Social media began to boom in the 2000s. According to statistics, there are 92.3% of internet users are social media users who spend nearly two and a half hours daily on social media. Instagram is considered the most popular image-sharing platform, with more than 1.2 billion monthly active users. Meanwhile, consumers nowadays refer to and follow online reviews to assist their decision-making process more efficiently.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an important pillar in business practice. Luxury brands are no exception to this trend and have invested deeply in different types of CSR, and this is evident with companies such as Prada and LVMH. However, empirical research has demonstrated the paradox between CSR and luxury and has identified certain undesirable effects. The reason for this inconsistency in the results to date, is the lack of a comprehensive CSR categorization system. To be more specific, we integrated two dimensions - visibility and relevance - and have proposed a novel CSR type in four types, which is external-embedded, external-peripheral, internal-embedded and internal-peripheral. We can easily classify the CSR initiatives into this category, which means the source of undesirable effects can be clearly shown for luxury brands.