From likes to commitment : a case study of micro companies’ social media usage

Abstract: The purpose with the thesis is to identify, analyze and present the problems micro companies in the Swedish fashion and sport industry are facing when using social media as a communication tool in their marketing activities. Also relevant digital communication channels have been investigated and presented. Two case studies have been made with two Swedish micro companies in order to fulfill our purpose and answer our two research questions. The result from the interviews showed that micro companies, overall in the industry, could benefit from using social media as a communication channel, but they struggle to know how they should use it. We answer our research question through creating and presenting our own constructed model that companies should use in their business for planning their social media strategy and overcome the found problems. The thesis is a qualitative research with an abducted approach. We did an active research with a case study on the two companies Kask of Sweden and Gococo. Through deep interviews, we got much information about how they work today and what problems they face when using social media. We have worked with four themes during the entire process; present, relationship, problems and future, to facilitate for the reader and for us. The study has high reability for the investigated companies, and we also argue that it could be of interest for other fashion and sport micro companies at the Swedish market. An theoretical framework was conducted through researching the specific area and finding relevant theory and published material concerning marketing and communicaton, as well as digital marketing theory and publications about social media. The chosen material is presented in the theory chapter where an own constructed model is presented as a guideline for the reader. It will help the reader to find the theories and their elations to each other. We believe it to be a good way of ease the understanding and the relevance of the chosen theories. The research shows that micro companies in the Swedish fashion sport industry faces different problems using social media as a communication platform for their company. Thus micro companies often have a very limited amount of resources and neither have the money, the knowledge or the time to manage a large marketing and communication social media can be beneficial if used properly. Though it comes with a few struggles. The main problems concerned around knowing who their real customer is, how to handle the relationship and create stronger connections with customers, difficulties in knowing which channels to use and how to handle them properly. They also found problems in knowing what how to communicate the right image and get the desired result of the published materials. Lastly the companies sometimes lacked a clear strategy in managing their social media platforms and raised questions about the language use, time consumption and who should run the activates. With our ”Four step-from likes to commitment” model we want to put attention to the most relevant steps a company needs to be aware of before starting and during working with social media, as well as be a strategy to handle and overcome the problems the previously struggled with.