New Business Set Up for Branding Strategies on Social Media - Instagram

This study focuses on branding of home-based businesses that were set up on Instagram. With the advent of smartphone, Instagram as a Social Networking Site has been gaining popularity and the medium of choice for aspiring business owners. However there has been little research done regarding the businesses that were set up on Instagram especially research that focus on branding strategies. It's fascinating to note that businesses on Instagram are still pretty much under the radar even though it generates sales equivalent to a proper e-commerce business. This study sought to investigate and explore this phenomenon and understand how the business owners strategized their brand positioning. Qualitative research of in-depth interview has been undertaken with three respondents that are business owners themselves and the finding showed that Instagram is the best and current platform for aspiring business owners to start their business before deciding to venture offline. Three types of businesses were chosen with current followers of more than 10,000 and as this research was done, all three business owners had already make plan for offline expansion. This proves that as a Social Networking Site, Instagram plays an important role in shaping the way home-based business craft impactful strategies, as good branding is essential from the beginning to cut through the clutter of many businesses that are available on Instagram. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.