Four years ago, as an engineering student, I never imagined that I could find success in selling clothes. In 2016, I opened a women’s fashion shop on Taobao, China’s biggest C2C online sales platform. My shop has attracted over 20,000 customers with 14% becoming regular customers since.

When studying at university, a place in the suburbs of the city, I noticed most students preferred shopping for clothes on Taobao. This inspired me to start my online business. I withdrew £685 from my savings and opened my women’s fashion shop, Chic Naomi, on Taobao. To gather insight on customer preferences, I sent out 450 questionnaires through online social platforms such as WeChat, Weibo and the university’s campus forum targeting females aged 18 to 25. Then I positioned the style concept and price range of my shop in accordance with the 320 received responses. I visited a range of wholesale malls to find and compare the desired products and made deals with potential suppliers. In the end, I bought 20 female casual jackets costing approximately £16 each as my first inventory.

In order to attract my first guests, I found some micro influencers in the university and offered free clothes to let them post photos of themselves wearing my clothes on social media. All of the influencers were university students without too many advertisements on their social media, instead, they usually posted photos about their daily life. So the way they made their followers feel was not advertising but sharing and recommending. With massive advertisements online, people tend to trust the recommendations from influencers more. Further than that, they would like to spread the recommendations to friends. Word of mouth recommendations can happen in a one-to-many fashion via virtual relationships (Joel Backaler, Digital Influence, 2018). After serving thousands of customers, I gained an understanding of marketing and would like to learn more in a postgraduate programme.

Consumers in most Asian cultures tend to look for assurance that a product is going to work before making a purchase decision. The lack of reliable institutions strengthens the need for the third-party validation that trusted influencers may offer (Joel Backaler, Digital Influence, 2018). To put this idea into practice and to encourage customers to stay loyal, I built chat groups where my customers could share their experiences and opinions on fashion. I would send out a special discount purchase link to invite regular customers to purchase new products before the official release. Consumers would like to conduct eWOM behaviour because they desire for social interaction, are driven by economic incentives and their concern for other consumers, and aspire to enhance their own self-worth (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). So I made rules about customers posting buyer shows on social media to get vouchers. Theses buyer shows acting as free advertising and recommendations keep attracting new customers.

To get exposure for my shop, I began to collaborate with social media influencers who are more focused on clothing and build business relationships with them. Results proved that their followers are more likely to become my customers with a conversion rate of about 7% each time they post a set of photos. I collaborated with an influencer with over 120,000 followers to promote a product line of beach-themed dresses. The reason why I choose her is that she lives in southern China where there are plenty of chances to go to the beach and most of her posted daily photos are taken by the sea. After conducting some research on her loyal fans, I found most of them are females between 16 and 35, same as my targeting customers. The vlog we took on a popular beach gained over 24,600 click rate in the first week and the sales of this product line increased by 37% compared with the week before.

Although I employed customer service staffs two years ago, I insist on participating in customer service when I have time. Interacting with customers is the most efficient way to know their needs. Most customers have difficulties when choosing clothes online and they would turn to customer service for professional advice. I usually give advice considering on their own conditions instead of just coercing them into buying my clothes. In the near future, I would like to be an authentic fashion influencer who has her own style.

During the four years, I have interacted with thousands of customers, bargained in wholesale markets in real life, and managed logistics to ensure timely deliveries. This experience develops my negotiation skills, and helps me learn about consumer behaviour, marketing analysis, advertising and promotion methods in practice. As a future influencer, along with promoting my own brand studio, I would like to share my experience on clothing matching, techniques on how to choose the cost-effective clothing and trending fashion news.

[University Name]’ open, individualistic, free and loud atmosphere has never failed to fascinate me for its being an ideal college not only to acquire knowledge but also to gain critical thinking and practical skills. The MSc in Marketing and Technology aims to shape and create new marketing approaches leveraging emerging technologies. As an online shop owner, I believe the market is transformable and am willing to employ technologies in different platforms, such as xxxxx. I will be able to analyse the relationships between them and to evaluate the merits of various forms of market research through studying the up-to-date research on marketing, technology, branding and consumer experiences. 如果可以举具体老师和论文的例子更好。I look forward to taking the course Marketing Strategy that includes working with a London-based company, where I shall translate theoretical implications of innovation to practical applications and build productive relationships with project collaborators.

Being well motivated and soundly qualified, I believe that studying at [University Name] will enhance my ability in doing business and reshape my way of thinking. This is why I am applying for your programme. I am ready.