog
or online site. However, product promotions of Brand X on Twitter mainly consist of
invitations to join them at special events or seasons, the same that happens in Facebook
with this type of actions.
Other relevant actions include sharing content on the value and culture of the brand;
posting contents that were not directly related to the brands field of expertise but
associated to the brand’s culture and values, and posting contents on casual socialization
and greetings to their followers and customers. Interestingly, Brand X also uses Twitter
for actively conducting market intelligence for marketing research; these actions seek to
gain insight on their audience for market segmentation purpose, although the number of
this type of actions is not high enough when compared to other types of actions. Other
than that, it appears that Brand X also uses third party accounts as a mean of promoted
advertisements in Twitter.

11
 Figure 5 – List of social media strategic actions from Brand X’s on Twitter activity

Figure 6 – Example of Brand X’s tweet on product promotion and awareness

Additionally, we also analyzed users’ reactions (retweets and replies). A retweet is

analogue to Facebook shares and a reply is equivalent to a comment. Figure 7 summarizes
these users’ responses. The tweets that triggers a higher number of retweets and replies
are devoted to product promotion. Other actions with high number of retweets are those
related to brand’s values and culture.
12
 Figure 7 – User responses to SMM actions on Brand X’s Twitter account (average responses
per post for each type of actions)

5. Discussion of results
As stated, Brand X main reasons or drivers to implement SMM are target market,
branding , market intelligence, and customer support related objectives, other than
increasing sales. To achieve these objectives, Brand X is aiming to translate their
strategies through implementing actions mainly on promotion and sales and public
relation activities. They are such actions of providing social shopping (e.g. providing e-
commerce site and product promotion), exclusive preview of promotional campaign,
offline events, contents on value and culture of the brand, news or stories about the brand,
as well as greeting their customers through social casualization contents.
Most of the declared strategic actions conducted by Brand X are prominent in their
SMM activities in social media platforms. There are common aspects in the
implementation of Brand X’s SMM strategy –in terms of social media content strategies–
across the two platforms, but also interesting differences. Among the commonalities, the
main use of both focuses on promotion and sales activities. However, Brand X capitalizes
of funneling contents of the offline store or promotion events in Facebook, but uses
Twitter for product awareness. Brand X also uses Twitter as a means to conduct market
segmentation. In general, Brand X uses both channels for customer support –e.g.,
answering inquiries from customers or potential customers, and responding to customers’
complaints. These actions are in line with Brand X statements on their main strategic
actions implemented in relation with their SMM, which are promotion and and sales,
customer support, and market intelligence. Although actions of market intelligence
mostly can not be observed from the social media contents, because most of them are
passive actions such as monitoring chatters and voices of their customers and target
market, or mining their social media customers’ or audience’s followers and networks.

13
 It is revealed also that Brand X generates a relevant amount of content about the
brand’s values and culture in both social networks. Brand X structures this type of
contents not only around its culture and values, but also as its expertise and themes like
leather, luxury, artisanal, handcrafted and high skilled craftmanships, and messages such
as “Made in Italy” and the “Tuscany way of life”. In fact, Brand X also delivers contents
that are not directly related with their products but that are a reflection of those values.
This is intimately related to Brand X social media marketing positioning strategy to
maintain their brand image and position within social media ecosystem.
Additionally, current literature suggests that users’ social media responses may serve
as indicators for specific marketing outcomes of consumer behavior (e.g. Hoffman and
Fodor, 2010). Based on our assessment on user responses on Brand X’s actions on social
media platforms, we suggest that Brand X should continue to put effort on providing
contents about the offline store and offline promotion events, as well as actions associated
to social shopping –be it product promotion or linking social media with their online shop
platform. Other than this, also considering the users responses, Brand X may step up to
exaggerate the using of actions such as sharing online opinion leaders, public figures, or
celebrities postings about the brand and engaging them in social media activities as well
as providing content on values, culture, expertise of the brand. Furthermore, and given
the amount of customers’ positive reactions to contents on news/stories about the brand,
Brand X might consider posting more success stories and news, company achievements,
and even results of their innovation processes. This recommendation should, however, be
taken with a grain of salt, as further empirical research is need to confirm whether these
responses and reactions may serve as indicators or proxies of Brand X’s intended
marketing objectives, such as brand awareness, increasing brand reputation and equity,
or actual sales.

6. Conclusion & Implications

This paper explores SMM practices of an Italian SME luxury fashion brand, and assesses,
identifies, and classifies the SMM strategies and actions implemented by the brand across
two social media platforms: Facebook and Twitter.
This research is an effort to contribute to the study of SMM strategy implementation
in the fashion industry, especially among luxury and high-end European SMEs, and
setting the foundations for further research on SMM performance measurement within
the perspective of SMM strategic actions deployed by fashion brands.
From a practical standpoint, the findings from this research provide valuable initial
insight about luxury fashion brands, in particular among SMEs, on how to assess their
SMM strategies and SMM actions in order to measure their effectiveness in terms of
achievement of the expected marketing outcomes. This information would allow
managers to better design and deploy their SMM strategies in order to capitalize on the
opportunities offered by social media as a means to achieve their marketing goals. In
particular, luxury brands –both large and SMEs– must maintain a fine balance between
brand’s desirability and accessibility (Phan et al., 2011). Finding such a balance becomes
a challenge considering that social media are “class-neutral”, which seems to contradict
the exclusivity and uniqueness of luxury brands (Ng, 2014).
The best way to protect brand equity when implementing social media marketing is to
carefully control the way social media is used and the content strategies deployed across
the different social media platforms. This is important considering the “user-generated
contents” nature of social media that resulting in social media environment that is largely
consumer –not marketer– controlled. Hence, brand image is not only created by
marketers, but is increasingly influenced by customers. Marketers or brands who fail to
14
understand that, do so at their perils (Hoffman and Fodor, 2010). Just as luxury brands
have their high craftmanship skills and artisanal works, they should understand how to
better craft their social media platforms’ contents.
We expect that this study work will foster further research investigating whether the
SMM strategy and actions implemented by SME fashion brands –and, on larger scale, the
European fashion brands– are living up to their expected marketing outcomes. Further
research should therefore address how SMM strategies implemented by fashion brands
may affect customer behavior, or marketing outcomes. Another open area of investigation
should address how users’ responses and reactions in (and to) social media platforms may
relate to, or serve as indicator of, marketing outcomes. This study still presents some
limitations: This empirical study is limited in terms of the social media platforms
observed which –the research only covers Facebook and Twitter–. Other than that, the
analysis focuses on a single case of an Italian luxury SME. Although the consideration of
this work is that Italy has significant importance among the European fashion and luxury
industry, a comparison with similar companies based in other European countries might
be extremely useful for the development of research and practice on this topic.

Acknowledgement
This research has been conducted within the framework of the European Doctorate in
Industrial Management (EDIM) program which is funded by the European Commission
under Erasmus Mundus Action 1.

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