Luxury companies are striving to improve their communication with customers while paying attention to online promotion and marketing activities. As companies interact with customers in luxury brand communities via various channels, they yield consumers higher value throughout the effective consumption process. In addition, this connection enhances customers’ understanding of the company, making it easier for companies to acquire empathy from customers. This study aims to analyze the value factors that affect luxury brand community members’ purchase intention and brand attitude. This study utilizes online survey results of four hundred prestige brand community users in China. The results reveal the positive effects of customer engagement on customer psychological empowerment and flow, the positive impacts of customer psychological empowerment and flow on community identity and brand attachment, the positive effects of community identity on purchase intentions, and the positive effects of brand attachment on purchase intentions and brand attitude. Furthermore, the results show that community types and fashion involvement partially moderate customer engagement. This study provides theoretical suggestions for relationship marketing in the luxury brand community environment. Last, this study presents practical implications that companies could utilize to create an emotional connection with their community members, resulting in an increase of customer support.

Customers’ cognitive and affective responses evoked during shopping are closely linked to their attitude toward a brand (Kim, Park, Lee & Choi, 2016). Furthermore, personal traits have been known as important moderators. Studies on the antecedents of customer attitude have focused on the main effects of specific predictors and are yet to examine the combined effect of cognitive and affective responses during shopping and personal traits (Fiore & Kim, 2007). Using complexity theory, this study intends to fill this gap in the research, particularly in the luxury fashion retail context. Employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this study offers 6 combination patterns of cognitive responses, affective responses, and personal traits leading to positive brand attitude. The results reveals three major findings. First, to shape a customer’s positive attitude toward a luxury brand, managing cognitive responses is more important than managing affective responses. Second, results show that avoiding negative feelings is more important than evoking positive feelings. Third, the combinations that lead to positive attitudes differ by the level of brand familiarity. This study contributes to the S-O-R literature by demonstrating the intertwined relationship between components of the organism (O) (i.e., cognition and emotion). The identified configurations can help luxury retail managers recognize patterns of influential factors on customer attitudes and better design retail experiences.

This study aims to investigate the effect of word-of-mouth on the purchase of genuine and counterfeit luxury brands. It also examines the roles of attitude functions and social norm in the relationship between word-of-mouth communication and consumers’ luxury brand evaluation. A 2 (information source: advertising vs. word-of-mouth) × 2 (luxury brand: genunie vs. counterfeit) between-subjects experimental design was used to collect the data. A total of 153 adult consumers from Shanghai, China were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions. Prior to the conduction of the actual experiment, a pretest of 30 respondents was conducted to determine the brands and scenarios selected for the experiments. Attitude function (social-adjustive function or value-expressive function) is measured by a self-monitoring scale. Social norm, luxury brand evaluations on genuine and counterfeit luxury brands were measured. MANOVA and ANOVA were performed to examine the proposed hypotheses. Results indicated that purchase intention for counterfeit luxury brand was moderated by subjective norm. Word-of-mouth increased the subjective norm related to the disapproval of counterfeits, compared to traditional advertising. Subjective norm was found to strongly influence consumers’ counterfeit luxury brand evaluation. The relationship between subjective norm and counterfeit consumption was positively significant. The moderating effects of self-monitoring and subjective norm on consumers’ evaluations and consumption for counterfeit luxury brands were found to significant. In short, the findings support the proposed hypotheses and showed that positive word-of-mouth was an efficient way to enhance consumers’ purchase intentions for genuine luxury brands, and also an effective means to decrease purchase intentions for counterfeit luxury brands. The results reveal that social-adjustive function and value-expressive function served by luxury brand consumption can be increased by positive word-of-mouth. Furthermore, higher levels of social-adjustive function and value-expressive function served by publicly consumed product (vs. privately consumed product) are found, indicating that product categories also affect the attitude functions served by luxury brand consumption. Managerial recommendations are provided to the marketing managers for luxury brands.

This study explores relationship between social responsibility in advertising and brand attitude in luxury products. This study investgates how psychological constructs of attitude towards advertising affect brand attitude and purchase intention of luxury brand consumer and how it can lead the sustainable development of luxury products. Consumers no longer purchase products only but depend on quality and price of product. With globalization and rapid growth, corporate social responsibility becomes important issue. And the advertising represents corporate image and management concept. More recently, and coinciding with some major corporate ethical disasters, many companies have been including sections on governance, ethical practice, and social responsibility (David S. Waller & Roman Lanis, 2009). According to David S. Waller & Roman Lanis (2009), Corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure has been the subject of substantial academic accounting research (Farook and Lanis 2005; Gray, Owen, and Maunders 1987). Advertising is one of the typical means that can represent a corporate image. As defined by Lutz (1985, p. 53), attitude toward advertising in general is “a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner to advertising in general.” In his framework, Lutz viewed attitude toward advertising in general as being directly influenced by general perceptions of advertising (Srinivas Durvasula et al., 1993). Authors would like to study following issues in this research. (1) How perceived social responsibility influences Attitude toward advertising. (2) How fashion consumer behavior influences Attitude toward advertising. (3) How attitude toward advertising affects brand attitude and purchase intention. (4) How proximity plays a moderating role among perceived social responsibility, attitude toward advertising and brand attitude.