Social Media Marketing Communication in Luxury Brands Promotion - Dissertation Example

During the early part of the 1990s, a number of luxury brands began to initiate their brands in China. The major cause for it is China being the world’s leading market. The Chinese market signifies a huge population and sturdy financial development. More significantly, Chinese customers - including students - have become more affluent than ever before, they are more accommodating towards western-style traditions and they have a strong aspiration toward luxury products. In 2010, a study revealed that more than 15 million existing and potential luxury brand customers are Chinese (Zarrella, 2009, p. 77). The combination of synchronizing the marketing communications across all media together with the social media, the huge impact that social has on both individuals as well as businesses, the pace at which things progress within this field, and the comparative insufficiency of existing research regarding this field all are the bases for this study (Vivian & Anspaugh, 2000, p. 12). With reference to the discussion above, this study will also explain how companies can benefit from social media in developing marketing messages to attract young customers including students.

Figure 1: Growth of Internet Users from 1995 to 2010 (Malacrida, 2011, p. 122)During the past fifteen years, a huge amount of individuals have been able to access the Internet as a way to correspond, shop, and collect data regarding pertinent issues and Versace gets the maximum benefit from this situation by modifying its marketing communication strategy. As soon as Versace started to recognize the transformation and saw the potentials of the Internet, it created new approaches to portray itself and speak to consumers via the online segment.

Most of the companies started to generate static websites during the early phase, which became more dynamic “after the implementation of Web 2.0 in the early 21st century. With the implementation of Web 2.0 companies were not only able to present themselves but also the establishment of two-way communication channels on the websites was technically possible” (Duncan & Moriarty, 2005, p. 11). This helped almost all luxury brands, including Versace, to respond more capably to the requirements and needs of customers.

With the development of Web 2.0, the ‘so-far-inactive’ student was now capable of becoming a dynamic and processing user. The factor of consumers now being competent to develop, amend and remark on web material became commonly known as user-generated content. The currently visible results of this content are blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and other various platforms where users can correspond or share content with one another.Once businesses offering luxury brands realized how excited users were regarding sharing their experiences with others in cyberspace, they started to have second thoughts regarding their marketing strategies and attempted to understand new tools to draw and reach their target markets, i.e., students.