LUXURY BRANDS ENTER METAVERSE: USING NFTS AS A POWERFUL TOOL TO CONSTUCT DIGITAL DESIRABILITY IN PHYGITAL MARKETING
- LanguageENG
- URLhttp://db.koreascholar.com/Article/Detail/422698
p.659
The development and application of NFTs has gained great attentions. Especially, with the eyes on the potential of Metaverse and Web 3.0, NFTs are regarded as one of the foundational parts of the future internet. The main contribution of NFTs is the innovative solution for creating digital uniqueness through its property of non-fungibility. With this property, the ubiquity caused by replicable data on the current internet can be advanced with NFT-backed uniqueness, which can assist in certifying authenticity, authorship, and possessions of contents, products, and assets online. This has tremendous meaning for the luxury brand industry, which has been struggling with the ubiquity of the internet for years. The emergence of NFTs, however, represents hope and a potential mean to represent scarcity in a digital context. By the use of NFTs, luxury brands’ conservative digital marketing strategies and their ways of production design, marketing, consumer management could be fundamentally changed. This study aims to discuss the NFT marketing strategy from the perspective of luxury brands. Particularly, the study will investigate the desirability strategies in these luxury NFT cases. To do so, the study uses a socio-technical perspective to understand how luxury brands embody the desirability strategy through NFTs, by considering the technical factors of NFTs (i.e., design, issuance, and ecosystem functioning) and social factors of desirability (i.e., exclusivity, rarity, prestige, and creative leadership). The study explores applicable strategy of how to realize luxury desirability through NFT technics. As a result, this study investigates 39 luxury NFT cases from 2021 to 2022, including the NFTs launched by famous luxury brands such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, and KARL LAGERFELD. The study showcases three within-case analyses to exhibit vivid examples of NFT innovations. Besides, the study generates a common framework by a complete cross-case analysis. The framework contains three domains and seven dimensions to guide further luxury NFT innovations and contributes to theory development in the field of NFT marketing and branding.