Social media interactions and brand luxuriousness: the role of materialism

Abstract

Purpose This study aims at investigating how the level of brand–consumer interaction between luxury brands and consumers on social media may affect the perception of brands’ luxuriousness. In particular, this study is focused on the moderating role of consumers’ materialism. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a quantitative approach. Data were collected with two online experiments. Study 1 was run to test whether a luxury brand’s product description was perceived as more luxurious when published on a social media platform versus the brand’s website, and if consumers’ materialism influences this effect. Study 2 explains the underlying psychological mechanism by underlining the mediating role of psychological distance. Findings The results show that branded luxury products are perceived as more luxurious when these are communicated on a social media platform (vs on the brand’s Web page), and consumers are high (vs low) in materialism, due to high psychological distance. Originality/value Previous literature has neglected the relationship between materialism and social media communication, as well as the potential differential effect that a high versus low level of brand–consumer interaction may have, for luxury brands, in the online context. This study fills this gap by investigating the role of a consumer-related characteristic (i.e. the level of materialism) that represents an important dimension in luxury consumption. Moreover, this study sheds light on the mediating role of psychological distance in the context of luxury brands’ online communication.

The Role of Consumers’ Individual Differences and Perceived Product Quality in Sustainable Luxury Marketing: An Experimental Study in a Social Media Context

“…An interesting factor for the marketers should be recognized into the ability of the virtual communities to act as an amplifier, through word-of-mouth news, trends and styles, thus allowing the development of different forms of viral marketing (Huang et al, 2019). Thus, today social media offers companies the opportunity to create web pages for marketing purposes and to communicated with their consumers (Colella et al, 2021;Jahn et al, 2012). Accordingly, social media marketing strategies consolidated its importance in the luxury sector too (Okonkwo, 2009).…”

“…Therefore, among the main motivations that push consumers of luxury products towards the use of social media is self-presentation, which is based on its dimension of visibility of luxury (Jahn et al, 2012). In this context, the studies specified what efforts social media marketing activities have been successfully implemented in the context of luxury (Colella et al, 2021;Kim & Ko, 2012;Godey et al, 2016). To illustrate, in order to positively influence consumers' luxury brands and products perception, in defining the best social media marketing strategy it is necessary consider five important to consider some fundamentals factors such as personalization, trend, positive WOM, interactions and thus communication with the target consumers (Godey et al, 2016;Kim & Ko, 2012).…”

“…According to Phan et al (2011), to develop an efficient marketing strategy aimed at improving consumers' perception of their products, luxury brands need to have a clear understanding of the concept of social media marketing potentiality and usable tools, e.g., social media posts and picture to communicate and interact with their consumers (Chu et al, 2013). A significant aspect that emerged from these studies is the level of interactivity that luxury brands have acquired in recent years (Colella et al, 2021), with particular regard to the interactivity that consumers have in the various decision-making processes in the purchase of luxury products. Kim and Lee (2019), argue that in the context of luxury consumption, the interaction involves the reproduction of those consumers who share, disseminate and defend their ideas, values, and experiences and who support brands and products .…”

“…According to Okonkwo (2009), through social media, consumers often have the perception of being in full control of their choices, generating a particular form of apprehension on the part of the luxury brand (Godey et al, 2016). Therefore, modern luxury consumers are gradually turning their attention to social media platforms (Colella et al, 2021;Martín-Consuegra et al, 2019), and, according to Yu et al (2017), activities carried out on social media platforms tend to increase consumer experience, brand engagement, interactivity, and brand loyalty, making companies' communication more accessible. By extension, such social media marketing strategies for luxury brands are becoming recurrent, especially to drive communication campaigns and advertising (see Colella et al, 2019 for a review).…”

“…As a marketing strategy, several luxury brands are increasingly investing their marketing efforts towards digital communication, becoming pioneers in how they use various social media platforms (Heine & Berghaus, 2014), as for Burberry (as shown by Phan et al, 2011). Importantly, the social media advertising that disseminates messages and information about luxury brands tends to promote the purchase of luxury brands (Chu et al, 2019) and consumers-generated content are one of the most effective ways for interact with them via social media (Colella et al, 2021;Hasbullah et al, 2020). These contents shared via social media may have more influence than other sources, mainly because it is disseminated from a reliable source of information accumulated from a consumer's personal network (Castronovo & Huang, 2012).…”