CREATING BRAND IMAGE IN FASHION START-UP: THE IMPACT OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITY BASED MARKETING

• Main Author: Khairunnisa, Selma
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/80541
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The tipping point of the fashion industry 2018 for first time reached when more than half of the apparel comes from developing country that make competition getting tighter. Start-up fashion industry usually fail get the suitable marketing channels to deliver their brand identity since lack of resources. Virtual community based marketing can be a strategy for start-up in fashion industry to increase brand image of the company because marketing media just focused on adding new customer while the virtual community based marketing focusing on maintaining the relationship with customer. Virtual marketing give independent time and location for both of the marketer and customer to access the information and community based also suitable in Indonesia since they tended to create community as their culture. As the chunk of virtual marketing, social media become part of daily life and more effective way to share information among youth people. Thus, the company can deliver their brand identity to the customers via virtual community especially social media group. The purpose of this research is to see the effect of virtual community based marketing that influence to the brand image and what factor of virtual community based marketing that affect the most to the brand image of start-up fashion companies. This research create the implementation strategy design based on the analysis of virtual community based marketing towards brand image. The virtual community based marketing in this research is define as the independent variable and the brand image define as the dependent variable. The sample of this study involving 100 respondents with 15-29 years old, and live in Bandung or Jakarta. This research use simple linear regression, rank order analysis, and descriptive analysis. The questionnaire conduct with close ended question with four-point Likert scale. The result found that the virtual community based marketing give positive impact to the brand image with 55.8% coefficient determination and the most affected factor of virtual community based marketing is the customer support where the company can get feedback from both positive and negative experience with the product from customer in community. The customer support can be implemented by involving customer from community the business process such as designing the product together. The most effective media to do the virtual community based marketing are Line group, Whatsapp group, and community account on Instagram. This research will be useful for people who have start-up business and peoples who want to create business strategy in fashion industry.