How do fashion community sites influence consumers purchasing behaviour?

Through Internet :Consumers (Powerful promoters)Fashion brands (monitors)ie. Fashion bloggers were being invited to Fashion weeks. Fashion brands are buying advertising on individual fashion blogs

Fashion virtual communitiesprovide public forums,instant messagesConsumerseasily connect with friends and share information join a specific interest group and share opinions with a worldwide audience.

Ie.Myspace.com have more than 43 million worldwide users -150,000 daily visitors) - Fashion and style ,34 categories -34,127 public group display fashion relative topics on site. - discuss topics for fashion,simplest way to express personal attitudes.

Kim and Jin(2006) investigated the 2,521 apparel retailers.

- 13 of them hosted virtual communities.- argues that clothing retailers could benefit from hosting virtual communities for the purpose of market research and consumer feedback,especially for young,internet-savvy demographic groups.

Still questions that await answers !!!Ie. How social networks affect consumers purchasing decisions? what are the benefits of online social communities for fashion e-business?

Then, marketers can benefits from fashion-related information that is being presented on fashion community sites.

Definition

* E-business: E-business is a conduct of business on the internet that provides commerce for buying, selling and servicing along with the collaboration of business partnerships.

* Fashion community sites: Fashion Social media is a specific platform that allows individuals who use technology to share, discuss, create information and experience that is related to clothing, beauty And fashion accessories with like-minded people.

For examples: Esty.com, individual fashion blogs, Style.com,polyvore.com , chictopia.com.

LITERATURE REVIEW

E-business theories

Porter(2001) argues that the key enquiry of e-business is not to take advantage ofinternet technology but to apply media to make traditional business process better and implement new combinations of virtual activities.

LITERATURE REVIEWSuccess factors for e-business include:[W. Mougayar (1998), W.D. Raisch(2001), E. Turban, J. Lee, M. Warkentin, H. Chung (2002) ]:

Internet technology fully integrated into the company's overall strategy. Company's strategic positioning well maintained and competitive advantage health created Strong support from the management team. Quick delivery time to market. Right systems infrastructure. Good cost control. Correct e-business training to employees, management and customers. Offering value products and services by e-business. High quality website that exceeds user expectations.

E-business theories

Key principles of strategic positioning in e-business

Long-term return on investment (Trust relationship) Keep regular contacts (email,post,website)

For effectiveness, Internet is the solution ( target customers directly and continually) LITERATURE REVIEW What customers need and how they think

Online media plays an important role in the communication of e-business

Social media

as Internet technologies and marketing trends is an emerging marketing tool for businesses.

Social media encompasses many diferent types of tools :

Blogging (Blogspot ) Microblogging : Twitter, total user numbers 2.6m (Ofcom research,2009 ).Video-sharing: YouTube , 200,000 of video publishers on YouTube (Singer, 2008) Photo-sharing: Flickr , 35 million photographs on the site (Barras,2009)Social networking: Facebook and Myspace total user numbers 18.9m and 5.1m (Ofcom research,2009 ). Social voting:Digg, total user numbers 6.8 m(Ofcom research,2009 ).Social bookmaking: LinkedIn , total user numbers 1.1m ( Schonfeld,2009)

They are all quite different from each other and new tools are being introduced almost everyday. LITERATURE REVIEW

LITERATURE REVIEW Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence of social media (Mishra,2009)

everyone can be a creator receive information from other people than create content themselvescollected individual data to powerful collective results.Ie. Open group blogs,photo poolsput them all together withoutlosing value.

Social objects: person,plac,idea. large number of members strong relationshipIe. Kate moss.

More reviews,more valueIe. Ebay and google page rank

eWord of mouth

Customer communities and network effects

groups of people who connect via netwrok technologies around various interests.These communities become trusted resources for customers (Valuable relational asset) lead to market-based intellectual capital to create new products and serve new markets. ie. Member generated content is one of the aspects that attracts new members thus communities can increasingly benefit from network effects.

Customers that use the same products or services more often create a trend towards influencing peoples decision on what things they should by.Ie. One mobile- not worth anything, two connected to each other -worth a little more, million of networked mobiles - worth a whole lot more.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Network effect occurs when products or services is added which increases the value of existing network products or services.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Network effect occurs when products or services is added which increases the value of existing network products or services.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Because of the socially constructed nature of learning, communities of practice go far beyond more information exchange. Members take risks to share both their knowledge a challenges. Reputation places a person in either the core or periphery of a group. Social capital is the currency. Trust, identity and the influence of leadership all affect a learning community. (White, 2003)

A number of academics are also examining WOM most recently,Ie, - people who gave more negative WOM tended to give more positive WOM and that new customers rather than existing customers were more likely to spread word of mouth (East and Hammond,2005). - one research found that co-creation implies that marketing happens with young people rather than it being directed at them (Needham,2008).

To understand how individual identity or behavior influence the others on social communities can give businesses a idea about how to use social media to benefit its marketing strategy. LITERATURE REVIEW

LITERATURE REVIEW

How social media needs to balance its relationship between users engagement.

LITERATURE REVIEWDATA AND METHODSexamine the connection between E-business and social communities. Specifically, the dissertation intends to answer the following questions:

1. To understand how social networks affect consumer's purchasing decision. 2. To identify the benefits of online social communities for fashion e-business

The goals of the interviews will be:

1.Consumer behavioural intention on fashion community sites 2. How social media methods related to the competitive advantage of e-business.

LITERATURE REVIEWPrimary research process

Qualitative stage- 5 exports

Quantitative stage27 survey questions are based on literature review4 sections 1)Fashion Media including Information regarding sharing, social communities and service providing2) e-Business including credibility of security and Online shopping.3) user experiencing including user experiences of information and time scales of responses on using community Sites.4) network effects including information about sharing from consumers.

LITERATURE REVIEWAccording to (Internetworldstats, 2009) there were a total of 1,596,270,108 online users throughout the world in 2008.

The twice-yearly global AC Nielsen Online Consumer Opinion Survey -found more than 627 million people have shopped online (2005)-over 128 million consumers that had purchased clothing, accessories and shoes online.

Therefore, the research is taking the minimum 128 effective respondents for the quantitative research.

Sample typeNan-probability sample (Users human judgment, subjective) judgment sample ( fashion community sites users only )

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHFashion media

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHFashion media

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHFashion media

The name of the most commonly used fashion community site:

Online shopping sites

The numbers of respondents (percentage)

Etsy.com

11 ( 8% )

Asos.com

8 ( 6% )

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHFashion media

Fashion media

The numbers of respondents

Style.com

11 (8%)

Vogue.com

9 ( 6%)

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHFashion media

Fashion social forums /blogs

The numbers of respondents

Lookbook.nu

22 (16%)

Polyvore.com

13 ( 9%)

Chictopia.com

12 ( 9%)

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHFashion mediaThe tangible fashion social media benefits are:

Direct link to social networking site ,Facebook and Twitter Direct products connect to online shopping sites.Daily fashion, keep updating new information daily.Allow users to create personal stylebook on siteStraight communication with other users on siteInstant contact with fashion brands on sitewhen users browsing products on site, by adding a clear product introduction or experienced review that can satisfy consumers and also encourage theirs purchasing demand.

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHOnline shoppingThese 140 surveys were completed by a high percentage of female (76%), and 70% of all the respondentsare between ages 25 to 35. So, the final analysis data might be more likely to demonstrate for a young female group more than any other social group

Etsy.com

23 (16%)

Ebay

18 (13 %)

Asos.com

9 (6%)

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHOnline shoppingThe study possibly states that the consumers online purchasing behaviors are:

62% of interviewees think themselves spend 11-30% of their yearly income between 10,000 to 19,000 on online purchasing. So, the average spend online per person yearly is between 1,100 to 5,700; per month 90 to 475

Half of interviewees are browsing or researching fashion products or news almost 3-5 times per week on Etsy.com , eBay.com and Asos.com.

Users are more likely to complete the whole social shopping process from product browsing to online purchasing, step by step all in one site.

The other users recommendation and review, and access to low price deals are the mean reasons for consumers gone online fashion communities.

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHUser experiencing

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHUser experiencing

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHUser experiencingThe study possible replies that the consumers experiencing are:

After browsing the fashion community site, the information consumers received made their life easier.

Users feel encouraged when they are browsing fashion community sites.

Shoppers feel amazed by the community interaction on online fashion communities.

Consumers can fully concentrate on what they are doing while browsing community sites.

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHNetwork effects

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHNetwork effectsListed below are some main research findings in this topic:

Users would like sharing their personal positive experience with other people on the site.

Informant and recommender are two roles influence consumers' intention. Consumers have a more favourable attitude toward a product as a greater number of positive reviews.

This effect ability of eWOM on consumer behavioural intention is depending on consumer involvement.

Fashion businesses have direct and instant access to their consumers while using follow network effect, For example, facebook,twitter.

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHCONCLUSIONSthe research looked into how individual consumers influence the other members on the net, theoretically, network effects can create :barriers to entry-reducing the threat of new entrants.

Then, powerful networks link-in customers : increasing switching costs reducing the bargaining power of customers.

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHCONCLUSIONSThe important roles for fashion social e-business.

For fashion brands, who ran their own blogs or websites can cooperate with fashion communities to promote the brand visibility.the advertising banners on lookbook, chictopia or individual blogs. -then the users can link back to receive more information from brands websites.

For fashion communities, by using the same user account to access social networking sites such as twitter and facebook that can instantly spread the information worldwide, therefore each user can be seen as an individual promoter for the brands. This is also one of the benefits from fallow network effect.

With the brands information on social networking sites, users can directly transfer the activity on social sites to online shopping process, thus shopping sites can also provide social functions on its site to allow user to leave and share recommendations and reviews. online shopping sites can be one of brands marketplaces or portals to represent brands value and image.

DISCUSSION OF PRIMARY RESERACHCONCLUSIONS