DISSERTATION Course/ Programme: BSc (Hons) Business Management Module: BAM6001 Dissertation Supervisor: Asma Begum Assessment Number: One of Two (75% of final mark) Assignment Topic: Study of social media marketing strategies at Leonardo company Assignment Length: 12,929 words Student Name: Đoàn Mỹ Châu Cohort: 16 ID student : 2124801 Submission Date: May 1st, 2023 Student: Doan My Chau ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This dissertation wouldn't be accomplished without the advice and support of numerous persons who contributed and extended their valued guidance in various ways throughout the study's processing and completion. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to University of Bolton for providing chances for people to expand their point of view on how the reality in the field of business management appears. I'd also want express my deepest appreciation my supervisor Phd. Asma Begum and PhD.
Pham Thi Tuyet Trinh for the passionate advice and insightful recommendations that supported me in completing my dissertation. Following that, I'd want to offer my sincerest gratitude to Leonardo company and the CEO, Mr.Dang Van Phu and manager of the marketing department, all the employees, team members in the marketing department, company, who assist me with moral and material needs, as well as sharing their knowledge to support me in my researching. Sincerely appreciated ! Ho Chi Minh city, May 1st 2023 Doan My Chau 2 Student: Doan My Chau Declaration: I declare that the thesis has been composed by myself and that the work has not be submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. 3 Student: Doan My Chau TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.
Overview about Research Subject:. Key Elements of SMM strategy in Devloping Stage: .Techniques and procedures:. 42 4 Student: Doan My Chau 4.Method to reach goals. The assessment of Leonardo SMM strategy:.
Analyzing interview and survey data: .Method to reach goals:. Summary key findings .Implication for manager in industry: .Suggest for future research:. 118 5 Student: Doan My Chau TABLE OF FIRGURES Fig 2.4: The conceptual framework………………………………………………………….26 Fig 3: Research onion……………………………………………………………………….2: The post of Leonardo in their fan page with clear brand information………….3: The post of Leonardo in their fan page with brand identity………….5: Respondents‟ years of working at Leonardo………………….6: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM stratgey in clarifying the segments of target.7: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in targeting active audiences…………….8: The evaluation of Leonardo SMM strategy in using the right platform……….9: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM stratgey in using suitable communication style.10: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in setting objectives align with overall goals and company strategy…………………………………………………………………51 Fig 4.11: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in setting measurable SMM objectives.12: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in setting realistic, achievable SMM objectives……………………………………………………………………………………….13: Evaluate Leonardo‟s Leonardo SMM strategy in not setting too many SMM objectives……………………………………………………………………………….14: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in using suitable promotion tools………54 Fig 4.15: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in allocating sufficient resources.16: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in content planning to build relationship with customers…………………………………………………………………………………….17: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in systematically planning to deal with negative feedbacks………………………………………………………………………….18: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in exploiting effectively the features of current social media platforms………………………………………………………………57 Fig 4.19: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in integrating social media platforms….20: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in using suitable evaluation metrics….21: Evaluate Leonardo‟s SMM strategy in clarifying brand identity social………59 Fig 4.22: Respondents‟ answer about factors that need to prioritize when modifying Leonardo's SMM strategy…………………………………………………………………….23: The recommendations of respondents………………………………………… .61 6 Student: Doan My Chau LIST OF TABLE Table 4.1: The table shows SMM revenue, amount spend, reach, impression, conversion from 2020- 2022……………………………………………………………………………….2: The overall criteria of respondents‟ assessment of Leonardo SMM strategy.47 7 Student: Doan My Chau LIST OF CHART/PHOTO: Fig 4.2: The post of Leonardo in their fan page with clear brand information………….3: The post of Leonardo in their fan page with brand identity………………………45 Fig 1.1: The chart shows the revenue of fashion industry in Vietnam that include accessories, apparel, footwear sectors from 2017-2022 and predict to 2027………… .3: The picture shows one of Leonardo products…………………………………….1: The chart shows the advertising forms for websites / mobile applications of retail businesses…………………………………………………………………………………… 96 Fig 4.1: Company permission for using data Fig 5.1: Popular social media platfroms in Vietnam……………………………………….99 8 Student: Doan My Chau ABSTRACT In this research, the author research about the social media marketing strategy developed of Leonardo in Facebook. The objectives of this study are describing the developing of Leonardo‟s social media marketing strategy and determine what factors in this social media marketing strategy were favorable and unfavorable.
Then, suggesting appropriate recommendations for them to improve the effectiveness of their social media marketing strategy. secondary data from company‟s online advertisement report also applied to clarify research issue and primary data and from semi-structured interview with marketing department to have a deeper understand when describing Leonardo social media marketing in developing stage. Additionally, survey with 96 respondents that understand and know about this social media marketing strategy from marketing, business, accounting departments to collect their assessments about Leonardo social media marketing strategy. From there, the author will mismatch survey and interview data to validate the finding of favorable and unfavorable factors in their social media marketing strategy.
Findings of this research indicated that how they developing social media platforms and setting objectives are the major issues, followed by some of the methods they use to reach goals. This research contributes in improving the results of Leonardo social media marketing by researching the development of this strategy and provide better understanding of key factors that important in the developing stage of social media marketing. Keywords: social media marketing strategy, Leonardo company 9 Student: Doan My Chau 1. Introduction: Social media marketing (SMM) is a modern means to reach enormous potential customers by using online social networks and communities like Facebook, Instagram, etc.
(Laudon & Traver, 2020), which can be seen as a revolution from traditional media. Because hardly anyone can deny the increasing popularity of the internet and social media (SM) in recent years. This phenomenon has affected many industries, becomes an effective and convenient ways to connect with customers (Dwivedi et al., 2021), and Vietnamese businesses are also affected by it, especially fashion and accessory companies (Vy, 2020). Consequently, SMM is now essential for many businesses to concentrate on and enhance.
Problem statement: The increasing popularity of SMM as analyzed above provide huge opportunities and challenges for Vietnamese companies to develop and enhance their presence widely. Furthermore, Vietnam has lately been identified as an ideal place for the development of SMM due to its modern Internet infrastructure and massive SM users (EU-Vietnam Business Network, 2018). Currently, SMM in Vietnam witnessed the dramatically increased and it is considerably affect the behaviors of Vietnam retailers (Vietnam E- commerce Association, 2021). In relation to Vietnamese fashion and accessories companies, it affect heavily the means for promote products (Vy, 2020), thanks to its efficiency information costs, ubiquity, regardless of distance and time, which approaches potential customers easily, conveniently (Laudon & Traver, 2020).
However, 10 Student: Doan My Chau many firms are struggles to utilize SMM to boost income and reach clients (Harris, 2019), and Leonardo is not an exception. Recent years, Leonardo has decided to emphasize on SMM instead of traditional, they toward SMM to leverage the brand awareness, which will good for the overall strategy in market development and increase profit to have a solid foundation for growth. However, their SMM not received many effective results, since brand awareness still not increased as expected and the number of potential and new young customers still low, although young people is one of their target and the majority buy group in Vietnam fashion industry (Minh et al. Additionally, they noticed that the revenue decreased, despite the fact Vietnam fashion and accessories indutsry still have high potential, becasue according to Nielsen report 2019, many Vietnamese spend about 36% of their salary after covering the essential for living for fashion (Vietnam News Agency, 2017) and the revenue of this industry, has increased quickly from 0.57$ billion in 2017 to 1.99$ billion in 2022 (Statista, 2022) (See Appendix 1 Fig 1.
So, this research aims assess their SMM strategy developemnt based on theoretical, to detect the well- developed and unwell-developed points and recommend some solutions to tackle the issues. Because the strategy development has closes relations with the effectiveness of SMM, which means ineffective SMM performance can be applied to query and criticize the development SMM strategy in order to identify unwell-developed aspects (Gimbert et al. So, it encourages the revision of the strategy. Overview about Research Subject: Leonardo, established in 2014, a B2C leather fashion and accessories company (See Appendix 1 Fig 1.
Their mission is customers will be provided Vietnam 11 Student: Doan My Chau leather products with high quality standards, various designs with perfect in smallest details at reasonable prices. Additionally, their vision is become one of the most favorite and popular brands in Vietnam fashion and accessories industry in the next ten years. So, the overall goals of Leonardo is enhancing the brand awareness to become popular with many people and build long-term relationship with them and increase revenue to have a solid foundation for growth. They are retailer in Vietnam leather with four main categories, including shoes, bags, wallets, accessories like clutch, bring elegance, luxury vibes (See Appendix 1 Fig 1.
They are really confident about high quality standards and give one-year warranty for most of their products. Their headquarters is in Ho Chi Minh city and currently, they using the brick-and-click model to selling products (Laudon & Traver, 2020), with nine physical stores in Hanoi, Vung Tau, Bien Hoa and in company‟s websites, Facebook, in many e-commerce platforms, like Shopee, Lazada, etc. Additionally, they use value- based pricing strategy (Kotler et al., 2018), because they offer reasonable price for high quality products that making from high quality standards leather from Vietnam and good post-purchase service like warranty. Finally, although they have traditional like print posters and digital marketing like search engine (SEO) in Google, their main focus is on SMM.
Research Scope: The research scope will be SMM strategy in developing stage, the main marketing media of Leonardo in the current social network in Facebook and picture-sharing, video- sharing. This strategy is in functional-level, which shows how the components of an organization‟s effectively deliver the corporate strategies in term of people, resources, 12 Student: Doan My Chau procedures. It involves making decisions, activities in functional-level that align to business strategy (Wheelen et al., 2018) and support company to reach overall goals. Research Contribution: This study is essential to support Leonardo in detecting the well and unwell-developed of their SMM strategy, by describing it and evalute it based on the assessment of people understand and know about it.
Basing on those findings, Leonardo marketers could have suitable adjustments, modifications to enhance the effectivenes of their SMM strategy. Finally, although there are many researches of this issues in health industry, like Baptista et al. (2020) or in tourism industry (Kou, 2022), there are lack of research about this issue fashion industry for small Vietnamese companies. Thus, this study aims to fill this gap of knowledge and may provide valuable information for many small Vietnamese firms with similar size that may face similar issues.
Research Ethics: This research will be compliance with the research regulations, ethics checklists of the university (See Appendix 4) and guarantee that the checklists for reserach ethics is followed. Moreover, the plagiarism issue will be avoided when referencing knowledge of previous studies, and the citation will follow the Havard Refence style. Research Structure: The research is based on academic sources, evidences collected and include five main parts. First is introduction chapter with general information of Leonardo, research problems and brief backgrounds of the research, research objectives, questions, ethic and structure.
Second is the literature review to review previous research, studies 13 Student: Doan My Chau about SMM. Third is methodology, showing the method to conduct this research. Fourthly, this chapter provides keys finding and analysis from data collected.