Fashion Business Context Fashion Business Context_Claudia Ferraretto | Page 32

E-Reputation: a passe-partout for Chinese Market

I

talian luxury fashion brands are
increasing the target to Chinese market in order to make
as much profit as possible from
Chinese consumers, since china’s consumption of luxury fashion goods category is amongst the
highest in the world (Bonetti, 2014).
But as Zisper et al. (2016) report
in their studies “a rising proportion
of Chinese consumers focus on a
few brands, and some are becoming
loyal to single brands”, this means
that becoming part of the closed
set of the few brands consider
by them is increasing challenging.
Chinese people are attracted
to luxury goods to show their
wealth and social position, so that,
nowadays, the real challenge for

luxury fashion brands is their reputation and their
brand image. A brand should be well-known, renowned and, since in this country more than 980 million people are now online, improve its presence on
internet through Baidu (Chinese web services company), social networks, blogs, increasing IWOM (Internet
Word of Mouth) and its “E-Reputation” (Olivier, 2014).
The 91% of internet users have accounts in popular
Chinese social networks: Weibo, WeChat, Douban,
these are the socials in which Chinese people spend
most of their time, for this reason the presence of a
brand on social networks is imperative to communicate with its consumers, in order to better understand what their consumer could like, promote their
brand name and confirm that what they are selling

“a brand should be
well-known, renowned”

Fashion China Agency (2016) suggest that successful luxury brands in china had invested a lot in
their digital communication, trying to combine e-commerce with a good digital marketing strategy.

Social Network: Weibo
Here the brand share content on the brand. We
can see different photos of celebrities wearing Versace, of course the most popular photos are those
of Asian celebrities.

Social Network: Douban
It is a platform dedicated to consumer reviews on
services and products.
The brand has launched a campaign called “Cut &
Craft” by defying its most creative fans to create
brand’s handbags with the help of tips and a small
manual; the most original bag was rewarded by the
brand.

Social Networks: VIP Weibo Account
It offer privileges, discounts and gifts to fans with a
VIP Weibo Account.
32

Social Network: Weibo
The brand is known through the socials to
have made a campaign by creating a competition on his Weibo account. This allowed
fans to actively participate in making themed
photographs. This helped Fendi to have many
responses and it showed at the same time
that Chinese users are present and read the
contents of the page. they like to participate
in the events of brands because they love the
interaction.

Social Network: WeChat
Since on WeChat the brand has to invite users to follow their official account by scanning the QR code, and then thank the new
follower personally; this social network is
sometimes run by local distributors, a method that many brands have decided to use.