Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges of Social Media Marketing in the Bangladeshi Fashion Industry.

Abstract

The proposed thesis explores the strategic application of the Social Media Marketing (SMM) by fashion brands in Bangladesh, both in the opportunities it offers and the obstacles that impede its successful usage. With the enormous rate of digital transformation and a vast social media audience in the country, social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube have emerged as the key platforms in influencing fashion branding, consumer engagement, and market expansion. The paper follows a qualitative exploratory case study with the use of secondary data from 25 peer-reviewed articles, theses, industry reports and working papers. Using an abductive approach and thematic analysis, the study identifies three key dimensions of social media marketing (SMM) in the Bangladeshi fashion industry: platform types and usage patterns, major strategic opportunities, and prevailing implementation challenges. The results indicate that fashion brands, especially SMEs, strongly depend on Facebook and Instagram to be seen, tell a visual story, collaborate with an influencer, and engage in communication. SMM offers brands significant opportunities, including enhanced brand awareness, deeper customer engagement, potential for loyalty development, growth in social commerce, and support for women’s entrepreneurship and sustainable fashion communication. Nonetheless, the research also reports the presence of some essential challenges, including the lack of digital proficiency, budgeting issues, irregular analytics usage, reliance on platform-based algorithms, content overload, and cultural or ethical market biases that are unique to Bangladeshi. The findings reveal strategic suggestions to fashion brand managers, trainers in the industry, and policymakers to become more digital, focus on content strategies, and sustainable growth in the highly competitive digital market. This study also provides insights to academic literature by utilizing TAM, TOE, RBV, DOI, and Relationship Marketing theories to find application in an emerging market and suggestions on the enhancement of SMM in the fashion industry of Bangladesh.