In an increasingly digital and interactive global marketing landscape, social media
marketing is emerging as one of the most important strategic tools for brand
communication. This is especially true in the luxury fashion context, which
traditionally exploited virtual environments as an effective communicational tool of
brand-related content and product usage information all over the world. A
contemporary consumer cohort that exhibits digital- and virtual-oriented behaviors
are Millennials, which represent the digital native generation highly inclined to
Internet interaction and, thus, a relevant strategic opportunity for social media
marketers in the luxury industry. While the literature reports a positive relationship
between Millennials’ social media usage and purchase intention towards luxury
brand, scant attention has been paid to the underlying mechanisms explaining such a
relationship. To fill this gap, the current research proposes and tests a conceptual
model to provide three main contributions to the social media and brand
communication literature: first, consumers’ perceptions of interactivity – a
multidimensional construct comprised of real-time conversation, no delay/timing,
and engaging/navigation – is hypothesized as an antecedent of social media usage. In
this way, relevant theoretical and practical implications are provided to online luxury
marketers interested in embracing virtual environments for brand communication.
Next, two significant constructs of consumer behavior such as materialism –
comprised of success, hedonism, and happiness – and morality – comprised of moral
judgment and moral intensity – are hypothesized as mediating variables of the
relationship between social media usage and purchase intention towards luxury
brands. Particularly, these materialistic and ethical decision making processes
emerge as relevant for Millennials’ online purchasing activities, with the expectation
of transparent and effective brand-related information through social media. Finally,
these mediating influences are hypothesized to be moderated by two other relevant
constructs in the brand communication process—consumers’ motivation to use social
media and advertising skepticism. In fact, a better assessment of Millennials’
motivation and skepticism toward social media marketing communication result as
crucial for modern strategic marketers. Such hypotheses are tested using
bootstrapped moderated mediation analysis on a sample of 297 Millennials actively
following luxury brand social media activities. Our results confirm the proposed
hypotheses, particularly both materialism and idealism partially mediate the
relationship between social media usage and purchase intention. Moreover,
motivation to use social media improves the effect of social media usage on materialism, whereas advertising skepticism reduces the effect of idealism on
purchase intention. These findings contribute to the social media and brand
communication literature, providing interesting avenues for future research.

• Lamberto Zollo(University of Florence, Italy)
• Sukki Yoon(Bryant University, USA)
• Riccardo Rialti(University of Florence, Italy)
• Cristiano Ciappei(University of Florence, Italy)