As the importance of online virtual spaces increases due to COVID-19, interest in online virtual spaces using 4th industrial technology is increasing. Accordingly, the metaverse that combines virtual and real is becoming an issue. In the fashion industry, marketing using online is gradually increasing, and various attempts are being made by converging with the metaverse to provide new and enjoyable experiences to customers. This study looked at the impact of customer experience of a luxury fashion brand pop-up store on customer satisfaction, affective commitment and brand loyalty in a metaverse environment where utilization is increasing due to COVID-19 and technological development. For the analysis data of this study, a survey was conducted on the users who experienced the metaverse platform Zepeto's ' BVLGARI World'. As a result of examining the effect of the customer experience of a luxury fashion brand pop-up store on customer satisfaction, affective commitment, and brand loyalty in a metaverse environment, some of the customer experiences affect customer satisfaction, and the proposed hypothesis was partially accepted. In addition, it was confirmed that customer satisfaction affects affective commitment and brand loyalty, and affective commitment affects brand loyalty. In this study, we examine the impact of the customer experience of a luxury fashion brand pop-up store on customer satisfaction, affective commitment, and brand loyalty in the metaverse environment, and identify what is needed for more active convergence and activation of the metaverse and fashion brands. Also, we provide practical implications to people who involved in the metaverse and the fashion industry.

The market for luxury is changing with new competitors to the market, more modest growth, and new types of customers (Kim and Ko 2012, Ko, Phau and Aiello 2016) as well as the ubiquity of digital marketing channels (Okonkwo 2009). Moreover, social media has transformed the logic of fashion marketing by providing new ways of engaging, interacting, and connecting with customers (Dhaoui 2014) as well as enabling consumers to participate in branding process (Burman 2010). As a consequence, also luxury brands need to develop experience-based marketing strategies that emphasise interactivity, connectivity and creativity (Atwal and Williams 2009). What is more, despite of growing importance of social media marketing in luxury industry, extant research on the topic still remains quite limited (Ko and Megehee 2012). While the previous studies have well documented the benefits of luxury marketing on social media (Kim and Ko 2012, Kim and Ko 2010, Brogi et al. 2013, Kontu and Vecchi 2014, Godey et al. 2016), and their implications on luxury brand management (Dhaoui 2014, Larraufie and Kourdoughli 2014), and even co-creative marketing practices (Choi, Ko and Kim 2016, Tynan, McKehnie, and Chuon 2010), no studies to this date have looked at co-creation from consumer-perspective. This article provides a novel perspective on luxury branding, by following the resource-based theory of consumer (Arnould, Price and Malshe 2006) to study the brand identity as co-created in social media. To do this, visual frame analysis (Goffman 1974, Luhtakallio 2013) is applied on consumer generated images downloaded from Instagram feed of brand exhibition staged by luxury brand Louis Vuitton. Based on the analysis, a typology of co-created brand identities is proposed. The findings indicate that in the branded exhibitions, consumers co-create brand identity by utilising resources available in the experiential brandscape by taking and posting these objectifications of brand on social media (Presi et al. 2016) and in so doing create symbolic/expressive, and experiential/hedonic value (Tynan et al. 2010). Theoretically, this article provides a novel perspective on luxury brand as co-created and in so doing, demonstrates the dynamics of firm-consumer co-creation. What is more, to extend the emerging stream of visual analysis of luxury (Kim et al. 2016, Freire 2014, Megehee and Spake 2012), an application of novel is demonstrated in the article. Managerially, this explorative study provides new insights on luxury marketing in social media by suggesting that branded experiences should be designed in a manner that engages the consumer to actively use the resources available to them. The financial implications of this shift are also significant as according to McKinsey study, three out of four luxury purchases are influenced by social media (Hope 2016)

The value of luxury brand is always latently charged with elements of sacredness. Fashion expresses symbolic meaning that allows customers’ experience to be sacralized in many ways. Hence, customers’ necessity to express their existence is also possible thanks to luxury brand which is defined as exclusive and image-driven. Building on Georg Simmel’s sociological theory of equalization and differentiation behavior in fashion and René Girard’s mimetic theory of sacred, this paper investigates the sacredness in perception of luxury brands. Different customers stereotypes can be defined resulting in what we conceptualize as the sacred experience framework. Specifically, the authors identify three dimensions of the framework, namely the active and passive attitude, the personal and social motivation, and the idolatrous and realist perspective. The framework can be used for strategic positioning of luxury brand. The focus is on risks and threats related to idolatrous positioning of luxury brand and opportunities related to realist positioning. Luxury brand sustainability is possible by fostering the symbolic myth that reflects customer sacred experience. The aim of this paper is a formulation of a general theory of luxury, which to our best knowledge has not been well defined yet. Such a new theory of luxury requires that customers’ needs and motivations theories show how existential desire should be fueled also by sacredness.