Social media marketing offers a vast array of opportunities for fashion brands to engage with their core customers and the broader digital audience. However, they still struggle with the question of which specific strategies can be successfully applied to enhance the effectiveness social media marketing (Rampton, 2014). This study investigates how a luxury brand’ social media brand page satisfaction and brand love are positively related to desired marketing outcomes (i.e., word-of-mouth and loyalty intentions toward the luxury brand). On the basis of Customer Value Theory (Sweeny & Soutar, 2001) and Brand Love Theory (Carroll & Ahuvia, 2006), this study developed and tested a dual impact model encompassing both brand page value (i.e., information, financial, brand interaction, social interaction, and entertainment value) and brand value (i.e., inner self-and social self-expressive value). Usable responses from 290 U.S. consumers following at least one luxury brand on social media were used for data analysis. The results of structural equation modeling showed that information, brand interaction, and entertainment values were positively related to brand page satisfaction while financial and social interaction values were not. In addition, inner self-and social self-expressive brand values were positively related to brand love. In addition, brand page satisfaction was positively related to WOM intentions but was not related to loyalty intentions whereas brand love was positively related to both WOM and loyalty intentions. Furthermore, mediation analysis showed that brand page satisfaction fully mediated the influences of information, brand interaction, and entertainment values on WOM intentions. In addition, brand love fully mediated the influences of social self-expressive value on WOM and loyalty intentions. Our study suggests that social media brand pages providing unique value propositions can reap benefits in terms of enhanced brand page satisfaction, highlighting the crucial role of “content excellence” in social media marketing (Holt, 2016). Our findings also show that brand followers tend to love a particular luxury brand when the brand helps express their self and when the symbolic meaning of the brand is integrated into their own self-identity. Thus, one of the roles of social media marketing is in elucidating brand followers how to express their inner states guided by the desire to signal their self-identity not to others but to themselves (Berger & Heath, 2017).

Chinese economic develops fast and have became the second economic entity all around the world. The development of economic pushes the popularize of mobile clients. Accordingly, whenever and wherever the consumers are, they can acquire and share information about productions directly, e-word-of-mouth (eWOM) becomes one of the important part of online marketing. Customers prefer to trust opinion leaders and real users’ feedback rather than the advertisements which are made by companies. The choice preference of information source accelerate the development of social media. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association, have grown rapidly and have advocated for the burgeoning new industry. (Robert V. et al., 2010) Marketers and sociologists have recognized the importance of the phenomenon of word of mouth, for more than half a century, proposing, for example, that WOM affects the majority of all purchase decisions (Brooks 1957; Dichter 1966).They find that the “friend who recommends a tried and trusted product” rather than the “salesman who tries to get rid of merchandise” (Dichter 1966, p. 165). Marketing scholars has evolved from a transaction orientation to one based on relationships (Vargo and Lusch 2004) Consumers are regarded as active coproducers of value and meaning, whose WOM use of marketing communications can be idiosyncratic, creative, and even resistant (Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry 2003; Kozinets 2001; Muñiz and Schau 2005; Thompson and Sinha 2008) Therefore, when the behavior is on/off, impact measured as probability of purchase can differ substantially from impact measured as attitude change (Robert East 2015). This study will select significant respondents from Chinese social media users as sample. The WOM communication is send information to marketers from the market-based message interaction community ,gathering consumers with same interests. In this study, not only structural equation modeling (SEM) will be used to test research model. But also using the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and SPSS, the first method attempts to find a new configuration to verify the finding and the SPSS can be used to make reliability analysis and validity analysis. WOM of the research model will also be tested by fsQCA and SPSS to obtain the conclusion about what extent do two communication ways influence consumers’ purchase preference. We want to explore different results between opinion leaders and the real users in different communication ways. Based on the results we will give some implication to both marketing scholars and practitioners.

Social media are increasingly becoming a strategic vehicle of modern companies’ way of communicating and interacting with consumers. Actually, social media marketing (SMM) has recently emerged as an effective two-way communication channel able to provide the sharing and exchange of information, ideas, and user-generated content in virtual environments. This is especially true for fashion brands, which are progressively creating interactive platforms such as online brand communities in order to enhance their consumer-based brand equity (CBE), interpreted as the consumers’ assessment of a company brand image, identity, and value. Scholars have widely analyzed the relationship between a company’s SMM and brand equity, thus finding a direct positive impact of the five main constructs depicting perceived SMM activities, namely entertainment, interaction, trendiness, customization, and word of mouth, on CBE. Despite this relevant scholarly interest, the consumer behavioral responses linking a company perceived SMM activities and CBE have been largely neglected. Actually, consumers’ benefits from virtual environments and online brand experience may represent significant elements marketing strategists should focus on in order to enhance a company’s brand equity. Building on the uses and gratifications theory and experiential marketing, we develop a conceptual model that unpacks such linkages, by relating SMM activities, perceived benefits of using social media, online brand experience, and CBE. Specifically, we interpret SMM activities as significant brand-related stimuli able to influence consumers’ cognitive, social interactive, personal interactive, and hedonic benefits, which in turn influence consumers’ sensory, affective, behavioral, and intellectual online experience. Moreover, we investigate the experiential responses of consumers that mostly affect a company’s brand equity, which finally impacts on consumers’ purchase intention of the fashion brand. The model is validated using structural equation modeling (SEM) on a sample of real users of online brand communities operating in the fashion industry. Our sample is composed of Millennials, which currently represent the most influential grown-digital generation of consumers. Overall, our findings shed light on consumers’ online behavioral and experiential responses to a company’s perceived SMM activities, thus proposing strategic implications for the management of brand online communities and suggesting interesting possibilities of future research on social media and fashion consumers.

“Today I was persuaded to spend more than $200 on a lotion in Barneys. The price difference (between online and store) is $75. However, the store salesman told me that it is only few dollars way! I felt humiliated by the upscale society.” Lawrence, a 22 years old male Chinese who is an international undergraduate student studying marketing in a public U.S. university, posted the above status on his WeChat moments. With its fast growing economy and huge population, China has become one of the most lucrative markets for luxury brands (Zhan and He 2012). In fact, China has surpassed Japan and become the No.1 luxury products’ spender in the world, accounting more than one-quarter of the global luxury brand expenditure (Yousuf 2012). According to Bian & Company’s study (2016), $ 17.6 billion were spent on Chinese luxury market in 2015. In the past, the core Chinese luxury consumers are female middle-class and up-class consumers (Zhan and He 2012). In recent years, the faces of Chinese luxury consumers have gradually changed: more and more Chinese luxury goods buyers are males, and they actually spend more money on average than women do (Chen, 2016). In addition, the Chinese culture is different from the Western culture (Li, Li and Kambelle 2012). Accordingly, Chinese luxury consumption follows its own patterns and trends, which may not always resemble those of the Western world (Li, Li and Kambelle 2012). Previous studies have revealed unique characteristics of Chinese luxury consumers, in terms of motivations, for example, Mianzi (prestigious face) (Li and Su 2007; Wang and Ahuvia 1998), subcultures (Wang, Sun and Song 2011), public meaning (Wang, Sun and Song 2011), gift giving (Li and Su 2007), and reference groups (Li and Su 2007). All of those studies emphasized the cultural and social dimensions of luxury brands’ consumption. Given these distinctive characteristics of the Chinese market, Western luxury brands have made use of all possible communication methods to connect with Chinese consumers. One of the seemingly promising channels is the Internet. The Internet breaks down geographical and temporal boundaries (Kozinets 1999), and enables Western luxury brands to connect with overseas markets. Among all the digital advertising tools, social media have become increasingly important in the Chinese market (Kim and Ko 2012). In 2015 alone, there were 574 million active mobile social media users in China (Kemp 2015). Due to the large number of social media users, Western luxury brands, like Burberry (Phan, Thomas, and Heine 2011), have started practicing social media advertising (Okonkwo 2009). Accordingly, several challenges emerge. With the rising popularity of social media, Chinese consumers increasingly demand Western luxury brands’ social presence online. Looking at the bright side, social media allows Western luxury brands to show a desirable brand image (Okonkwo 2009; Tynan, McKechnie, and Chhoun 2010) and maintain customer relationship (Kim and Ko 2012). However, concerns about negative consumer comments and their potential impact on brand images (Britten 2013; Macnamara and Zerfass 2012; Singer 2014) loom large. Thus, it remains a question whether and to what extent Western luxury brands embrace the interactive media. Moreover, it is unclear how Chinese consumers perceive their social media advertising effort. In particular, how Chinese young males, the new market segment, interpret luxury brands’ social media advertising presence is an untapped research field. Thus, the purpose of this study is to fill the research gap by exploring how Chinese young male consumers understand and interpret luxury brands’ social media advertising. Given the exploratory nature of the study, a qualitative research approach is adopted (Creswell 2013).

Despite its innovative and avant-garde reputation, the luxury industry initially began showing a very low commitment to new online marketing tools and it held a conservative approach to selling when compared to other sectors. Nowadays, the context has dramatically changed and luxury brands are approaching with an increasing interest social networks as well as the online selling. This research aims to clarify the current strategic approaches of the players in the different luxury markets towards the social commerce phenomenon, from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. The purpose is to test a framework that can be used to classify luxury companies’ strategies regarding social media adoptions based on actual theories on social media. Four strategies related to the social media adoption by luxury brands have been identified: the Social brand ambassadors strategy class (low promotional content percentage and low social commerce score) includes those brands that use social media for entertainment and user engagement; the Social showcases strategy (high promotional content percentage and low social commerce score) includes those brands that use their social accounts as online catalogues; the Social infotainers strategy (low promotional content percentage and high social commerce score) includes those brands that scored high in social commerce, mainly because of the provision of informative content and brand–consumer interactions, but they were linked to more entertainment-oriented actions rather than product-related ones. Finally, the Social sellers strategy (high promotional content percentage and high social commerce score) includes those brands that have integrated social commerce into their online strategies and have subsequently exploited the potential of social media to drive online and offline sales. The database is built using original data from a content analysis of 100 luxury brands’ postings on five different social media platforms – namely Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. The total final sample included 12,132 Facebook posts, 21,216 tweets on Twitter, 1,105 YouTube videos, 10,138 Instagram pictures/videos, and 117,359 Pinterest pictures. The main findings are the following: luxury brands adopt at this stage the Social brand ambassadors and Social showcases approaches; brands belonging to the perfumery, cosmetics, jewelry and watches markets show a more developed attitude towards the social commerce; in other luxury markets, such as wine and spirits, brands still adopt a Social Brand Ambassador strategy, while managers should increase the promotional content in order develop the social commerce. The Fashion & Accessories brands show a positive relationship between the percentage of promotional content and social commerce score. This means that social commerce adoptions depend on the single brand’s strategic choices, ranging from low adoption to best practices. In general, social commerce is still not widespread; many luxury fashion brands, while presenting new collections during fashion weeks, focused on fashion shows, backstage events, and celebrities, rather than really promoting the new product lines with materials, availability, and purchasing indications. This social media approach is mainly focused on increasing brand awareness rather than increasing social commerce. If managers aim at increasing social commerce they should add direct call to action and link the contents to e-commerce market place. Automotive brands are concentrated in the Social showcases area; This sector encounters natural limitations in the introduction of social commerce due to the difficulty of selling products through the digital channel; many brands have, however, devised strategies to approach their users during the purchasing process prior to the actual transaction to take advantage of the increasing ROPO phenomenon. Conversely, the Perfumes & Cosmetics sector shows a highly fragmented approach to social commerce. The content analysis based on single post contents has shown that actually the contents are based on pictures of the products, or the brand, information on events, and a large and increasing presence of video posts based storytelling about the history of the product and the brand heritage; the most social commerce oriented posts are picture or video focused on the product. The commercial contents that aim at developing the see now, buy now approach are mainly based on video shows.

The purpose of this research was to identify how students used social media during their experience with study abroad programs that focus on social and environmental sustainability. Key research questions included: Did students and program faculty directors perceive social media as beneficial or challenging to program goal? How did social media contribute to the overall learning process? How can this knowledge inform the design and implementation of future study abroad experiences? Surveys were conducted with students participating in three study abroad programs in three countries with varying levels of internet access. We found that most students used social media as a familiar support system to help acclimate to a foreign land, through the formation of cohesive peer groups and establishment of communication channels with family and friends. However, both students and program directors acknowledged the challenges of social media dependency. We conclude that judicious use of social media, when coupled with conscious immersion into the local environment and culture can enhance study abroad programs; and offer suggestions for future program planning.

Social networking sites (SNS) are defined as web-based services that enable consumers to create a public profile and a list of contacts with whom they share a social network (Kang et al., 2014). On SNS sites, consumers can find the right product, obtain advice from people, make purchases, post product recommendations, reviews and photos, and create SNS communities (Shen, 2008). The shopping motive acts as an important trigger to browse for products on social media websites. Product browsing over social media sites could influence the intention of future purchase and sharing information of product and brand with friend and acquaintances. For companies related to social media business, both intention to purchase and information sharing are crucial elements. However, few efforts have been made to identify the factors driving consumer intentions to purchase and word-of-mouth of fashion products on social media sites. The objectives of this study were to determine the factor to facilitate product browsing and to find out the causative relationship among influential factors and consumer intentions to purchase and word-of-mouth of fashion products on social media sites. The instrument was developed based on the previous literatures (Brien, 2010; Park, et al., 2012; To, 2007; Woo & Hwang, 2013) and each item was measured by five-point Liker type scales. A total of 269 data were collected during a regularly scheduled class in universities, who have experienced to purchase fashion products or make a product review on social media sites. Mean age of the respondents was 22.3 years old. Nearly 75.3 percent of the subjects were women, and more than half of the respondents (61.6%) have purchased the products (e.g., apparel, shoes, etc.) on social commerce sites over three years. The structure equation model analysis was conducted by AMOS 23.0 using a correlation matrix with maximum likelihood approach. The structural equation model was relatively acceptable (chi-square value = 136.30, df = 66, p = .000; GFI = .94, AGFI = .91, RMR = .05). Cronbach's alphas were ranged between .83 and .87. This result suggests that utilitarian shopping motives have influenced directly product browsing, purchase intention, and word-of-mouth intentions of fashion products on social media sites. The more product browsing on social media sites, the more intended to purchase and word-of-mouth of fashion products with friend and acquaintances. It implies that consumer with utilitarian shopping motives are likely to more browse, and then to more purchase and write the review of fashion products on social media sites. However, consumers with hedonic shopping motives are prone to more write the review of fashion products to their friends and acquaintances without product browsing or purchase intention on social media sites.

According to industry reports, a CEO’s strong social presence has a tremendous impact on the company’s reputation and their own image. However, despite being considered as digital influencers, most C-suite leaders fail to establish their own personal brand online. This under-development leads to the following questions: What are CEOs currently doing with their social media and why are CEOs (not) using social media? Interviewing 16 Dutch CEOs, this study explores the impact of the leadership style (transactional or transformational) and leaders' perception of narcissism in online impression management on CEOs’ social media activities. By investigating these relationships, the research further clarifies CEOs’ leadership communication strategies on social media and establishes the drivers and barriers for social media engagement to pave the ways for interested social CEOs. The results suggest that leadership styles may detect the content strategies and motivations of social media usage. The activity level, however, is determined by the perceptions of self-image and degree of a narcissistic impression on using social media. With this finding, we propose CEO social media activities can be typified into four categories: thought leader, storyteller, professional networker and selective performer. Transformational leaders tend to emphasize on being accessible and transparent to their audience. When they are positive about being narcissistic on social media, they are more likely to be a storyteller where they strive for charismatic and authentic content building. Conversely, a more reserved transformational leader would be a selective performer where they only publicize their stories in front of a selected group of audience, mostly through internal platforms. On the other hand, transactional leaders tend to focus on professionalism and efficiency in using social media. The ones who see the benefits of social media and are confident in sharing their own ideas tend to be thought leaders among their professional networks. On the contrary, the reserved transactional leaders rather using social media to connect with their professional network to obtain information than broadcasting their own voices. The study provides insights in how CEOs formulate their leadership communication online; further research should continue exploring the impact of various strategies on corporate performance and stakeholder engagement.

Social media as an online channel for sharing and participating can play an important role for many marketing activities. Social media can be especially influential in word of mouth (WOM) communication as the focus of it is the sharing of information regarding consumers’ product experiences. To use social media as a marketing tool, identifying the relationship between message sender and receiver (the strength of social tie) is important in the viral marketing campaign context. Also, the effects can be influenced by message type, and consumers’ situational context. Therefore, the study examines the consumers’ intention to share advertising message with others in social media focusing on the strength of social ties (strong vs. weak tie) between message receivers and senders. The authors hypothesize that participants’ intention for sharing will be higher for the message recipients of strong tie than of weak tie. Especially, the sharing intention, for strong tie than for weak tie, will be higher when there is a match between message type (visual vs. text) and consumers’ purchasing context (close vs. far distance). The study used 2(temporal distance: close vs. distant) x 2(message type: text vs. picture) x 2 (close friends, vs. general public) design with the first two factors as between –subject factors and the last factor as a within-subject factor. A total of 107 student subjects participated in an experiment. They were recruited from a private university, in Seoul, in exchange for extra credit. The participants’ average age was 22 (SD=2.72) and 58 percent of them were males.

Recent evidence suggests a dramatic increase of use on the social media environment in the tourism and hospitality industry. This study aims to develop a measurement scale for the social media environment also called “social media scape”. The study will offer insights regarding the consequences of social media scape as well. Empirical data will be collected from 3 different countries and 3 studies will be conducted. In addition, the findings of this study will suggest how social media scape shapes key consumer behavior outcomes. Finally, this study will discuss the managerial implications for marketing and positioning strategy in the social media environment. In particular, the results of the study will indicate how the social media scape should be developed thus helping brands to better position themselves in this social media world and what consumers’ needs can satisfy such as functional, hedonic, social, and psychological. In addition, for global marketers who want to develop international networks, ethnicities are a significant impact factor on users’ behaviors. As such, this information will be useful since our study will include 3 different countries

Luxury brand marketers have recently turned their attention to luxury brand consumers and their social brand communities devoted to the brands. Luxury brands appeal to customers by enhancing their images regarding heritage, quality, and artistic value. Luxury fashion brands also establish social media communities to communicate their images more effectively. This study uses the key concepts of integration and interactivity to provide theoretical foundations to investigate luxury brand communities (LBCs) in the social media context. A survey was given to 252 members of Facebook fan pages for luxury brands from South Korea. This study examines effects of interaction as a process on perceived interactivity of LBCs in social media, and consequences, attitude, purchase intentions, and brand loyalties, hence offering implications for luxury brand management academics and practitioners

This study is intended to provide marketing practitioners with an overview of web analytics to explore the issue of how to define and measure the effectiveness of social media through analyzing the various activities of current/potential consumers as well as provide a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of digital content marketing using social media. These analytics answer broad questions about which types of social media metrics are best at referring traffic, about conversations at the organization’s website, and about comparing different social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter in this study. The major goal of this study is to demonstrate the value of businesses’ efforts and to optimize their digital/social marketing strategy using web analytics. Based on this goal three research questions were identified: (1) can the model identify social media performance variables that are related to audience response which can be represented by website traffic?; (2) which social media sties are driving traffic to a firm’s website, specifically in B2B environment?; and (3) can the model provide insight into the importance of those variables? These analytics employ time series analysis to specifically address activities in SNSs that effectively drive traffic to a website and accomplish business goals. This study is one of the first empirical investigations in the marketing communication field related to measuring social media’s effectiveness.

This paper aims to explain how storytelling becomes interlinked with social media and the conceptual consequences this development implies. In recent years the interest in storytelling has increased within the marketing discipline. Parallel to this development, the traditional media landscape has been subjected to change as a result of digitization and particularly the expansion of social media. Even though the social nature of these media and its associated electronic word of mouth seem to be well aligned with storytelling, extant literature exhibits few attempts to review the storytelling concept in relation to social media. Based on such a review, the contribution of this paper is condensed into six theoretical propositions that point out how storytelling is expected to become increasingly common and dynamic in social media. Therefore, storytelling is suggested to represent a managerial challenge with regard to professional organizations’ marketing approaches but simultaneously allow for increased customer intimacy for those actors who develop successful ways of attracting the interest and engagement of social media users.

In this paper, we review the influence of crisis response strategies in social media on attitude recovery in relation to customer brand commitment. We extend the situational crisis communication theory and the social-mediated crisis communication model to include the role of audience characteristics (i.e., customer brand commitment). The effects of crisis response strategies (i.e., defensive, accommodative) and electronic word of mouth antecedents are discussed because source factors, message factors, and audience factors lead to attitude recovery. We also introduce a framework of the impacts of brand crisis response strategies on customer attitude recovery after exposure to negative word of mouth and response strategies in social media.

The rise of technology has brought innovations in the field of marketing. The most modern trend of marketing is termed as social media marketing. Social media is not only reducing the communication distance in the world but the discovery of social media provided opportunities for business to increase their exposure. However, it has been observed that regardless of the advantages of new technology some time users’ are reluctant to accept and use that technology. Considering these facts, the investigation of the factors affecting consumers’ intention for the acceptance and use of social media marketing (SMM) has been the greatest concern of the researcher. Other facet of this study is to understand the nature of consumers’ behavior across culture. This research is an empirical study for testing the underlying factors that influence the users’ intention for the acceptance and use of SMM. Current research proposes SMM acceptance model by integrating unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and technology acceptance model along with personal constructs. As the focus of this study was on UTAUT, hence majority of factors were selected from this theory. The survey was conducted with sample of 612 participants from South Korea and Pakistan. Findings by using structural equation modeling revealed that attitude towards online advertisement and electronic word of mouth significantly affect users’ intention for acceptance of SMM. Moreover, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, social influence, perceived usefulness, and perceived risk significantly influence users’ attitude towards advertisement. It has been found that the effect of social influence, perceived usefulness, and involvement is significant on attitude towards electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Moderating effects of nationality, gender, and use frequency are also tested on integrated model. The findings are helpful to understand consumer behavior and advantageous for marketing strategies. This research will contribute to the literature within the domain of social media marketing. The findings along with implications and recommendations for future research were also discussed at the end.

Through the theoretical lens of self-concept and by conducting 27 in-depth interviews, the study shows that social media provides an arena for the development, negotiation and maintenance of home and host identity self-schemas, as well reducing negative emotional effects. However due to simultaneous online surveillance from multiple agents, maintaining disparate expectations is found to result in social anxiety and the practice of self-regulation.

The aim of this paper is to investigate, through a content analysis, the communication strategies used by luxury fashion brands on Twitter and the related Twitter eWOM, with the purpose to identify brand associations compared to luxury dimensions considered in literature (De Barnier et al. 2012; Godey et al. 2014). Within the luxury fashion environment, where every detail is meaningful and, consequently, every single word matters, this study attempts to provide a contribution into the field of luxury advertising, by comparing semantic fields of words chosen by digital fashion marketers and by popular fashion bloggers to the dimensions that define the luxury construct in luxury literature.

Social media was originally based on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and is described as “user-generated content” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Although initially used for communication among internet users for privacy, it has become one of the most powerful online networking tools, and in the last few years has been widely practiced in the real world to enhance relationships between businesses and customers. Virtual tourist communities are not a new concept; they have been used for more than 10 years by tourists to exchange opinions and experiences of certain travel destinations. In tourism, internet based social communities have greatly expanded recently as a result of Web 2.0 technologies’ development. Tourists use the Internet to obtain information on trips, and share experiences related to their trip before, during and after their vacation (Parra-Lopez et al., 2011). Therefore, behaviors such as sharing photos and videos, writing travel experiences in blogs and microblogs, ranking travel destinations and posting opinions on social forums (for example, TripAdvisor) are becoming generalized (Chung & Buhalis, 2008) into what has been called Travel 2.0 (Adam, et al., 2007). The purpose and importance of this study is to explore how tourists perceive the value of social media as practiced in the tourism industry. We also investigate travel agencies’ social media marketing activities, and how tourists’ perceived value of social media affects their intention to use social media for organizing their vacation. Conceptual foundations Perceived value of using social media in tourism Perceived value is treated as a major element in a number of tourism research papers (for example, Parasuraman & Grewal, 2000; Sweeny & Soutar, 2001; Jin et al. 2015). As Parra-Lopez et al. (2011, pp.641) said, “the identification of the types of customer value perceived by travelers using social media for trip planning purposes is very essential, because it can provide significant guidelines on how to design the information sources, the structure and the functionality of social media in order to enhance their web traffic, usage and competiveness”. Realizing the essential role of social media in the tourist industry, and clarifying how to measure the perceived value of using social media is required. Because perceived value is defined as ‘cognitive-affective evaluation’ in this study, we employ both cognitive and affective variables to measure the perceived value of using social mediato organize vacations. This study applies four dimensions – ‘functional’, ‘social’, ‘altruism’ and ‘trust’ from Parra-Lopez et al.’s (2011) study - to measure the value that travelers perceive from using social media to organize their vacations. Because both cognitive and affective value are used to evaluate a product or service during the purchasing process (Bajs, 2015), it seems reasonable to assume that ‘function’, ‘social’, ‘altruism’, and ‘trust’ are regarded as essential when measuring the perceived value of using social media to organize vacations. Such propositions and findings provide valuable insights that enable us to introduce our Hypothesis 1. H1: ‘Functional’, ‘Social’, ‘Altruism’ and ‘Trust’ are the dominant dimensions in the perceived value of using social media in organizing vacations. The inter-relationship of attitudes towards social media marketing activities and the perceived value and intention of using social media to organize vacations Social media is seen as one of the most powerful communication tools, and social media marketing (referred to henceforth as ‘SMM’) is used by business companies to build and maintain relationships with their customers in various fields (Kim & Ko, 2012). In previous studies, such as Kim and Ko (2012) as well as Teo and Tan (2002), it has been claimed that customers’ attitudes towards SMM activities affect brand equity. This conclusion is also supported by Chan and Guillet’s (2011) study, which shows the important role of SMM in the hospitality industry. Nowadays, most travel agencies in Japan have created their social communities aiming to enhance their relationship with customers and promote their travel products. Aker and Topcu (2011) suggest that attitude greatly affects people’s purchase intention and behavior. Moreover, the wide acceptance of SMM also means that a positive attitude towards SMM affects the perceived value of social media. It has been clarified that perceived value is positive when the benefits are greater than the sacrifices (Zeithaml, 1988). As more and more tourists rely on social media to enhance their vacations, this suggests that the perceived benefit of social media is greater than the sacrifice, and therefore its perceived value positively affects the behavior intention of tourists who use social media to organize vacations. This academic background leads us to Hypothesis 2. H2: Both direct effect (i.e. attitude towards SMM activities→Intention) and indirect effect (i.e. attitude towards SMM activities→ Perceived value→Intention) will provide a good explanation of tourists’ intention of using social media to organize vacations. Methodology Proposed conceptual model Based on the theoretical background, this study proposes a conceptual model (see Figure 1) to show the inter-relationship of ‘attitudes towards SMM activities’, ‘perceived value’ and ‘behavior intention’. Figure 1: Conceptual Model Measurement This study involves items which have been used in past research. All items were developed based on the 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ (see Table 1).Data collection The empirical data for this study was collected by an online survey conducted by one of the biggest research companies in Japan from March 13th to March 16th, 2015. A screening test was conducted to select suitable respondents with experience of using social media to organize their vacation and had accessed or used travel agencies’ social media, such as Facebook, Blog, and Twitter. Finally, due to the limited research budget, 622 valid samples were collected to be used in analysing the conceptual model. Data analysis results As all items presented in this study are cited from past research, we employed second-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) directly to explore the dominant dimensions of the perceived value of using social media to organize vacations (H1), and covariance structure analysis to investigate the inter-relationship among attitudes towards SMM activities, perceived value and behavior intention (H2). The results of data analysis are shown below (see Figure 2&3). Conclusions and managerial implications Based on the results reported in the present study, ‘functional’, ‘social’, ‘altruism’ and ‘trust’ are shown as dominant dimensions of perceived value in social media literature, thus supporting hypothesis 1. However, these four dimensions play different roles in perceived value. Compared with other dimensions, ‘altruism’ appears to be more essential. This result can be explained by the usage of social media. Tourists tend to share their experiences, opinions, photos and videos about certain travel destinations in what is called ‘altruism dimensions’. These tourists’ behavior is not for the benefit of others but for self-satisfaction (Baym, 2010) and is believed to be the most important incentive for using social media. Concerning the inter-relationship of attitudes towards SMM, perceived value and the intention of using social media to organize a vacation, contrary to our hypothesis, tourists’ attitudes towards SMM activities conducted by travel agencies do not seem to affect their behavior intention of using social media to organize their vacation (.05). The perceived value of social media seems to play a significant mediating role between attitudes towards SMM and behavior intention. In other words, the indirect influence (.585) through perceived value is greater than the direct influence (.05) of attitudes toward SMM on behavior intention. This result implies that travel agency managers should know how to increase the perceived value of social media, instead of only attempting to enhance SMM activities. Limitations Social media’s commodification in Japan is still a new concept, and for Japanese tourists, the practice of social media in the tourist industry is relatively novel. In other words, social media’s commodification has not been developed enough in Japan. Thus, the results gained from the empirical study should be compared in the countries where social media is more developed.

This study investigates whether goods and service brands have different social media strategy to develop relationships with consumers. A content analysis of 10,752 brand posts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts of 10 Indonesian leading brands finds that goods and service brands have different strategies in utilizing their social media.

With its fast growing economy and huge population, China has become one of the most lucrative markets for luxury brands (Zhan and He 2012). In fact, China has surpassed Japan and become the No.1 luxury products spender in the world, accounting more than one-quarter of the global luxury brand expenditure (Artsmon et al. 2012). Chinese middle-class consumers thus have become important targets of luxury brands (Zhan and He 2012). However, China’s culture is different from Western cultures (Li, Li and Kambelle 2012), and Chinese luxury consumers have their distinctive characteristics (Buchwald, 2015). Therefore, Chinese luxury consumption may not follow the trends of Western world (Li, Li and Kambelle 2012). Previous studies have explored Chinese luxury consumers’ perceptions and receptivity of luxury brands in different cultural contexts (Bian and Forsythe 2012; Wang, Sun and Song 2011; Zhan and He 2012; Wang, Sun and Song 2011; Li, Li and Kanbelle 2012; Oswald 2010, Li and Su 2007; Wang and Ahuvia 1998). However, all those studies have only investigated luxury brands’ marketing strategies in traditional offline worlds. With the emergence of digital technology, luxury brands have started building presence in online world through different digital marketing strategies (Okonkwo 2009). Among all the digital marketing tools, social media marketing has become an increasingly important marketing communication weapon (Kim and Ko, 2012). While the luxury brands have widely accepted social media marketing, the academic research largely lags behind, Only limited number of studies have examined luxury brands’ social media marketing strategies (Tynan, McKechnie, and Chhoun, 2010; Kim and Ko, 2012). No study, to the authors’ knowledge, has been conducted to investigate luxury brands’ social media marketing strategies in connecting with Chinese consumers. In addition, previous studies on luxury brands marketing have conducted either quantitatively (Bian and Forsythe 2012; Wang, Sun and Song 2011; Zhan and He 2012; Wang, Sun and Song 2011; Li, Li and Kanbelle 2012) or qualitatively (Oswald 2010, Li and Su 2007; Wang and Ahuvia 1998) from either consumers’ or marketer’s perspective. In order to fill the research gaps, the current study is designed to explore the phenomenon with a mixed method by integrating both marketers’ social media marketing strategies and consumers’ interpretation of those marketers’ social media marketing in the contextof China. Specifically, a quantitative content analysis was conducted to examine marketers’ social media marketing strategies on a Chinese social media platform: WeChat; in the meanwhile, a qualitative study was conducted to explore Chinese female affluent consumers’ interpretations of those social media strategies transmitted via WeChat. Based on the research purpose, two overarching research questions were proposed: R1: Do Western luxury brand use social media platform of WeChat to build social presence, create self-presentation or interact with consumers? R2: What are Chinese female affluent consumers’ perceptions and interpretations of luxury brands’ social media marketing communication strategies via WeChat? Methodology The current study used a mixed methodological approach (Creswell 2014). Specifically, a quantitative content analysis (Krippendorff 2012) and a phenomenological study (Creswell 2012) were conducted to investigate luxury brands’ social media marketing communication strategies via WeChat and Chinese female affluent consumers’ perception toward those marketing communication strategies. Initial Findings Study 1 So far, 50% (N = 60) of the sample was analyzed. RQ1 asked about the luxury brands’ marketing communication strategies. The initial frequencies of each coded variable are reported in Table 1. Table 1. Frequencies of Coded Variables The results showed that more than half of the coded messages had images, showed products/brands in images or videos, provided event, discount and other promotional information, described products’ physical features and attributes, contained celebrities, sought action-based participation, and applied hyperlinks. The initial data suggest that a major use of social media in luxury brand advertising is to build the brand’s social presence by extensively using visuals. Images were found in 44 messages, and 25 of them used 6 or more images. Most of these images showed products or brands. Video also appeared in 14 messages. The initial results also suggest consumer interaction and engagement is restricted to the lowest level. The two major ways of interaction were hyperlinks and action-based participation. A close examination showed that these two were often used together. A hyperlink used anchor text that contained a call for action-based participation, like “read more,” “get the coupon,” etc. A lot of these actions related to consuming content, like reading, downloading or sharing, which is the lowest level of brand related-activeness on branded social media sites (Muntinga, Moorman, and Smit 2011).Additionally, product/brand information and physical features and attributes were frequently mentioned, suggesting that luxury brands use social media for information dissemination. WeChat has a large size of active users, and self-disclosure of information on social media can create a sense of close relationship (Kaplan and Haelein, 2010). High product quality, especially in terms of design and craftsmanship were frequently addressed, suggesting that that social media are used to communicate the nuances of brand’s social meanings. For example, some messages described the conceptualization of the design, the processing of handcrafting, and the meaning of the design, etc. These deeper meaning of a brand is often left out of traditional methods of advertising because of limited space or time. Celebrity was one of the major methods to create social meaning, suggesting that luxury brands use social media to leverage parasocial interaction between celebrities and consumers. Parasocial interaction refers to consumers’ perception of personal relationship with media personalities (Men and Tsai 2013). Among the sample messages, there were interviews with famous designers, advices and recommendations from celebrities about luxury brand and fashion, etc. These messages offer an opportunity for consumers to connect with celebrities, and subsequently, associate luxury brands with these iconic figures (McCraken, 1989). All in all, Western luxury brands largely use social media to build social presence, disseminate information, and communicate brand’s social meanings. Luxury brands frequently interact with audiences on social media but the level of consumer engagement is restricted. Study 2 The participants’ interpretations of WeChat provide a unique context and form a crucial referential framework for them to interpret luxury brands’ marketing communications on this particular social media platform. Specifically, the themes that emerged regarding those Chinese female affluent consumers’ perceptions of the social medium are an intimate friend vs. an everyday assistant, simple vs. complicated, and stickiness vs. interactivity; and, the themes regarding the participants’ interpretation of luxury brands’ marketing communications include inactive, conservative, and distance. Based on their own experiences of social media marketing and from consumers’ perspectives, the participants also provided insightful suggestions for luxury brands to improve their social media marketing to better connect with their consumers. Interpretation of WeChat An Intimate Friend vs. An Everyday Assistant According to the participants, their usage and composition of friends on WeChat has kept changing and evolving. At the initial stage of their usage, all the friends on WeChat were family members and close friends. At that time, WeChat constructed a small, closed, and intimate social circle for them to communicate, socialize, and entertain themselves and their WeChat friends in a carefree and relaxing way. In this sense, WeChat is like a good friend, who can accompany them and chat with them whenever they need him/her. Later, with the number of WeChat friends increasing and expanding, the composition of theirWeChat friends has also become complicated: different social relationships have been added to their WeChat friend list. Accordingly, based on the closeness and remoteness, they categorize their WeChat friends and communicate and socialize with them in a more cautious and delicate way. In this sense, WeChat has also changed to an office assistant who helps them to manage and maintain their social relationships. Simple vs. Complicated With the change of WeChat and the revolution of participants’ usage and experiences, in the life-worlds of the participants, WeChat has transformed from a simple chatting app to a multi-functional personal service hub. At the initial usage of stage, according to the participants, the major function of WeChat is a chatting app to communicate with their friends conveniently. Later, with more functions to be added to WeChat, WeChat has evolved to a complicated personal service hub to serve various personal and commercial purposes for the participants. Stickiness vs. Interactivity According to the participants, WeChat is a unique social media platform with high stickiness but low interactivity. The participants indicated that they use WeChat all the time, and they have to check their WeChat numerous times during a day. In other words, WeChat is considered as a high frequency social media app. In the meantime, the participants felt that WeChat is lacking interactivity when comparing to other social media platforms such as microblogging. They stated that the possible interactive activities on WeChat are very limited. In other words, in the life-world of the participants, WeChat is perceived as a less reciprocative social media platform. Interpretation of Luxury Brands’ Marketing Communication on WeChat Inactive According to the participants, the luxury brands’ WeChat public accounts are less active than other brands’ public accounts. Those luxury brands’ WeChat public accounts post information less frequently and seldom interact with followers. This is actually put those luxury brands in a relatively negative marketing position on WeChat. The participants indicated that they follow many public accounts. Because the luxury brands’ public accounts are not very active, without constant reminder, the followers may gradually forget about those luxury brands’ public accounts and stop checking their accounts’ updates. Conservative In addition to be seen as inactive, the luxury brands’ WeChat public accounts are also perceived to be conservative. According to the participants, compared to other brands, luxury brands’ WeChat public accounts are too serious, less interesting, and lacking entertainment. The participants felt that the luxury brands are very cautious and careful regarding their WeChat presence. Therefore, their WeChat posts are generally too conservative and formal, lacking creativity and uniqueness. As a result, the participants couldn’t remember any impressive and unforgettable post from those luxury brands’ WeChat public accounts.Distance In the participants’ eyes, the luxury brands are perceived to intentionally keep a certain distance from WeChat users. The participants felt that on the one hand the luxury brands are trying hard to connect with their consumers on social media, on the other hand, they are also trying to preserve their luxury brand image on this media platform by alienating general WeChat users. However, the participants felt it is not easy for luxury brands to achieve those two purposes successfully on WeChat. Suggestion of Luxury Brands’ Marketing Communication on WeChat Based on their perceptions and experiences of luxury brands’ social media marketing, the participants offered several insightful suggestions for luxury brands to improve their social marketing endeavors to better connect with their consumers. According to the participants, the most important marketing communication strategy via social media that luxury brands could adopt is to collaborate with opinion leaders (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1957) on social media to humanize, personalize, and entertainize their marketing communications. As the participants indicated, there are many successful and popular personal fashion public accounts on WeChat which have millions of loyal followers. Those personal fashion public accounts usually have unique styles and characteristics that are attractive to and well-liked by their followers. Compared to luxury brands’ official public accounts, those personal public accounts are perceived more humanized, personal, and closer to consumers. In addition, those accounts also have more flexibility to be creative and entertaining thus providing a better social media experience for luxury brands’ consumers. For luxury brands’ own public accounts on social media, the participants suggested that those luxury brands should become more active on social media by posting messages more frequently and constantly reminding consumers of their social presence. In addition, the participants think those luxury brands should be more adventurous on social media by being more creative and expressing more entertaining spirit.