Brand communication and fashion amidst Covid-19 pandemic: Focus on emerging fashion business in Nigeria
ABSTRACT
With the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged the entire world; the use of social media platforms for business communication has become inevitable for enterprises, especially those in the fashion industry. As previous studies focused on big fashion brands, this study focused on how small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City, Nigeria have adopted and used online media to enhance their businesses. The diffusion of innovation was used to drive this study. Survey method was adopted, and questionnaire was administered on 200 fashion designers, who were selected using purposive and available sampling techniques. Data analysis was done using frequency table, charts, and Chi-square. Findings revealed that almost all the fashion designers used one platform or another for business communication. WhatsApp was found as the most used platform, followed by Facebook and the reason for preference were based on relative advantage (32.3%), complexity (27.7%), triability (16.4%), compatibility (12.8%) and observability (10.8%). Awareness creation (94.5%) was the number one impact of the platforms on fashion businesses while increase in sales was the least (39%).
Finally, sophisticated phone is the major challenge small and medium scale fashion designers faced, followed by struggle to gain more contacts/followers on the platforms. It was inferred that small and medium scale fashion designer have adopted social media platform for business promotion to a large extent.
Keywords: Brand communication, Business promotion, Coronavirus Pandemic, Fashion Designers, social media, WhatsApp, Diffusion of innovation theory, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
Introduction
Coronavirus, shortened as COVID-19, no doubt has bedevilled every sector of the world and the effects have been devastating, especially on businesses. Ever since the virus broke out in Wuhan city, China in 2019, the whole world has been battling with containing it but unfortunately, the world plunged further into the second phase of the pandemic (Africa CDC, 2021). With countries initiating partial and total lockdown of their cities, the business sector suffered devastating setbacks. Hitherto, businesses, both local and multinational, continue to adopt every communication technology to promote their brands. With the Coronavirus pandemic, business owners cannot afford not to have online presence because of the paradigm shift from physical market to online market. The social media is defined as “the new information network and information technology, using a form of communication utilizing interactive and user- produced content, and interpersonal relationships are created and maintained” (Fasunwon, 2019, p.1). One vital position in this definition is sharing of information or interaction. The platforms allow individuals and groups to share profiles and information they so wish with other users of the platforms.
One industry that involves in aggressive brand promotion is the fashion industry. This is due to many brand producers within the industry, leading to tough competition. Therefore, every brand seeks to outshine its competitors to connect with myriads of customers around the world. To do this, the social media platforms come handy. As well as other business sectors, the social media have revolutions the fashion industry.
The use of social media, such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, has now become new trend among fashion consumers. The platforms are used to live stream shows, shop fashion products, seek fashion ideas, share designs and so on (Castillo-Abdul, Bonilla-del-Río & Nú?ez-Barriopedro, 2021). They have changed how fashion brands communicate their businesses, sale and connect with fashion consumers (Wang, et al, 2019). Makeup artistes, hairdressers, shoe and bag makers, fashion designers and many other dimensions of fashion producers now use the online platforms for brand communication.
According to Ahmad et al. (2015:1), “one industry which is perfectly suited and naturally fit for social media is fashion. When we talk about social media for the fashion industry it refers to the social networking websites and other online platforms that enable the fashion industry to connect with their customers using the latest social networking technology”. Decades ago, brand communication used to be through interpersonal communication and later through conventional media (radio, TV, newspaper/magazine) but with the internet, the prediction of Mashal McLuhan in 1963 has now come to fruition: the world is now a global village.
Several studies have been conducted on the impact of fashion and they have reported positive relationship between social media use and fashion business promotion (Danlos, 2016; Manneh, 2017; De-Silva, 2019)
However, even though there is evidence that the social media have influence on fashion businesses, the gap observed is that while many of the previous studies focused on fashion
consumers alone, many others focused on big fashion brands (Danlos, 2016, Manneh, 2017; Klavech 2018; Wu et al, 2020). These are brands that are expected to follow marketing trends because of their status in the industry. Little has been done on small and medium scale fashion designers on their adoption and use of online platforms to promote their businesses.
Following the suggestion of Manneh (2017) that future researcher should collect data from a much bigger number of fashion brands and not just few fashion designers in order to ascertain the use and the impact of social media on fashion businesses, this study only focuses on small and medium scale fashion designers, who have received little of no attention from researchers.
Despite several studies reporting that social media have positive impacts on businesses, Castillo-Abdul et al (2021) note that this cannot be generalised for businesses in the fashion industry. This study will examine how small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City, Edo state Nigeria have adopted and use the social media platforms to promote their businesses and the impacts these media have on their business amid the current Coronavirus pandemic.
Objectives of the Study
The overarching aim of this study is to investigate how social media adoption and use has impacted on small and medium scale fashion design business in Benin City, Edo state Nigeria. The specific objectives of this study are:
Literature Review
Theoretical Basis
The diffusion of innovation theory (DOI) serves as the bedrock of this study. The DOI was developed by Rogers Everett in 1962 and it is one of the theories mostly used to explain adoption of technology and other innovations and how they spread among people in certain communities (Bibhunandini, 2020). According to the DOI theory, an innovation is any process, idea, technology, or development, such as the social media platforms, that is new to people in a certain community while diffusion is the process by which the new idea flows from persons to person within the community (Bibhunandini, 2020). The innovations in this study are the social media while the social system entails fashion designers. Rogers however identified five categories of adopters of innovations – innovators, early adopters, early majority, late adopters, and laggards (Dearing, 2020). The innovators (about 5%) are among the fashion designers who adopted the use of social media as soon as they are developed. The early adopters (about 13%) come after the innovators and the early majority (about 45%) are those who studied the earlier adopters before adopting social media. The late adopters (about 15%) are fashion designers that were first reluctant to adopt social media but later did while laggards are those who blatantly refused to adopt the online media. They constitute about 12% of the total population (Lamorte, 2019).
There are five factors that can influence the adoption of social media platforms by the fashion designers (Zhang et al., 2015). The factors are presented in table 1 below
Table 1:
Factors influence adoption of new innovation
He further stated that the success of adoption of any innovation is determined by the channel through which people get information about the innovation, the characteristics of the innovation and that of the adopters and the entire community system (Lamorte, 2019). This theory is?relevant to this study as it explains how fashion designers in Benin City adopt social media to promote their businesses and the factors that influence the adoption of the platforms.?
Promoting Fashion Business through social media
Fashion businesses are not left out in the myriads of changes ushered in by the use of the social media in business communication. McCarthy in Manneh (2017) avers that fashion and the social media are alike – they both give people ways to express themselves and fit into the world. “People dress a particular way to present themselves to the world in that manner, analogous to the way users may arrange his or her Facebook page, Twitter account or Instagram”.
The power and influence of social media on fashion industry is undeniable. In the 21st century and with the current coronavirus pandemic still in vogue, the presence of fashion designers on the social networking websites is of extreme importance. The designer and brands, who realize the true worth of social media, are the ones who have massive fan following (Ahmad, et al. 2015). Fashion designers such as Zara, Gucci, D&G, Channel, Fendi, Donna Karan, Diane von Furstenberg, and Dolce Gabana and other international designers are very active on the social media, and they use the media to promote their businesses. In Nigeria, fashion designers such as Tanah wears, Dakova, House of cecil G, Yomi casual and many others are using the social media space for business promotion.
Wang et al (2019) notes that consumers of fashion want to be part of the latest fashion trends in town and receive accolades from peers, much like users of social media want their virtual friends to like and comment on their posts. Therefore, there is strong connection between social media use and fashion. This justifies why fashion business owners cannot be disconnected from the social media to promote their businesses.
Manneh (2017) reports that online revenue for fashion products grew from 25 % to 30%. With this, the number must have grown beyond this percentage because the number of social media platforms and the users has increased. There are more internet users than before and nowadays, there is an upsurge in the number of online retailers and virtual shops.
Some of the advantages of social media to fashion businesses include creation of awareness. One other advantage of the social media to fashion business is the provision of visibility and opportunity for market research (Castillo-Abdul et al, 2021). As such, organisations can conduct opinion survey on brand visibility, customers’ satisfaction, evaluate market performance online customer service and other business-related research. These are done to develop proficient strategies to promote their brands and forge understanding and mutual relationship with consumers.
With awareness comes connectivity. Social media helps fashion entrepreneurs to connect and relate with fashion consumers. As Wu et al (2020) added, business enterprises can use social media platforms to interact with consumers and get feedback. Since the platforms allow every user to create and share information as they wish, it gives room to fashion designers to showcase their businesses to potential consumers and facilitates interaction (Bulut & Dogan, 2017). The feedback will be inculcated into the business operations to satisfy consumers better.
As Wang, Ahmed, Deng and Wang (2019) claim, consumers with strong attachment to a brand can easily influence the people around them to patronise such brand. They further state that by adopting and integrating the use of the social media into their business operation, brand owners can improve sales, ensure consumers prefer and are loyal to their brands. Similarly, they are good for advertising businesses and generating sales lead (Castillo-Abdul et al, 2021).
If research is properly conducted and the feedbacks from consumers are used to develop business marketing strategies, consumer buying can be influenced favourable for the organisation (López, Lizcano, Ramos & Matos, 2019). In addition, the use of social media enhances low cost of marketing. This is assured as almost all the entire features of the digital platforms are free to use, unlike conventional media and this is one of the major reasons they have become the easy-go-to media for business promotion all over the world (Bulut & Dogan, 2017)
This is guaranteed as fashion designers can advertise their products to their online contacts without paying any dime, except for those who need online advertisement, which is usually cheaper than advertising on conventional media – radio, television, and the prints. With billions of users across the world, fashion entrepreneurs can use the platforms to connect with and gain followers. Moon and Byungho (2018) also argue that the social media are useful for small and medium scale fashion brands in providing access to a large number of online users or customers at low cost.
A study by Danlos (2016) analysed the use of social media for marketing in the fashion industry. The study found that social media have provided several opportunities for fashion brands to use in promoting their businesses and giving their brands the desired publicity. The study also reported that consumer behaviour had changed with the exponential growth of the social media and the platforms had allowed dialogue between potential consumers and fashion brands.
The study by Manneh (2017), conducted to investigate the “influence of social media on fast fashion companies” in Sweden revealed that Instagram was the most used social medium, and the use of the social media was considered vital for the fast fashion e-commerce businesses because it gives them a direct contact with their customers, attract new customers and knowing their target market.
Similar findings were reported by Azar, Machado, and Vacas-deCarvalho (2016), De-Silva (2019). Castillo-Abdul et al (2021) in their study reported that social media engenders two-way communication between fashion brands and their followers on the social media platforms, increases the impacts of digital messages and lastly, ensures a robust engagement between fashion brand owners and their respective customers. From most of the studies, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter were discovered as the most used social media for fashion business promotion.
The study by Wang, Ahmed, Deng and Wang (2019) reported that social media marketing in Bangladesh fashion industry generated customer preference and attachment. The study however found that social media did not create committed consumers for fashion brands.
In extension of previous studies, a recent research reported that the use of social media for business promotion by fashion brands is significantly influenced by the brand’s business strategies and idea generations (Wu, Guaita-Martinez & Martin–Martin, 2020). This implies that effective use of the social media platforms for business promotion does not only rely on mere use but strategic use. Fashion brand owner must develop strategies that are efficient in generating lead and converting lead to patronage. This was also established in an earlier study by Klavech (2018), which concluded that there existed a significant influence of the social media and buying behaviour of the consumers. The study further reported that the quality of the online platforms adopted for business promotion would influence consumers’ behaviour towards brands.
However, despite the various benefits of social media to businesses, certain issues surround their adoption for business promotion. Manneh (2017) posits that the platforms are prone to risks, such as not getting the right quality of product ordered and such risks do discourage some users to shop online or relate with online vendors (Hjort & Lantz, 2016). When this happens, it ruins the reputation of the seller. This is also identified by Rogers (1962) as one (media characteristics) of the factors that the influence adoption of new technology. Other risks can be technical fault during online transaction and fraud, social media do no enhance interpersonal interaction between the buyers and sellers, and this may reduce the credibility and trust for the sellers (Manneh, 2017).?
Methodology
Survey design was adopted for this study. Survey is the most popularly used quantitative research design and it is used to examine belief, attitude, behaviour, perception, and feelings of the population. The study stated that survey is used to gather structured data on education, business, health and other phenomena about the human society (Adjei, 2016; Kabir, 2018). Survey design is considered appropriate for this study because it is one of the most used research designs in marketing research (Stephan, 2019). The study population for this study are small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City, Edo state, Nigeria. This population comprises tailors, embroiderers, and stylists. Many of them have no apprentices while some have few. Many of the members of this population use their homes, little shop outside the house or rented shops as their workplace. The age range of these designers is usually between 18 and 60 years.
However, there is no available statistical data to show the total number of fashion designers in Benin City, Nigeria. Therefore, 200 fashion designers in the city were sampled in this study. Purposive and convenient sampling techniques were used to select sample. Purposive technique was used to select only small and medium scale fashion designers. The fashion designers in focus are tailor, stylists, and embroiderers. Convenience technique was deployed to select only those who willingly expressed readiness to participate in this study. The above criteria make the purposive sampling necessary for this study as the sample will be selected based on the above stated criteria.
Questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection for this study. It was well structured and simplified for easy understanding by the respondents. These items will be adequately structured to cover all the research questions. It was divided into two sections. ‘Section A’ contained the demographic data of the respondents while ‘Section B’ contained items that were used to answer the research questions in this study.
The researcher administered the questionnaire copies manually on the respondents. With the help of two research assistants, the researcher visited the fashion designers in their respective shops. The study and its objectives were explained to them and their approval to participate in the study was sought. The distributed copies of questionnaire were adequately monitored and retrieved after they have been attempted by the respondents. They were sorted and analysed afterwards.
The analysis of data was done based on structured research questions. The quantitative data collected was coded and analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) programme. The data was presented with the aid of tables and graphs and was analysed using simple percentages. Mean and standard deviation were used to determine the impact of the selected social media platforms on the businesses of the selected fashion designers
Findings
Table 2:
Demographic Profiles of the Respondents
Note. Field Work 2021
Table 2 contains the demographic characteristics of the respondents. As shown, majority of the fashion designers, 58%, can still be regarded as youth with ages 18 years and 35. The males dominated the study with 68.5% and more than half of the respondents are tailors (56.5%). Also, more than half (54%) of them is married, and fashion designers with tertiary education are the majority in this study with 55.5% of the total sample. It can be deduced from this finding that most of the small-scale fashion designers in Benin City are educated beyond secondary school, they are relatively young, and the vocation is mostly practiced by men.
Figure 1:
Social medium platform used for business
Note. Field Work 2021
Figure 1 shows the social media channels the fashion designers use for their business promotion. The respondents were asked to tick all the media they use for their business promotion. It was revealed that all the four identified social media platforms were used by 97% of the respondents, except the 2.5% of them that do not use any of the media. Twitter is the least platform used while WhatsApp is used by all the respondents, and it accounted for 43.5% of the total selection.
Table 3:
Extent of social media use
Note. Field Work 2021
Data presented in table 2 shows that more than half of the designers (51%) do post their works on the social media very often, followed by those that post often. This table shows that the small-scale fashion designers adopt the use of social media for business promotion to a large extent. Findings have shown that almost all the small-scale fashion designers (97.5%) make use of social media for business promotion, and they often use the platform. From these, it can be deduced that small scale fashion designers in Benin City adopts the use of social media for business promotion to a very large extent.
Figure 2:
Social media channel mostly used.
Note. Field Work 2021
As depicted by Figure 2, WhatsApp is the most used social media channel by small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City Nigeria (59%). None of the respondents picked Twitter as the most used channel.
?Table 4:
?Factors responsible for choice of preferred channel
Note. Field Work 2021
Table 4 contains justifications for choice of favourite channel in figure 2 by the fashion designers. As shown, majority of those who preferred WhatsApp do so because of its ease of use, followed by its relative advantages. Facebook and Instagram are mostly preferred by their relative advantage. The implication of this finding is that majority of the small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City prefer social media because of its relative advantages to their business, followed by ease of use and triability. Observability is the least considered factor.
Table 5:
Social media impacts on fashion designing
Note. Field Work 2021
Table 5 shows that the small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City use social media mostly for awareness creation (94.5%). This is followed by customer relationship (74%). It was revealed that the adoption and use of the social media had least impact on sales (39%).
Table 6:
Challenges encountered in adopting and using social media for business promotion.
Note. Field Work 2021
Of the total respondents, only 126 said they encountered challenges while using the social media to promote their businesses. Their responses are tabulated in table 6 above. The responses show that lack of sophisticated phone is the major challenge small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City faced in using social media to promote their businesses and this is followed by a struggle to gain more contacts/followers on the platforms.
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Discussion
The findings of this study have revealed that small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City have adopted the use of social media platforms – Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram – to communicate and promote their businesses. It was revealed that almost all the respondents use one platform or another while most of them combine the platforms for business communication and the use the platforms very often. This shows that the designers acknowledge the relevance of the new media to their business promotion, especially in this coronavirus pandemic era, when the need for online business communication is inevitable for entrepreneurs. This confirms the earlier position of Wang, et al (2019) that the use of social media has been growing tremendously, especially among fashion business owners to connect with fashion consumers around the globe. This high level of adoption may also be attributed to the fact that majority of the fashion designers are educated, with majority of them having advanced education.?
Also, WhatsApp was found to be the most adopted and used social media platform for business communication by the fashion designers, with 59% of the total respondents favouring the channel. This is followed by Facebook, Instagram but none of the designers picked Twitter as the most used platform. This result does not provide support for earlier findings by Manneh (2017), who found Instagram as the most used platform for fashion promotion in Sweden. This also negates the findings of Wang et al (2019) that 89% respondents followed fashion brands using Facebook and Instagram and the conclusion of Bulut and Dogan, 2017) that Facebook is most used for business promotion. This new finding may be because earlier studies focused on big fashion brands while this study focused on small and medium scale fashion brands. Further analysis revealed that relative advantage and ease of use (complexity) were the two major reasons the fashion designers prefer their most used media platform. This is as identified in the diffusion of innovation theory as the factors that affect the adoption of new innovations, such as the social media. Currently, WhatsApp has gained popularity among social media platforms due to its ease of use, low cost of data and it is currently the most used social media platform in Nigeria (Varrella, 2020).?
Furthermore, it was revealed that small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City use social media mostly to create awareness for their businesses and customer relationship. Increase in sales was the least impact felt by the designers on their businesses. This finding supports the conclusion of Ahmad et al (2015) that social media are tools for public relations and for connecting potential buyers and sellers. This also supports the findings of Danlos (2016), Manneh (2017) and Azar et al (2016) that the use of social media for business promotion has grown tremendously among brand owners and they engender awareness creation, exposure and lead generation.
This study however revealed that lack of sophisticated phone is the major challenge small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City faced in using social media to promote their businesses and this is followed by struggle to gain more contacts/followers on the platforms. Other challenges are customers expecting them to sew exact garment style they see online, stiff competition, being snubbed by online users, cyber bullying. These findings lend credence to the conclusion of Klavech (2018) that the effective use of social media is dependent on the quality of the online platforms adopted. This signifies that the strategies adopted on the media and how strategic the brand owners are in integrating the digital platforms will determine the impacts they have on businesses.?
Conclusion
The implication of the findings of this study is that small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City, Edo state Nigeria have adopted the use of social media to promote their businesses, and this will aid their business communication during the current coronavirus pandemic. With awareness creation for their businesses, customer relations and other impacts, the use of the online media platforms becomes pivotal to fashion business success. It is therefore suggested that fashion entrepreneurs can engage social media experts to help them set up their online business pages for more awareness, generation of more contacts and lead generation. Government can also empower the entrepreneurs with social media marketing skills and internet-enabled gadgets for use.?
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QUESTIONNAIRE
Dear Respondent,
This questionnaire is designed to evaluate the adoption and use of social media for business communication by small and medium scale fashion designers in Benin City. Your candid response to the questions will be highly appreciated and shall be treated with utmost confidentiality. Your responses shall be used for no other purposes other than academic.
Thank you.
Instruction:?Kindly tick (√) the option(s) that contain the information/answer of your choice, unless where stated otherwise.?
Demographic Data
??????i.?????????Age??????????a. 18-25 [ ] b. 26-35 [ ] c. 36-45 [ ] d. 46 - 55 [ ] e. 56 - above [ ]
????ii.?????????Sex: ?????????a. Male [ ] b. Female [ ]
??iii.?????????Type of business ???????a. Tailor [ ] b. Embroiderer [ ] c. Designer [ ]
??iv.?????????Level of Education: ??a. Primary [ ] b. SSCE [ ] c. Tertiary [ ] d. Non formal [ ]
SECTION B
1.???Which social medium platform do you use for your business?
a. Facebook [ ] b. Twitter [ ] c. Instagram [ ] d. WhatsApp [ ] e. Others (specify)
2.????How often do you post on the social media about your business?
Very a. often [ ] b. often [ ] c. seldom [ ] d. rarely [ ] e. not at all [ ]
3.????Which of the following social media do you use to promote your business (you can pick more than one)?
a. Facebook [ ] b. Twitter [ ] c. Instagram [ ] d. WhatsApp [ ] e. Others (specify)
4.????Which is your most preferred social media platform for business promotion?
a. Facebook [ ] b. Twitter [ ] c. Instagram [ ] d. WhatsApp [ ]
5.????Please indicate reasons for your choice in question 4.
a. Benefits to my businesses [ ] b. it is easy to use [ ] c. it is suitable for my lifestyle [ ] d. Because those who use it give testimonies [ ] e. I have tried it and found it useful.
6.????Kindly indicate the benefits of social media to your business
Others; please indicate ……………………………………………………………………..
7.???Are there any challenges you encountered when using the social media for promoting your business?
Yes [ ] b. No [ ]
8.??????????????If yes, please mention.
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9.??????????????Are there any disadvantages to using the social media platforms to promote your business?
Yes [ ] b. No [ ]
10.??????????????If yes to the above question, please mention the disadvantages.
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Filled in by the evaluating lecturer:
Overall feedback (approximately 100 words):