Social media and luxury: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Luxury, historically an exclusive, rare and elitist phenomenon, is changing. This is predominantly driven by technological developments, particularly social media, and the rising level of consumer empowerment in the marketplace. A maturing stream of research has emerged assessing the effects of social media platforms on luxury brands, offerings and consumers. However, there has been no comprehensive analysis of this extant literature synthesizing the current state of knowledge and postulating future research directions. This paper addresses this gap by utilizing a systematic literature review approach. A total of 115 articles were collected and analysed and five core themes were identified, examining(1) luxury brand strategy, (2) luxury brand social media communications, (3) luxury consumer attitudes and perceptions, (4) engagement and (5) social media's influence on brand performance-related outcomes. These themes are comprehensively explored to understand the myriad impacts of social media on luxury businesses before conceptualizing the themes as a holistic framework explaining social media's role within luxury. The framework developed highlights the fragmented yet progressive nature of research on the confluence of social media and luxury, and signals fruitful avenues for further inquiry. It is proposed that scholarly attention is directed towards multiple lines of inquiry, including social media's role in luxury brand construction online, social media's role in facilitating 'moments of luxury', younger consumers' luxury consumption, as well as the integration of both future innovative technological developments and novel social media platforms within luxury branding.

Literature reviews as independent studies: guidelines for academic practice

“…From a qualitative perspective, scholars can conduct a content analysis or, more specifically, a thematic analysis, by subjectively organizing the content into themes. For example, Creevey et al (2022) reviewed the literature on social media and luxury, providing insights on five core themes (i.e., luxury brand strategy, luxury brand social media communications, luxury consumer attitudes and perceptions, engagement, and the influence of social media on brand performance-related outcomes) generated through a content (thematic) analysis. Systematic approaches for inductive concept development through qualitative research are similarly applied in literature reviews in an attempt to reduce the subjectivity of derived themes.…”

Nuevas estrategias de promoción en las Industrias Culturales. El lanzamiento en TikTok del álbum Motomami de Rosalía

“…Esta tendencia está presente en áreas y campos muy dispares (Hafez, 2021;Creevey, Coughlan y O'Connor, 2022), pero tiene una gran fuerza en su aplicación a las industrias culturales, incluida la musical (Castro-Martínez, Pérez-Ordóñez y Torres-Martín, 2020; Gilstrap, Teggart, Cabodi, Hills y Price, 2021). Las redes sociales no solo influyen en las ventas (Dewan y Ramaprasad, 2014), sino que han entrado a formar parte del ecosistema musical a través de su potencial como plataformas para recomendaciones por parte de los prosumers (Tan, Bu, Chen, Xu, Wang y He, 2011;Kastner, 2020) y como elementos que intervienen en todas las fases del proceso, desde la producción al consumo musical, pasando por la distribución (Mjøs, 2011).…”

Is social media marketing worth it for luxury brands? The dual impact of brand page satisfaction and brand love on word-of-mouth and attitudinal loyalty intentions

“…The growing popularity of social media has altered the fabric of a wide range of businesses, including luxury brands (Creevey et al , 2021). Luxury brands are identified as having excellent quality, high prices and exclusive distribution channels (Kapferer, 1997).…”