As a result of the growing abandon of traditional advertising approaches, luxury
brands are strategically focusing on social media marketing influencers for product
and services’ endorsement through daily narratives (Abidin, 2016; De Veirman et al,
2017). Nowadays, social media are an integral part of marketing and advertising. The
use of social media sites as twitter, facebook, instagram etc has started to be a part of
the luxury fashion brands « advertising » campaign and has shown a valuable
opportunity for luxury fashion brands to position themselves in new markets. Social
media, in their being a two-way platforms for communication by allowing users to
interact with each other (Kim and Ko, 2010) and share information but also with
influencers, may represent a fundamental tool to increase customer awareness and
improve customer relationship in particular in China.
This study aims at exploring and analysing how a Chinese social media became the
main trend setter for luxury fashion brands in China and how its influencers played a
key role in reinforcing customer relationship for the luxury fashion market in China.
The study focus will be on the main Chinese social media platform for luxury fashion,
Wechat, and the role of influencers in increasing Chinese luxury customers’ brand
awareness and relationship. Through the study of the social platform and its SMM –
social media marketing – influencers’ and advertising followers, the article will
analyse and provide the success factors for Wechat social media platform in
positioning itself as the most influential SMM platform for luxury fashion brands in
China.

ABSTRACT
 Introduction
 SMM and Influencers
 Influencers, WeChat and Customer Relationship
 Methodology
 References

• Serena ROVAI(La Rochelle Business School, France)
• Simone Guercini(University of Florence, Italy)