Section 1: Introduction
1.1 Academic topic:
Social media has become one of the latest and most popular forms of mass communication in recent years. In the context of the fashion industry which is one of the most dynamic and rapidly changing consumer-oriented business this assumes greater significance and hence analyzing the impact of social media marketing on the brand awareness and
1.2 Rationale of the study
Social media is a force to reckon with, which has enabled marketers to have a channel of communication with their customers and allows for interaction with them as well. Such interactive forms of mass communication were unheard of and not available in the past whereas the technology advancements in information and communication technology have made this possible. Social media is often referred to as marketers delight as it has become a tool to make interactive decisions and has the power to influence many aspects including consumer preferences. This research proposal aims to study the effects of social media as a tool to promote and create brand awareness through the analysis of the fashion industry.
1.3 Research Objectives
Objective 1
To explore the effect of social media on brand awareness
Objective 2
To analyze the customer's attitudes and buying behavior as a result of social media marketing in the fashion industry
Objective 3
To provide recommendations to organizations on effective use of social media marketing in order to induce positive brand awareness
1.4 Fashion industry in Hong Kong
Many of the consumers are now getting their information on the social media websites, many of the retailers in the luxury fashion industry are setting up their own online platforms and some are using third party online shopping platforms. The various luxury brands that are sold through traditional stores are shown in the graph above. And the increase in the use of social media platforms such as WeChat and Sino Welbo in HongKong are used to promote their latest collection and also for providing information and interacting with the customers(Tumczyx, 2016). Hence, this research focuses on analyzing the factors that influence the purchase intentions of the consumers given the various social media marketing activities of these luxury brands.

Section 2. Literature Review
The social media has been in use by a wide range of industries for the promotion of their products and has also provided many innovative options thanks to its inherent nature of being an interactive mode of mass communication. Any form of the message can be conveyed through the social media which need not to be limited to a marketing campaign; it could be a social cause message or any other message that warrants to be communicated on a mass basis and or communication that needs feedback(Schivinski & Dabrowski, 2015). The flexibility of eliciting feedback after communicating a message to a large number of persons using a singular platform makes it an easy task, at the same time today technology has been developed to such an extent that the target section of people to whom a mass communication is intended to can be identified and can be the recipients of such mass communication.
2.1 Brand strategies and social media
A study titled â€œBrand strategies in social mediaâ€ by Tsimonis and Dimitriadis examined the reasons for use of social media by companies and on how they use the social media to their advantage and what strategies and policies are followed to extract the best out of such social media campaigns. The study brought out many dimensions to the use of social media including increased popularity of social media, interaction with customers, customer engagement, creating brand awareness and many other such related findings. Marketing managers who have embarked on campaigns to create brand awareness for their companies have been under a great handicap in the past while using noninteractive modes of mass communication such as the press and visual media as these were to the two major channels of mass communication available in the past. However with the advent of social media marketing managers have been greatly enabled to plan, create and deploy interactive mass communication messages which have given great results to such companies (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014).
2.2 Motives of fashion consumers
The fashion industry is one which changes its product and design offerings during various parts of the year by bringing new collections as per the various seasons of the year. This has been a great challenge apart from the high cost associated with such regular changes in product and design which makes social media a popular medium for the promotional activities of the fashion industry (Wolny & Mueller, 2013). While using the social media, the fashion industry gets an opportunity to study and understand customer moods, tastes, and preferences based on demographic pattern and can use such precious information to tweak their design and product offerings to customers as per the customer moods, taste, and preferences(Park & Cho, 2012).
2.3 Social media marketing and customer relationships
One other study stresses the usage of social media technology for the customers to

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Read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, "Mars Banks on Al...