Usage of Twitter in a Global Context: A Qualitative Analysis

Social media has made the world smaller. Social media offers an interactive and diverse platform allowing dialogue between the consumers and retailers. Increasingly, social media marketing is gaining traction and is being used in business to attract attention with Twitter being the second most used platform by businesses worldwide. This current study utilizes a qualitative research approach to examine how retailers, specifically H&M, tailor their social media-marketing message in their international markets. H&M was selected due to its popularity as it is the fourth most popular apparel brand on Twitter. Twitter feed for the H&M brand was downloaded for a period of 30 days resulting in 704 tweets. Specific emphasis was given to: images, timing and date of the post, subject, number of retweets, number of likes, hashtags, and mentions. Data was coded and the following themes were identified: (1) Product, (2) Promotion, (3) Cultural differences, (4) Cultural Diffusio