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.

본 연구에서는 현대 사회의 주요 흐름인 ‘발전과 진화’의 방향성에서 한발 물러나, ‘지우는’ 경험과 그 감성에 대한 연구 가능성을 탐색하고자 하였다. 이를 위해, 지금까지 많은 주목을 받지 못한 키워드인 지우는 경험에 대 한 통합적 문헌조사를 우선적으로 수행하였으며, 이를 토대로 실제 사용자들을 대상으로 하는 맥락 질문법을 진 행하였다. 맥락 질문법의 경우, 아날로그적인 연필-지우개 사용맥락, 디지털의 대표적인 맥락인 컴퓨터-키보드 사용맥락, 마지막으로 최근 활발한 활용을 보이는 Tablet PC 사용맥락에 따른 사용자들을 모집한 후, 각각의 사 용맥락에 대한 In-depth한 정성적 인터뷰 및 정량적 자료 수집을 진행하였다. 결과적으로, 지우는 맥락에서는 특 정 내용을 잘 지워내는 상황적 효용뿐만 아니라 이를 수행하는 사용자에게도 정서적으로 만족스러운 경험을 제 공해야함을 확인할 수 있었다. 해당 연구에서 진행된 탐험적 시도 및 실증적 결과들은 향후 연구들에 대한 학술 적 접근과 함께 실용적 관점에서의 디자인 함의를 제공할 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.