The Influence of Social Media on E-commerce : Fast Fashion Multinational Companies

Sammanfattning: Aim: The aim of this thesis is to analyse the influence of social media on fast fashion e-commerce multinational businesses and to identify the aims of Corporations using social media and why they adopt it as a marketing strategy to meet their long term objectives.   Methodology Approach:  This research study utilised a qualitative approach which comprises of primary and secondary data in order to conduct research and gather empirical evidence to evaluate the research aims and questions and to fill the gap that previous researches have not sufficiently covered. This thesis involved the use of a multiple case study by interviewing four international fast fashion companies based in Sweden, Stockholm. These companies are Bik Bok, River Island, Monki and Vero Moda. The researcher used a face to face interview method and telephone method. In total ten (10) interviews have been conducted.   Findings: The main finding of this research study is that the four e-commerce companies employed social media as a marketing strategy. Through thorough analysis it was found that Instagram was the most dominant of all social media platform. The use of social media marketing is vital for these fast fashion e-commerce businesses as they can have direct contact with their customers, attract new customers and to get to know their target market. These four companies opened an e-commerce business to offer product datasheet and to expand market for niche products. However, social media have also influenced few of these e-commerce businesses by the use of word of mouth.   Limitations: The limitation of this study is the lack of having the perspective of managers in the department of social media. The work could have been improved if the researcher was able to be in contact with those people in order to have a better validation of this research study. Moreover, there were inadequate resources or authors that have specifically covered the influenced of social media on fast fashion e-commerce firms and how they operate.  This could be seen as the research gap.   Suggestions For Further Research: As this research study only covers the influence of social media on fast fashion e-commerce businesses.Further study can be conducted on the perspective of fast fashion e-commerce customer’s perspective. Moreover, a bigger sampling of respondents can be collected rather than only collecting data from 2 or 3 people from each company. There might be a possibility if the chosen sampling  was bigger; the  researcher could have  had more  concrete  and solid research study.