The paper examines how omnichannel communication of sustainability of luxury fashion brands enhance consumer brand engagement. We propose a multiple case study of four Italian high-end fashion brands. The study advances the literature on sustainable luxury fashion and omnichannel communication and offers guidelines for managers to effectively communicate sustainability.

This research has adopted Word-of-Mouth (WOM) and social support theory along with a social media (SM) perspective to investigate why consumers enjoy using SM and interacting with luxury brand. Focusing on fundamental human needs, this study aims to examine fulfilment of which type of needs enhances interactivity on SM, encouraging in turn WOM adoption and brand-self connection. Our results have shown that consumers’ cognitive and integrative needs drive social interactivity and lead to WOM adoption and brand-self connection. However, no relationship is found between social needs and interactivity. Such relationship can only be strengthened with the presence of emotional support as perceived from the company and its brand.

Introduction The fashion business is known as one of the major industries that is suffering from rising concerns about the consumption of its product, which led to a reorganization of the fashion supply chain to become more sustainable three decades ago. The interest in the concept of sustainability and demand for sustainable marketing activities is gradually growing in the fashion industry due to the negative image and press it receives. Within the luxury fashion segment, the three main themes that are recognized to contribute to sustainability are exclusivity, craftmanship and limited production. However, luxury brands are increasingly shifting their attention and commitment towards environmental and social issues to be incorporated in the concept of sustainability. Yet, the majority of consumers has little understanding or misunderstands the concept of sustainable fashion and marketing, which leads to a gap between attitudes towards sustainability and actual behavior. As a result, fashion brands are trying to leverage their brand by making sustainability a key marketing strategy to raise awareness about social, environmental, economic and cultural issues. Extant research has not explored this recent trend to understand how consumers evaluate fashion brands with a sustainable marketing communication, especially in the context of luxury brands. This study investigates how luxury and mass fashion brands can utilize sustainable marketing contents in social media communication to reach their target group and enhance their equity with sustainability associations. Theoretical Development Associative network models of memory have served as a fundamental framework for a wide range of studies related to the formation and transfer of associations. According to associative network theory, brand knowledge is represented in form of an associative network of memory nodes connected to each other. Nodes are activated when cues, such as advertising, are presented. Mere exposure to cues was shown to be sufficient to active associations and facilitate association transfer. While brands are continuously attempting to make use of associative power to leverage brand equity, extant research has provided compelling reasons to accept that association transfer can also result in brand dilution when a retrieval of conflicting or negative associations occurs. Especially in the context of luxury brands consisting of very unique associations and being different from mass brands in many regards, managing the brand’s associative network is a crucial task in order to send the right signals to consumers and maintain exclusivity. This study investigates how social media communication of different sustainability dimensions affects brand attitude and how it ultimately impacts behavioral outcomes in an attempt to build brand equity for mass and luxury fashion brands. Method and Data The hypotheses are tested with 273 respondents who participated in an online experiment. They were first asked to state their involvement with the category fashion. Subsequently, subjects were presented with a brand post either for the mass or luxury brand including claims related to one of the four sustainability dimensions or no claims for the control group respectively. The experiment consisted of a 2 (brand: mass or luxury) x 5 (sustainability dimensions: none, cultural, economic, environmental, social) factorial design. The measures that followed included attitudinal as well as behavioral constructs related to the brand, sustainability as well as social media use. Analysis of covariance is applied to test for main effects and interaction effects. Summary of Findings This study provides evidence that social media communication of a sustainable brand affects the purchase intention of consumers. The findings indicate a significant difference between the mass and the luxury brand used for this study. The mass brand exhibits the potential to leverage associations with cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability. However, the results only reveal a marginally significant higher purchase intention when cultural sustainability is communicated compared to when the brand does not provide any sustainable associations. In contrast, the luxury brand suffers from significant brand dilution across all four sustainability dimensions resulting in a decline in purchase intention. Key Contributions The findings reveal that sustainability communication exerts a diverging influence depending on the type of brand that is involved. This study suggests that mass brands are able to benefit from sustainability communication in an attempt to leverage brand equity. However, for a luxury brand this type of associations rather presents a liability that might dilute the brand. The findings of this study provide important insights for brand managers. Since mass brands are currently increasing efforts into sustainable communication in the fashion industry, the results suggest that this might be a promising investment. However, luxury brands are advised to carefully manage the communication of salient content related to sustainability as it might harm the invaluable and unique associations inherent in a luxury brand.

Introduction In the last decade, the concepts of responsible or sustainable luxury (Vigneron & Johnson 2004; Bendell & Kleanthous, 2007; Kapferer, 2010; Janssen, Vanhamme, Lindgreen & Lefebvre, 2014) and digital or online luxury (Kim & Ko, 2010; 2012; Okonkwo, 2005; 2009; 2010; Mosca, Civera & Casalegno, 2018) have started receiving considerable attention, as separate areas of study. Scholarship shows that communicating CSR is more and more of a strategic decision (Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001) that needs to balance promises and performances of social instances (de Ven, 2008; Pomering & Donilcar, 2009; Hur, Kim & Woo, 2014;) and to impact on the audience positively through content, placement and motives of CSR messages (Jahdi & Acikdilli, 2009; Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010). Furthermore, with the explosion of digital contents and use, communicating CSR is even more challenging and firms increase their exposure to judgments of their real conduct (Christodoulides, Jevons & Blackshaw, 2011). Luxury players make an interesting case of investigation for the digital CSR communication, as they are peculiar both in the use of the online and in the implementation and communication of CSR (Vigneron & Johnson 2004; Bendell & Kleanthous, 2007; Kapferer and Bastien, 2009; Janssen et al., 2014). Despite some exploratory researches underline that luxury consumers are not so likely to see consistency between luxury and CSR (Davies et al., 2012) and yet, the communication of those activities can turn their perception negatively (Torelli et al., 2012), latest findings from empirical studies on luxury consumers show a growing interest in the communication of sustainability on the online (Janssen et al., 2014). However, few studies consider how consumers react and modify their perception in regard to CSR messages spread online, within luxury markets. This research has twofold aims. Firstly, it investigates the state of the art of leading international luxury players‟ CSR digital communication through the application of a theoretical framework developed by the authors for qualitative analysis of digital CSR communication contents, placement and purpose. Secondly, it explores luxury consumers‟ perception over specific digital CSR communications in order to verify whether and if there is consistency between CSR digital communication and consumers‟ reactions within luxury markets as well as underline emerging peculiarities in the way CSR is – and is expected to be – communicated online by luxury players. Theoretical development Creating experiences on the online became the imperative for luxury players (Okonkwo, 2010). This need is strengthened by luxury consumers, who are more willing to take part in the process of sharing brands‟ values through the online platforms, in a challenging multi-channel logic (Rifkin, 2000; Mosca et al., 2013). Luxury players seem to strive more than others to modify and integrate their products offer and communication on the online, because they have to adapt to a “pop” culture without losing their unique character and exclusivity (Aiello & Donvito, 2005) that can be, as some scholars suggest, identified with certain characteristics of sustainability and social responsibility (Janssen et al., 2014). The main contribution of this study is to allow a convergence between “responsible luxury” and “online luxury” by advancing the theoretical understanding of digital CSR communication within luxury markets, in terms of peculiarities, customers‟ perceptions and effectiveness. Research Design The study makes use of a theoretical framework for qualitative evaluation of web CSR communication previously developed by the authors, that is, in the context of the present research, enriched to include a qualitative investigation of all digital CSR messages (including web and social media). Firstly, the study applies the framework to 100 International luxury brands (representative of the principal luxury fashion-related personal products categories) selected from luxury reports by Deloitte, Reputation Institute and Interbrand in order to qualitative evaluate contents, placement and purposes of digital CSR messages. The qualitative evaluation is developed by the authors through the identification of KPIs reflecting the themes emerged in the framework, analysis of their frequency and Chi square test. Secondly, the study involves 400 luxury consumers within mature markets, who are tested around their perception of digital CSR communication of luxury players. The investigation over their reactions and perception of digital CSR messages is conducted through an online questionnaire and several focus groups. Statistical regression model, t-stat and comparison among the responses provided by consumers through the survey are conducted to analyse responses and match the data. Results and Conclusion Results show the that majority of the investigated players are extensively considering CSR as a core digital strategy, pointing out the growing communication of luxury goods that increased sustainability and social responsibility throughout the whole supply chain. The investigation on customers‟ perception outlines some discrepancies between players‟ communication and customers‟ reactions, showing several cases of misjudgements. On the one hand, some players fails in achieving customers‟ expectations and the actual raking of their digital CSR communication does not match the level of given perception. On the other hand, some digital CSR communications succeeds in creating positive overreactions, despite having previously evaluated as the minimum requirement as for CSR implementation and communication. Accordingly, some suggestions to managers are developed, not just around the three considered attributes of digital CSR communication (content, placement and purposes) but also around the context of buying behaviours linked to the core business and the brand values, which can be, somehow, strongly associated with sustainability and social responsibility. In particular, it emerges that luxury digital CSR communication is expected to be an integrated strategy between online and offline channels, focused upon facts, numbers, performances and results of CSR that should show high coherency with the luxury core business.

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of backstage storytelling in luxury brands’ social media communication and examine a psychological mechanism that elucidates how luxury brands’ backstage storytelling influences consumers’ attitudinal and relational outcomes. The theory of narrative transportation (Escalas, 2004) was employed as a theoretical lens. Focusing on the effects of visual storytelling in a social media platform, this study proposed that photos of a luxury brand’s backstage images offer a greater level of narrativity than staged images of products and models. Additionally, this study proposed VIP emotions and perceived intimacy as mediators between transportation to photo narrative and attitudes toward the brand, brand evaluation and self-brand connection. In addition, the effectiveness of social media for luxury brands’ visual storytelling was tested by testing the role of telepresence in viewers’ information processing. This study selects Instagram, a visual-oriented social media platform, as the study context; Chanel, a luxury fashion brand, was selected to develop the study stimuli. Two Instagram accounts for Chanel were created as study stimuli through a pre-test: one account with frontstage brand photos and one account with backstage brand photos. Students from two universities in the Southeast and Midwest were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions, frontstage (n=118) or backstage (n=134) Chanel Instagram account. Manipulation checks confirmed that respondents perceived the experimental conditions as intended. Our results revealed that viewers in the backstage condition experienced higher levels of transportation than those in the frontstage condition; VIP emotions and perceived intimacy mediate the relationship between transportation and attitudes towards a brand’s Instagram, brand evaluations, and self-brand connection. Additionally, ANCOVA results confirmed the interaction effects of telepresence on transportation is significant only in the backstage condition. Findings from this study shed light on the effectiveness of luxury fashion brands’ visual storytelling in social media communication.

Using the framework of social support, we aim to examine factors influencing social Word-of-Mouth (WOM) adoption. The proposed research model will be tested among customers who are active in the existing active social media platforms and have had experience in engaging with the activities of luxury brand communications. Introduction Today the most promising communication environment for reaching and interacting with stakeholders is the social media ecosystem (Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden, 2011). The social media has grown so rapidly in the past years that now impact the business processes and models (Henning-Thurau, Hofacker and Bloching, 2103). Many Brands begin to take advantage of the fluidity between social media and WOM for creating brand experiences that merge real and digital conversations, cutting through in incredibly powerful ways. However, the recent research (Godey, Manthiou, Pederzopli, Rokka, Aiello, Donvito and Sigh, 2016) suggest that luxury brands performing well in social media engagement. However, they are often lagged behind in WOM performance. Despite growing interest in examining the influence of social media marketing on consumer’s responses through brand equity creation (Godey et al., 2016; Jim and Ko, 2012), studies about social media in luxury brand communications remain to be scarce. An investigation of customer’s motivation behind participation in social media is timely and relevant which can help luxury brands unleash its potential. Moreover, development of an effective social WOM adoption model can help to provide a better picture of consumer interactions in online luxury brands communities, thus strengthen customerfirm relationship in longer term. Specifically, this research intends to answer the following two questions: 1) What are the major determinants of social WOM adoption in luxury brands communications? 2) Whether social support affects a. perceived source credibility; b. perceived information quality; c. user experience? Literature review Social media interactivity The concepts of social exchange (Blau, 1964) and the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960) have long been used by Marketing researchers to describe the motivational basis behind customer behaviours and the formation of positive relational attitudes (e.g., Wulf; Gaby; Iacobucci, Dawn, 2001; Rafiq; Fulford and Lu 2013). More recently these concepts have been used to explain why customers enjoy interacting with each other in social media (Liang, Ho, Li and Turban 2012; Godey et al., 2016). Social media interactivity is social interaction of people in social networking sites by Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook, Instagram (Hajli, 2016). For instance, Facebook has more than two billion monthly active users which is a great example of a platform. In fact, people love to interact with each other. When they favourite and like each other’s posts that would reinforce the closeness. Online social support Recent research has found that social interaction can bring social value to their users and that the social media is a powerful vehicle for an individual to build close relationships with others and to enhance the individual’s well-being (Liang et al., 2012; Eastin and LaRose, 2005; Obst and Stafurik, 2010; Shaw and Grant, 2002; Xie, 2008). Social support has been found to be a major social value that social media users can obtain from an online interactions (Eastin and LaRose, 2005; Obst and Stafurik, 2010; Huang, Nambisan and Uzuner, 2010). Social support is a multidimensional construct which refers to an individual’s experience of being cared for, being responded to, and being helped by people in that individuals’ social network (Cobb, 1976). Schaefer, Liang et al.(2012) claim that , online social support consists both tangible (e.g. instrumental and appraisal support) and intangible elements (e.g. informational and emotional support). Given the specific context, this study mainly focuses on the latter. Informational support refers to providing messages, in the form of recommendations, advice, or knowledge that could be helpful for solving problems. By contrast, emotional support refers to providing messages that involve emotional concerns such as caring, understanding or empathy. These two types of messages are the major support mechanisms for social interactions (Hajli, 2016). Antecedents of social WOM adoption Information adoption can be defined as the process of engaging purposefully in consuming information (Cheng and Thadani, 2012). Informational support provided through social interaction of individuals in social media can be in the form of ratings, review, recommendations or referrals. Therefore, when consumers search for information provided by other users to make a better decision for their purchasing, they are adopting information. From a marketer’s perspective, this process also helps to build long-term advocacy. This research argues that social media provides more opportunities to the individual to adopt WOM. The existing literature has identified several antecedents of social WOM adoption and most of these studies focused on travelling websites (Filieri; Alguezaui and McLeay,2015; Hajli, 2016). Beldad, De Jong, Steehouder (2010) have categorized the major antecedents of social WOM adoption in the literature into three categories namely customer-based antecedents (e.g. user’s experience during the social interactions); website based antecedents (e.g. perceived information quality) and company based antecedents(e.g. perceived source of credibility). Source of credibility is considered as fundamental predictors of consumers’ acceptance of a message in traditional WOM adoption (McGinnies and Ward, 1980). To facilitate the evaluation of credibility of a source, more and more social platforms require contributors to create a web profile upon their registration. Customers need to provide personal information (e.g. profile picture, personal preference). Furthermore, many social media website utilise reviewer reputation systems to enable customers to assess the credibility of reviewers. Zhang and Watt (2008) argue that the higher source credibility of message perceived in online social media, the higher level of information adoption would be. Moreover, the quality of information in online reviews is perceived as a very important cue for consumers to assess the website (Filierri, et al., 2015). Krishnan; Biswas and Netemeyer (2006) point out that concrete information provided by the website such as detailed features of the product/service is likely to be perceived as more credible than those from abstract information like peripheral description of the product/service. Finally, in marketing literature user experience is strongly related with trust (Yoon, 2002). In an online context customers’ negative experience is likely to affect their trust about the company. As a consequence, they are likely to engage in negative WOM. Research shows that user experience has a strong impact on the social WOM adoption (Liang et al., 2012). Method Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) will be employed for examining the research objectives of this research. The questionnaire for this study will be created through a professional online-based survey tool. As this research focuses on the factors influencing social WOM adoption in relation with luxury brands communications, the proposed research model will be tested among customers who is active in the existing active social media platforms and has had experience in engaging with the activities of luxury brand communications such as posting review or comment other’s post). Result and conclusion This research has adopted the electronic WOM theory and the social media support theory along with a social media perspective to investigate how customer’s interaction in social media affects their behaviour in relation to luxury brands consumption. The results show that social WOM facilitates the evaluation by customers about the luxury products using social media. Moreover, WOM has emerged with broad accessibility and the capability to be evaluated and measured easily by other consumers. This study gives practical implications on how to use social media to develop online communities for luxury brands. In conclusion, when going online, luxury brand should consider the importance of converting the online brand strategy into an interactive and engaging experience for their users and online communities.

In the current digital word, social media represent a relevant tool for marketing and communications strategies, which create new opportunities for firms to engage with their customers (Leeflang, Verhoef, Dahlström, & Freundt, 2013; Lemon & Verhoef, 2016; Libai et al., 2010). Among the sectors that leverage on social media in their communications, the luxury industry represents a main one. As previous research has mainly analyzed the consumer-side (Godey et al., 2016; Jin, 2012; Kim & Ko, 2012) overlooking the firm-side, the aim of this study is to investigate the cross-cultural issues faced by foreign luxury brands in implementing their social media strategies in China by carrying out a qualitative inquiry. China is the setting of analysis as it represents an increasingly relevant luxury market, characterized by the role of digital media as main communications and sales channel. Data collected consist of semistructured interviews with managers from foreign luxury brands operating in China in order to understand the issues faced and the strategies implemented. Moreover, an analysis of their social media presence on Chinese platforms such as WeChat and Weibo is conducted by considering the type of response activated among users. As pointed out by Belk (2017), qualitative advertising research can provide a better understanding of consumer response to advertising also in the rapidly growing field of social media, which have been mainly unexplored by qualitative approaches (Hadija, Barnes, & Hair, 2012). Moreover, an analysis on the firm-side will fill a gap in the existing literature and provide relevant managerial implications for international firms that operate in China.

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.

Introduction Recently global luxury brands have put their effort into strengthening their businesses online. This can be seen as an effort to overcome their stagnant growth by focusing on steeply increasing online markets as their target. In the midst of global recession, online luxury brands have continued to show rapid growth each year. Bain & Company (2017) has forecasted offline growth of global luxury brands at the annual average growth of 2~3% by 2020 while the online markets would show the average growth of 15% annually by 2020. Moreover, due to the expansion of importers with official copyright to the online sales and stabilization of e-payment system, online markets have gained consumer trust leading to the increased rate of consumers purchasing luxury brand online more. McKinsey Consulting (2017) has forecasted online sales of luxury brand would reach up to 28% of the total sales by 2025. Reflecting such expectations, luxury brands are in the process of proposing multiple channels of online sales and communicating through Social Network Service (SNS) marketing as their core strategies. As consumer usage of SNS, such as Facebook, tweeter, or Instagram, have increased, so the value of consumer toward luxury brands has changed. Since the introduction of the standing characteristic of social media-communication to the luxury brand market, the luxury brands not only became a privilege of the high minority group but also became available for anyone to easily purchase with absolute information availability of price, quality, location, etc. Theoretical Development Consumers are using social media sites to search for information and deviating from traditional media (e.g., television, radio, and magazines) (Mangold and Faulds 2009). The emergence of social media has changed communication method from one-way communication to multi-dimensional, two-way, peer-to-peer communication (Berthon, Pitt, and Campbell 2008). Social media platforms offer a chance for brand to familiarized interact with consumers. Also, consumer can be interacted with another consumer through social media. The most important factor for luxury brands to establish an online business strategy is communication with their consumers. Luxury brands that are most accustomed to communicating with their limited consumers in their offline stores providing high quality services, it is inevitable for them to fear the lack of face-to-face interaction with their consumers in online markets. Social media began to serve the luxury brands as the alternative communication channel within the online markets. Moreover, social media has proven effective in drawing consumer’s voluntary Word of Mouth(WOM) since social media interaction is important motivation for consumer to creating user-generated contents (Daugherty al., 2008). The social media provides the consumers with a platform to meet and communicate with others with similar interests in specific brand goods and services that makes target marketing easier than before (Muntinga et al., 2011). Furthermore, the social media platforms provide the consumers with restriction-free comments on a certain brand to other interested parties, the users voluntarily taking the role of eWOM (Kim & Ko, 2012; Vollmer & Precourt, 2008). Luxury brands also seek to take this advantage of social media. The extent of spreading word of mouth is at the most viral through social media platforms, influencing the consumer’s purchasing behaviors to a great extent as proven in many previous researches (Lau and Ng 2001; Nabi and Hendriks 2003). Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the consumer’s multidimensional value towards luxury brands on social media WOM intention and purchase intentions at the same time. Moreover, through extensive literature review with qualitative interview on consumers’ perceived value on luxury brand/product, consumer value dimensions on the luxury brands are categorized into six value factors (e.g. conspicuous value, status value, materialistic value, hedonic value, uniqueness seeking value, price-quality perceptions). Research Design The study conducted a thorough literature review and focus group interview to develop a comprehensive model of understanding the importance and dimensionality of customer value on luxury brand. After analyzing qualitative data on consumer value perception on luxury brands/product, online survey was performed using a customer sample in the United States. A web-based online survey was conducted using an online research panel service. After filtering and cleaning data collected, a final usable sample of 287 were analyzed to test hypothesized model. Measures for luxury brand on perceived values (including conspicuous value, status value, hedonic value, materialistic value, uniqueness seeking value, price-quality perceptions), social media word-of-mouth intention, and purchase intentions for luxury products were rated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Result and Conclusion The result show that the relationship between conspicuous value, hedonic value, uniqueness and price-quality perceptions with social media WOM were found to be significant impact. However, social media WOM were not affected by status value and materialistic value of luxury brand. Conversely, status value and materialistic value had a considerable influence on purchase intention for luxury brand online. And social media word-of-mouth had a significant positive effect on consumer purchase intentions for luxury brand. In the era where digital importance is at its peak, the expansion of the luxury brands to online business has become requirements and not optional consequences. It is not easy for luxury brands with their unique styles and identity, as well as high brand awareness to settle in an online market where variety of lifestyles and cultures coexist. For this reason, the study on the multidimensional consumer value on luxury brands holds its contribution to the academia and industry practitioners. This study empirically examines the influence of consumers’ perceived multidimensional value on the luxury brands to WOM and purchase intentions through social media. This paper has revealed that the consumer’s WOM intention on luxury goods does not necessarily correlate with the purchase intention. However, the consumer who has developed WOM intention through social media has shown to possess positive influence on the purchase intention. This results also indicated the importance of the exposure of the unique luxury brand image by the luxury brand managers to the social media in order to generate voluntary consumer WOM. Furthermore, in order to increase their social status, the necessity of online consumer community for sharing their special experiences is ever more present. Such online consumer community would serve to expand the communication channel between the brand and the consumers, thus leading to increase intimacy between two parties. The study was carried out to the American consumers; following study should be carried out to Chinese consumers or developing countries where luxury brands are exposed to the rapidly growing luxury brand markets. Moreover, an in-depth study on strengthening effective marketing strategy by segmenting consumer value on luxury brands should be conducted consequently.

Despite of its strategic role in shaping corporate image, Instagram predicts that 70% of its contents are not seen by users due to content overload and saturation problems. As more than 95 million photos are shared on Instagram on daily basis, when accessing Instagram, users are bombarded with a lot of visual information and consequently tend to selectively choose photos to pay attention to. Therefore, it is important for marketers to design an ads that has the ability to stop consumers and hold their attention for enough time to be processed cognitively before they scroll up or down to see other photos. This study investigates how visual aesthetic, vividness, and message type of pictures posted on Instagram affects customer responses. A content analysis of 3,952 brand content posted between July and December 2017 was conducted from the official Instagram accounts of seven global luxury brands. The top-listed brands on the Luxury Fashion Social Index namely Burberry, Calvin Klein, Chanel, Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, and Prada; were investigated as they were considered as good representatives of luxury brands with good social media presence. The coding guide in this study included the numbers of consumer responses (likes and comments), visual aesthetic (classical and expressive), vividness (high and low), and message type (literal and symbolic). For the independent variables, binary coding was used. ANOVA was used to test the hypotheses. Findings suggest that brand posts using expressive aesthetic image received more likes and comments on Instagram than the ones with classical aesthetics. Brand posts with high level of vividness receive more likes and comments than the ones with low level of vividness. Brand posts adopting using symbolic message receive more likes and comments than the ones implementing literal message. The results also suggest that there was a significant interaction between visual aesthetics, vividness, and message types in generating likes Brand content on Instagram using a combination of expressive aesthetic, high vivid, and symbolic message generates more likes and comments than any other combinations. Instead, the content adopting a combination of classical aesthetic, low vivid, and literal message produced the least responses. From theoretical perspective, findings can extend and modify media richness theory to luxury brand and social media contexts. Instagram can be used to display brand contents with various levels of vividness. This study imply that luxury consumers favor expressive aesthetics and symbolic message more positively indicating that they tend to have high level of need for cognition in consuming brand messages. Luxury brand marketers can increase their cognitive load by increasing the level of information complexity increasing the number of colors or patterns, using metaphoric statements, or crafting symbolic messages when creating brand posts on Instagram.

With the tremendous development of social media in recent years, luxury brands have welcomed social media with open arms as a means to engage with their customers. How luxury brands can make good use of social media marketing strategy is a top priority for both academicians and partitions but has not been well investigated. Many significant research gaps are present in this area warranting further explorations. For example, there is little research on the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement on social media (except for Chung and Cho’ (2017) study), even less for luxury brands. In addition, previous research on social media marketing mainly focuses on western-based platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Given the mentioned research gaps, this study builds on social media marketing and celebrity endorsement literature and aims to investigate the key factors influencing the effectiveness of celebrity-based social media marketing efforts for luxury brands. In particular, China market and Sina Weibo are selected as our research setting. We propose the message characteristics, celebrity characteristics, celebrity-brand relationship and brand characteristics have impact on customer engagement in celebrity-based social media marketing activities. We combined two data sources to generate the key variables. First, we derived posts on the brand pages of 12 luxury brands (e.g., Cartier, Tiffany, BVLGARI and PIAGET) that were published on Sina Weibo from September 2016 to March 2017 on the middle of December 2017. Then celebrity-related posts were all picked out. The final sample includes more than five hundred celebrity-related brand posts. For each post, it contains three kinds of engagement measures (i.e., the number of Likes, Retweets and Comments) observed on Sina Weibo. They are dependent variables in our model. We built up regression models to test the hypotheses. To generate those variables that cannot be derived directly from the posts, a set of independent coders was recruited to quantify those variables. The exploratory results show that posts related to celebrities (e.g., brand ambassador/spokesman) take a significant part of posts on Sina Weibo brand pages.

Most researchers agree that core to the value proposition of luxury brands is their sym-bolic content and the image they convey (e.g., Dubois and Paternault 1995, Albrecht et al. 2013). One of the key mechanisms through which the brand is charged with symbolic content is advertising (McCracken 1986). Advertising is a key medium in the meaning creation process which is strongly controlled by brand management and intentionally used to convey a certain image to consumers (Kim, Lloyd, and Cervellon 2015). Given the importance of advertising to the luxury industry, it is surprising that only little re-search exists that explores how luxury brands build and communicate their brand in ad-vertising (Freire 2014, Mortelmans 1998, Mortelmans 2014). This study closes this gap by identifying the key themes and codes which luxury brands use in their advertising, analyses their usage and evolution over time, category and brand to show similarities and differences between the advertising of luxury brands. This pro-vides the basis to answer the following research questions: • What are the main thematic and stylistic codes that luxury brands use in print adver-tising? • How do the thematic and stylistic codes vary between brands? • How do the thematic and stylistic codes vary between categories? • How do the thematic and stylistic codes vary over time? This research thus contributes to the advancement of luxury advertising theory as it pro-vides a comprehensive framework for academics and practitioners alike, to analyse and design luxury print advertisements. Drawing on research in the areas of luxury advertis-ing and semiotics, we develop a conceptual framework allowing to analyse and catego-rise print campaigns of luxury brands along the three dimensions’ brand, category and time for over 500 advertisements of luxury fashion brands. The study has important im-plications for academic research as well as the luxury industry. This study identifies the identity-relevant and symbolic codes used in creating a luxury brand and thus adds to an enhanced understanding of how luxury is communicated and constructed.

Luxury brands are explicitly marketed to appear rare, exclusive, prestigious, and authentic (Phau & Prendergast, 2000; Turunen & Laaksonen, 2011; Tynan, McKechnie, & Chhuon, 2010). The glamour and distinction that these brands generate appeal to consumers’ desire to signal their accomplishments, success, or social superiority (Mandel, Petrova, & Cialdini, 2006; McFerran, Aquino, & Tracy, 2014). It is, therefore, unsurprising that the marketing communication of many luxury brands explicitly portray images of successful, sophisticated, and confident people expressing their social superiority. However, the empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of such portrayal in luxury communication is scant. Only a pilot study showed that exposure to a story of a similar successful other may increase desire for luxury goods (Mandel et al., 2006). In the present research, we propose that envy is a key determinant of how consumers perceive display of pride and social superiority. Our findings from two studies showed that benign (malicious) envy predisposes consumers to perceive portrayal of social superiority on luxury marketing communication to be an expression of authentic (hubristic) pride. This relationship between benign (malicious) envy and authentic (hubristic) pride enhances (reduces) the luxury perception and positive brand attitude toward the luxury brand in the advertisement. These findings were replicated in a correlational study on genuine advertisements (Study 1) and an experiment that successfully manipulated consumers’ experience of benign envy (Study 2). Separate studies have recently shown that experience of benign envy can increase consumers’ willingness to pay toward the envied product (Van de Ven et al., 2011) and that the experience of authentic pride increases luxury consumption (McFerran et al., 2014). However, no existing research has explored the complementary effect of envy and pride on consumers’ response toward luxury marketing communication. The current research is therefore the first to demonstrate the differential effect of benign and malicious envy on: (1) consumers’ interpretation of social superiority as an expression of authentic and hubristic pride; (2) consumers’ response toward the portrayal of social superiority in luxury marketing; and (3) how portrayal of social superiority enhances or reduces luxury perception and brand attitude of a luxury brand. These findings also provide insights into the complementary relationship between envy and pride in consumer psychology. Lange and Crusius (2015) suggested that other’s authentic and hubristic pride expression may evoke the experience of benign and malicious envy, respectively. The current research, however, shows that the Luxury brands are explicitly marketed to appear rare, exclusive, prestigious, and authentic (Phau & Prendergast, 2000; Turunen & Laaksonen, 2011; Tynan, McKechnie, & Chhuon, 2010). The glamour and distinction that these brands generate appeal to consumers’ desire to signal their accomplishments, success, or social superiority (Mandel, Petrova, & Cialdini, 2006; McFerran, Aquino, & Tracy, 2014). It is, therefore, unsurprising that the marketing communication of many luxury brands explicitly portray images of successful, sophisticated, and confident people expressing their social superiority. However, the empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of such portrayal in luxury communication is scant. Only a pilot study showed that exposure to a story of a similar successful other may increase desire for luxury goods (Mandel et al., 2006). In the present research, we propose that envy is a key determinant of how consumers perceive display of pride and social superiority. Our findings from two studies showed that benign (malicious) envy predisposes consumers to perceive portrayal of social superiority on luxury marketing communication to be an expression of authentic (hubristic) pride. This relationship between benign (malicious) envy and authentic (hubristic) pride enhances (reduces) the luxury perception and positive brand attitude toward the luxury brand in the advertisement. These findings were replicated in a correlational study on genuine advertisements (Study 1) and an experiment that successfully manipulated consumers’ experience of benign envy (Study 2). Separate studies have recently shown that experience of benign envy can increase consumers’ willingness to pay toward the envied product (Van de Ven et al., 2011) and that the experience of authentic pride increases luxury consumption (McFerran et al., 2014). However, no existing research has explored the complementary effect of envy and pride on consumers’ response toward luxury marketing communication. The current research is therefore the first to demonstrate the differential effect of benign and malicious envy on: (1) consumers’ interpretation of social superiority as an expression of authentic and hubristic pride; (2) consumers’ response toward the portrayal of social superiority in luxury marketing; and (3) how portrayal of social superiority enhances or reduces luxury perception and brand attitude of a luxury brand. These findings also provide insights into the complementary relationship between envy and pride in consumer psychology. Lange and Crusius (2015) suggested that other’s authentic and hubristic pride expression may evoke the experience of benign and malicious envy, respectively. The current research, however, shows that the

The evolution of technology, on one hand, and the transformation of consumers’ behaviors, on the other hand, are taking marketing communication strategies, together with instruments and actors involved in their planning process, to the need of confronting themself with a huge change must consider the consumer polarization and different media attitudes at the same time. This research project assumes that companies should change their strategic action, if they want to communicate with their changing target. What happens in luxury mature markets? The intent is to empirically and qualitatively examine how luxury brands communication strategies have been evolving during the latest years towards a stronger relationship with a huge variety of different audiences at the same time. The interaction must follows a continuous path and the contents sharing must be the center of every communication effort in order to enhance the experience of consumers and to establish a strong relationship with the audience. The present research on 75 cases shows that players who have the most authority and esteem are the ones using social media tools and counting a higher number of impressions on social networks and a higher frequency of video views and shares content online.

Consumers today are not passive recipients of a constructed brand identity that is communicated towards them. Instead research suggests that the consumer is in fact an active part in constructing brand meaning. Salzer-Mörling and Strannegård (2004) held that brand managers are confronted with the fact that they are not the owners of the brand who can actively manipulate brand images in the minds of passive consumers. The importance of consumption activities and how these play a part in the development of meaning has been demonstrated by authors such as Wallendorf and Arnould (1991), who interpreted the consumption rituals of Thanksgiving and explored the linkages and cleavages between consumer ideology and consumer practice. Arnould and Price (1993) investigated the relationship between client expectations and satisfaction and concluded that the narrative of the rafting experience (multiday river rafting trips in the Colorado River basin was the empirical context for their article) rather than relationships between expectations and outcomes was central to its evaluation. Belk and Costa (1998) showed the creation of fantasy consumption enclaves through processes of inventing and mythologizing tradition, and Peñaloza (2001) investigated consumers‘ cultural production processes at different levels and concluded that consumers negotiate meanings and that business activities and specific references are significant for consumers in providing authenticity. In later research it is argued that brands belong to and are created within groups, communities or tribes (e.g. Brown, Kozinets and Sherry Jr., 2003), or that consumers are actively creating brandscapes (Thompson and Arsel, 2004) neo-tribes (Cova and Cova, 2002), the concept of brand communities (Muniz and O‘Guinn, 2001; McAlexander, Schouten and Koenig, 2002; Muniz and Schau, 2005; Algesheimer, Dholakia and Herrmann, 2005), subcultures of consumption (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995), and brand cultures (Schroeder and Salzer-Mörling, 2006). Muniz and O‘Guinn (2001) emphasized the triangular relationship between consumers and the brand and consumer relationships. McAlexander, Schouten and Koenig (2002) broadened this perspective by studying customers´ relationships with a branded product and related marketing agents, institutions as well as other customers. In their view, consumers socialize around brands, which are defined as brand objects, but they still consider brand meaning as being developed first by marketers. Related to the brand community is the concept of ‘neo-tribes‘, examined by Cova and Cova (2002), who hold that a tribe is not necessarily a brand community, since brand communities are explicitly commercial, whereas tribes are not. However, when a tribe is organized around a same passion of a cult-object it exhibits many similarities with a brand community (p. 603). Alongside the concept of brand community research has viewed the consumer-producer dichotomy in new ways of co-production: the customer as co-producer (Wikström, 1996; Vargo and Lusch, 2004), the reversal of consumption and production (Firath and Venkatesh, 1993), the consumer role in production and consumption (Firath and Venkatesh, 1995), consumers as customizers and producers (Firath, Dholakia and Venkatesh, 1995), customers as active co-creators of experience (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2000), the concept of customerization (Wind and Rangaswamy, 2000). Bendapudi and Leone (2003) viewed customer co-production in the construction of goods and ser-vices and claimed that consumer co-production extends to meanings as well and that consumers are not ―just passive receptacles of brand identity projected by marketers; they are active co-producers of brand meanings (p.26). They called for more attention to the implications of consumer co-produced marketing images given the empowerment of consumers through the Internet. Kozinets et al. further (2004) introduced the notion of ―interagency where consumer and producer interests are embedded in one another. Quinton and Harridge-March (2010) investigated relationships in online communities and the potential influence of consumer generated communication in online discussion fora on wine. This paper views consumer generated communication on luxury brands online and its impact on luxury brand image. With the growth of the Internet and brands’ use of it so has consumer initiated sites grown. Consumer communities and brand communities are today an active participant in the creation of brand value and brand meaning. However there is still a gap in the empirical research on consumer-generated communication and how this type of communication impacts brand image. A conceptual framework for consumer community communication is presented and three empirical examples of consumer-generated communication and its impact on brand image are presented. The approach is a qualitative online study. Consumer community sites show clear examples of information, distribution and conversation aspects. This study shows that information seeking is the most prevalent in the impact on brand image. The strength of this research lies in its qualitative nature with consumer interviews and online observations of consumer-generated brand communication. Given the exploratory nature of this research the online material had to be systematized during the course of the work and could not be chosen based on a set of criteria or evaluation methods already established.