Since the late 1980s, information communication and technology (ICT) have reshaped the landscape of the tourism industry (Buhalis & Law, 2008). Thanks to the Web 2.0 technology, tourism practitioners have never been this close to their customers over social media platforms. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social media refers to “a group of Internet-based applications which build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (p. 61). In line with this definition, electronic social networks, user-generated content aggregators, as well as location-based applications are all typical social media platforms, across which enable customers to create, edit, and share content. The increasingly growing social media platforms have greatly facilitated implementations of customer engagement strategies for organizations. As a psychological state, customer engagement is featured by interactive customer experiences with an organization, which encourage psychological, emotional, and physical investment a customer has in the organization (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017). In the tourism and hospitality context, customer engagement strategies are as critical in strengthening customer loyalty, trust, and brand evaluations (So, King, & Sparks, 2016). Useful insights have been gained relating to conceptualization and measurement scale of customer engagement, organizational and cultural obstacles to consumer engagement within hotel organizations (Chathoth et al., 2014), customer engagement in a social media context alongside the process of recognition (Cabiddu et al., 2014). Underlying the practical and theoretical significance of customer engagement lies the subjective nature of views on the social media platforms. Goh, Heng, and Lin (2014) recognized that engagement in social media brand communities positively lead to enhanced purchase expenditures through embedded information and persuasion. Quantitively, the persuasive effect of user generated information is at least 22 times more than that of marketer’s in terms of marginal effect. Although previous research has examined consequences of consumer engagement, there has been less attention paid to its causes. Meanwhile, as far as Brodie et al. (2011) were concerned, the persistency of consumer-brand engagement is contingent on an assessment of tangible and intangible costs against possible benefits such as product news and offers. Therefore, identification of these benefits can offer supplementary insights into current literature of consumer engagement. The current study utilizes the self-determination theory to uncover how engagement in social media activities is facilitated by consumers’ intrinsic motivators and what psychological benefits can consumer obtain from such engagement, as either psychological state or process (Brodie et al., 2011). Research subjects in this study are Chinese social media users. According to eMarketer’s (2017) estimated that more than 80 percent of Internet users in China (i.e., around 626 million people) accessed social networks regularly in 2017. The importance of tapping this massive market can never be overestimated.

The aim of the paper is to present an analytical approach that combines netnography with text-mining to build consumer brand knowledge in terms of brand associations deriving from social media contents. More specifically, it is based on the multi-vocal nature (Gensler et al., 2013) of the brand related to the participatory, collaborative and socially-linked behaviors by consumers that serve as creators of brand stories thus determining brand associations. It identifies and explores user-generated contents (UGC) as expression of brand associations emerging from different categories of actors in social media (consumers, influencers and other online prescribers), and measures their alignment with the company-defined brand associations. The rise of social media and the associated possibilities of large-scale consumer-to-consumer interaction and easy user generation of content shed light on the importance of the consumer-generated brand stories through social media, which have a high impact due to their characteristics of being digital, visible, ubiquitous, available in real-time, and dynamic (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010). Methodologically, the paper proposes a two-pronged methodological approach integrating qualitative market research techniques with the quantitative ones, respectively netnography, used to explore consumer interactions in virtual communities through computer-mediated discourses, and text mining, used to extrapolate information from relatively large amounts of electronically stored textual data by means of computer applications. More specifically, the paper proposes an analysis of the 10 top luxury fashion brands in terms of brand associations emerging from UGC in social media through the voices of consumers, bloggers and other online prescribers, in line with the multi-vocal nature of the brand. Such associations are then compared to those generated by the company, in order to identify a possible alignment. The paper provides an analytical tool that allow managers to actively understand how different “online market brand players” interact with their brands, and eventually redefine their branding strategies together with their brand communication.

China, with its rapid growing wealthy consumers, is increasingly becoming a major market for luxury brands and products. It is believed that the growing consumption of wildlife products in China is one of the key factors in the acceleration of global extinction of endangered species. It is certainly not an easy task to reveal consumers’ true motivations behind their purchase, but is even tougher to change their behavior. In the field of wildlife conservation, despite many efforts so far have been made to de-market the consumption, the results are not encouraging. This study is designed to fill the research gap by treating ivory purchase as a type of luxury product purchase in China. Through studying the behavior and its underlying values and motivations, this research is aimed to identify effective communication strategies to curve the ivory consumption in China. Pretest among small groups was first conducted for the purpose of scale validity evaluation. A random stratified sample was obtained from an online panel in China in January 2018. Total 600 usable samples were obtained. The data analysis showed a strong and positive relationship between power distance and materialism; power distance and negative attitude toward social media. Materialism/collectivism is found a strong predicator of positive attitude toward social media and social media usage. While ivory likely buyers associate uncertainty avoidance with materialism and positive attitude toward social network, ivory purchase rejecters demonstrate a positive relationship between long term orientation and materialism; long term orientation and positive attitude toward social media. Based on the strong relationships between materialism and social media usage we found form this study, it is recommended to design a social media campaign to dissociate ivory products from social status; and to associate social status with healthier, greener alternatives (e.g., Tesla car). Advocating desired behavior (e.g., charitable works to save elephants in Africa) in social media and de-advocating the undesired behaviors by celebrities on TV (e.g., ‘No Trading - No Killing’ campaign by YaoMing) is likely to work for likely ivory buyers.

Introduction Luxury industry, in addition to feelings, started to provide reasons for consumers to justify their consumption. Also, it helps them to avoid social risks by offering inconspicuous luxury products. For example, ‘Mandarin Oriental Barcelona’ suggests luxury holiday package for people running Barcelona marathon, London cocktail bar ‘Bart’ serves cocktails designed to 'facilitate focus and encourage relaxation', ‘Tiffany’ has dropped the spelled-out brand name from its fashion jewelry line in favor of simple “T”. (Trend watching 2017) Then, what changed consumers' interest? Interestingly, the current expectations of luxury consumers have a lot in common with the features of interdependent self-construal. The "we" effect of social media can explain this trend. Literature review and Conceptual framework Social Media usage and Interdependent Self-Construal Although earlier research in cultural psychology conceptualized self-construal as culturally determined (Markus and Kitayama 1991), more recent research suggests that independent and interdependent self-construal can also be made temporarily accessible. The most frequently adopted priming procedure to induce self-construal is the procedure by stories about we or I. (Gardner, Gabriel, and Lee 1999; Mandel 2003; Krishna, Zhou, and Zhang 2008; Hong and Chang 2015). We suggest that Social media usage can induce interdependent self-construal because social media users read stories and watch videos of others. Prior findings indicated that participants in interdependent self-construal condition have an equivalent number of thoughts about themselves and others. (Lee, Aaker, and Gardner 2000). Social Media, Interdependent Self-construal, and Consumers’ Luxury Value Perception Consumers’ perceptions of luxury value appear to be determined mainly by Functional, Individual, and Social aspects (Wiedmann, Hennigs, and Siebels 2009). Recent luxury marketing researchers compare conspicuous consumption and inconspicuous consumption, two types of social aspect consumption (Han, Nunes, and Dreze 2010; Eckhardt, Belk, and Wilson 2015). They are interested in Functional luxury value, added to Individual luxury value because small utilitarian additions to a hedonic luxury are often valued more than their stand-alone value (Keinan, Kivetz, & Netzer 2016). These two trends seem to have nothing in common. But when the concept of self-construal is adopted, they have something in common. Namely, interdependent selves, which focuses on others, are the one who cares about both inconspicuousness and utilitarian aspects. We suggest that because of the features of interdependent self-construal, consumers more using social media tend to have a different priority regarding luxury value perception than consumers less exposed to social media. We explore the mediating role of relational interdependent self-construal in this model (Triandis 1989; Cross, Bacon, and Morris 2000). Also, luxury brand company’s social media marketing efforts (Kim and Ko 2012; Godey et al. 2016) have different features. We expected that each social media marketing activity has a different impact on luxury value perception. Interdependent Self-Construal, Reason, Functional luxury value We propose that because of interdependence priming effect of social media, participants who are exposed to social media (social media priming group) tend to rely on both reason and feeling, which in turn set an equivalent value on Functional luxury value (cognitively superior) and Individual luxury value (affectively superior) (Hong and Chang 2015). Interdependent Self-Construal, Social Risk, Inconspicuousness The authors propose that because of interdependence priming effect of social media, participants who are exposed to social media (social media priming group) tend to avoid social risk than participants who are not exposed to social media (no priming group). Study 1: The effect of social media on the balance between self and others. A total of 709 respondents (389 females) participated in this study via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) They were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions (with social media manipulation vs. No manipulation) The impact of ‘one-time social media use’ Following the previous study (Hong and Chung 2015), we conducted a 2 (social media manipulation: No vs. Yes) x 2 (thought type: self vs other) mixed ANOVA with social media manipulation as a between-subject factor and thought type as a repeated measure. The main effect of thought type is significant (F(1,707) =293.54, p<.000). However, the interaction between social media manipulation and thought type was not significant. (F (1,707) = 0.128, p<.721). So, the result shows that one-time social media use doesn’t manipulate interdependent self-construal. The impacts of ‘chronic social media use’. To check whether chronic social media use can manipulate interdependent self-construal, we conducted a 2 (time spent on social media: Low vs. High) x 2 (thought type: self vs. other) mixed ANOVA. The main effect of thought type is significant (F(1,707) =293.81, p<.000). The interaction between time spent on social media and thought type was significant. (F (1,703) = 6.65, p<.000). Also, we conducted a 2 (communication on social media: Low vs. High) x 2 (thought type: self vs. other) mixed ANOVA. The main effect of thought type is significant (F(1,707) =300.76, p<.000). The interaction between communication and thought type was significant. (F (1,704) = 5.764, p<.000). So, the result shows that chronic social media use manipulates interdependent self-construal. Also, we computed three types of groups, the others-dominant, the balanced, and the self-dominant by modifying past research (Kitayama et al. 2009; Wu, Cutright, and Fitzsimos 2011, Hong and Chang2015). A chi-square test revealed that participants who spent more time and had more communication on social media had more balanced thought type (32.6%, 31.0%) than participants who spent less time and had less communication on social media (24.8%, 24.0%) Study 2: The effect of using social media on luxury value perceptions (SEM) A total of 255 respondents (85 females) participated in this study through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The participants were between 18 and 65 years old and lived in the U.S., and the modal age group was 25-34 (43.9 %), followed by 35-44 (25.5%). We conducted exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using maximum likelihood estimation with Promax rotation. The goodness of fit statistics is: 𝒙𝟐=707.14, df =377, P<0.0005, 𝒙𝟐/df =1.876, CFI=0.95, and RMSEA =0.059. The final CFA model fits well with the data (Hu and Bentler, 1999; Hair et al., 2010). After confirming the measurement model, SEM with maximum likelihood extraction was estimated to test Hypothesis. The goodness of fit criteria of the model meets the proposed thresholds in previous studies: 𝒙𝟐=677.97, df =374, P<0.0005, 𝒙𝟐/df =1.813, CFI=0.95, and RMSEA =0.057 (Hu and Bentler, 1999; Hair et al., 2010). The SEM model showed each social media activity has a different effect on each luxury value. Interaction positively impacts the functional luxury value (β=0.38, p<.000) but negatively impacts the individual (β= - 0.27, p<.000) and social luxury value (β= - 0.34, p<.000). Entertainment/WOM has a positive effect on individual luxury value (β=0.39, p<.000) and on social luxury value (β=0.32, p<.000). Customization positively impacts the social luxury value (β=0.26, p<.000). We could also find Entertainment/WOM and Customization did not influence the functional luxury value. Only Entertainment/WOM positively impacts relational interdependent self-construal (β=0.32, p<.000) Relational interdependent self-construal positively impacts on individual value (β=0.24, p<.000) and social value (β=0.27, p<.000). We conducted a mediation analysis. Among social media activities, only Entertainment/WOM had a significant positive effect on Relational Interdependent Self-Construal. Study 3: the effect of social media on self-construal and choice between functional value and individual value superior options 454 Responses (304 females) collected via Mturk to stimulate the environment of social media. Respondents are primed on interdependence by social media usage while control group respondents are not primed. The authors checked the validity of the self-construal manipulation effect of social media. Respondents were given a choice task, designed by adopting previous method (Hong and Chang 2015). They were told to imagine that they were going to buy a hand bag. Handbag X is superior on functional (cognitive) dimensions whereas handbag Y is superior on all individual (affective) dimensions. Participants are asked to indicate their choice between two Handbags Choice. A chi-square test revealed that the effect of social media manipulation is not significant on the handbag choice (𝑥2(l) 0.371, p<.309). However, the effect of interdependent self-construal on the participant's’ handbag choice was significant (𝑥2(l) 5.85, p<0.01). As predicted, participants with a higher Interdependent self-construal primed by social media have a smaller preference gap between Functional luxury value and Individual luxury value (F:73.2%-I:26.8%=46.4%), than participants with lower Interdependent self-construal participants (F:82.7%-I:17.3%=65.4%) Study3 supports the results of previous two studies. As individuals communicate more and spend more time on social media, they are more likely to prefer equally for Functional luxury value and Individual luxury. Study 4: the effect of social media on self-construal and choice between conspicuous and inconspicuous options. After the self-construal manipulation with social media, respondents were given a choice task. The choice was designed by adopting previous method (Han, Nunes, and Dreze 2010). Respondents were told to imagine that they were going to buy a handbag. One option has an inconspicuous design whereas the other option is conspicuous design. Participants are asked to indicate their choice between two handbags. Social media manipulation and Handbags Choice. All three chi-square tests revealed a significant or marginal effect of social media manipulation on participants handbag choice with the same pattern. ( 𝑥2(1) = 6.328, p > .032; 𝑥2(1) = 3.086, p > .079; 𝑥2(1) = 1.933, p > .098) As predicted, participants in social media manipulation group prefer the inconspicuous option to the conspicuous option (59.3%>40.7%; 58.9%>41.1%; 60.4%>39.6%) than participants in control group (47.3%, 52.7%; 50.5%, 49.5%, 53.8%, 46.2%). Interdependent-self construal and Handbags Choice. All three chi-square tests revealed a significant effect of interdependent self-construal on participants handbag choice with the same pattern. ( 𝑥2(1) = 4.2, p > .047; 𝑥2(1) = 4.79, p > .029; 𝑥2(1) = 6.11, p > .013) As predicted, participants with higher Interdependent self-construal primed by social media have a equivalent preference about the inconspicuous option and conspicuous option (50%, 50%; 50.8%, 49.2%; 52.4%, 47.6%) than participants with lower Interdependent self-construal(59.6%, 40.4%; 61.1%, 38.9%, 63.9%, 36.1%). Study4 shows that one-time social media exposure can reduce conspicuous consumption. However, as individuals communicate more and spend more time on social media, they become more likely to prefer equally for conspicuous option and inconspicuous option. Contribution In luxury brand marketing, this study sheds light on the balance between two motivations, luxury for self and luxury for others (Kapferer, Jean-Noël, and Vincent 2009) using the concept of self-construal. This research also contributes to the literature on consumers’ luxury value perception (Hennigs et al. 2012; Wiedmann et al. 2009). In general marketing subjects, it adds to the increasing literature on consumer risk and choices between affective and cognitive options. For the luxury brand industry, this study can give marketers a practical idea about choosing social media marketing activities and designing new products. For example, if luxury brand companies promote customers posting opinions on websites, they should know that their activities might advertently affect their sales because interaction negatively influences on individual and social luxury value.

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.

This study tries to focus on the psychological influence by social media on user and tries to find a relationship between psychological influence and consumption patterns. Therefore, we contend that social media are platforms of interaction in that they can generate social empowerment—users feeling that they have an impact on others which gives them high self-worth (Sara Hanson, 2017) and temporarily rise self-worth can lead low self-control. Khan and Dhar (2006) find that a prior virtuous act can momentarily increase one’s self-concept, which leads to more self-indulgence in unrelated decisions. In this paper, we also investigated the two types of social media users by their presentation focus (self vs. other). In social media, there are two types of users: player & watcher. Players are users who have many followers, post lots of information about themselves and need love and attention from other users. Thus, a player which is called self-presentation focus (Wilcox, 2013) is defined as a user who focuses on information they are presenting to people in social media. In contrast, watchers are users who don’t post information on social media as actively as players but love to observe and like or dislike other users’ posts. Thus, a watcher which is called other-presentation focus (Wilcox, 2013) is defined as a user who focuses on information people present to them in social media and this is called other-presentation focus. In general, players could feel more social empowerment because posting information can be one of the activities involving interacting with other users. However, we contend that watchers will feel rather more social empowerment because having an impact, or having the feeling of social empowerment, involves the perception that one’s actions are beneficial to others, which is giving a like or comment to other user in social media (Grant and Campbell 2007). This research will have several theoretical and managerial implications. First, this study will show the influence of social media on users’ behavior and mentality, and which are related to self-control and social-empowerment. Second, this study will discover which type of social media user can be affected effectively by firms’ social media efforts.

This study empirically examines the effects of two distinct types of privacy-related concerns (organizational threats and social threats) on different aspects of information disclosure (amount, honesty and conscious control) on social network sites, especially by highlighting the role of trusting beliefs (integrity & honesty, predictability, benevolence, competence), across three markets in which social network usage is substantial (i.e. US, Europe, and East Asia). The study contributes to the literature focused on the paradoxical dichotomy between privacy attitudes and behaviors. In a quantitative modeling framework, we develop a structural model based on our previous conceptual model. We use data collected through snowball convenience sampling technique from a large sample (n=624), Web-based consumer survey from Europe, US and East Asia to measure these constructs, and we fit a series of structural equation models that test related prior theory. Findings suggest that the “Social Sharing” paradox may result from a failure to disentangle between social and organizational concerns, since the authors find no effect of privacy concerns about organizational threats on overall disclosure (amount and honesty of information) but find high conscious control of information disclosed for higher concerns towards social threats. Trusting beliefs differently influence information disclosure in the three main geographical areas and were found to moderate the effect of social concerns on the amount of information disclosed and conscious control. Further the cross-country analysis results suggest that cultural values may affect how concerns about privacy and trusting beliefs, impact self-disclosure. For practice, our research suggests actionable strategies to aid online marketers in matching information requests with the needs and concerns of consumers by providing greater control and customization and enhancing firm trust.

This paper develops a conceptual model of international social media marketing strategy that describes how culture shapes consumers’ use of social media around the world. Drawing from cultural psychology, marketing, and computer information systems, we use Kietzmann et al.’s (2011) functional building blocks of social media to organize social media functions, then explicate how various dimensions of culture affect the way such social media functions are used across cultures. By delineating these complex relationships, our model and the propositions that stem from it offer directions for future research and advance understanding of cross-cultural differences with implications for businesses that provide social media or capitalize on social media for global reach in the international marketplace.

Social media have been proved as a tool for social branding, but not as a tool for return on investment (ROI) generation. The ultimate goal of any business activities is to generate ROI; therefore, businesses should know what social media practices actually increase their ROI. Researchers in the computer science and engineering areas have attempted to create a systematic model/statistical method to quantify data collected from social media to generate meaningful consumer and market trends and ROI (Zeng, Chen, Lusch, & Li. 2010). This process is called Social Media Intelligence (SMI) or Social Media Analytics (SMA). Researchers have not been yet successful in developing an effective analytical system for social media data to generate ROI. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore which social media practices would affect ROI based on SMA process with key techniques used to analyze the indicators in social media (i.e., Key Performance Indicators; KPIs) that show the effectiveness of a company in achieving its business objectives. This study is an exploratory research to determine the nature of a problem in the SMI, to gain further insight, and to show opportunities in the subject area. The result shows that using crawling, topic modeling and social network analysis techniques, businesses could collect and monitor right KPIs depending on their social media goals (e.g., number of followers for awareness, number of link clicks for engagement, number of lead magnets for conversion). After then, using the techniques to analyze the KPIs (e.g., opinion mining, sentiment analysis, etc. for the understand stage), businesses would be able to identify/predict consumer demands and market trends. Based on this prediction, businesses need to visualize the result to customers by executing right marketing strategies (e.g., effective viral marketing, personalized Call-To-Action, customized product/service, direct relationship establishment, frequent communication, establish long relationship, etc.). This study could contribute to the field by presenting the effective KPIs and techniques organized based on the SMA stages and social media goals and could provide the industry a right tool and a direction for their social media promotional practices.

Introduction Today, many luxury brands use social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube to communicate with their target consumers worldwide. Previous research has shown that engaging consumers in social media can lead to increase commitment and loyalty (e.g., Hudson, Huang, Roth, & Madden, 2016; Wirtz et al., 2013), purchase intentions (e.g., Beukeboom, Kerkhof, & de Vries, 2015; Kim & Ko, 2010) and sales (e.g., Kumar et al., 2016). Although researchers have investigated the role of social media marketing for luxury brands at an aggregate level (e.g., Godey et al., 2016; Kim & Ko, 2012), little is known about the success drivers of luxury brand communication at a more granular level. Therefore, our study aims to identify the characteristics of luxury brand posts that elicit positive consumer affect. Specifically, we examine the effect of different luxury appeals (e.g., conspiciousness, uniqueness, quality), alongside other brand post characteristics (e.g., vividness, call-to-action, informative/entertaining content) on consumers‟ affective reactions (“Love”) towards a luxury brand post. For this purpose, we draw on field data from Facebook that comprises 2,343 individidual brand posts published by 18 leading luxury brands between 1st January 2017 and 30th June 2017. Our study contributes to literature on luxury brand communication in at least three ways: First, from a theoretical perspective, we are shedding the first light on the relevance of different luxury appeals for generating consumer engagement in social media. Methodologically, we further introduce a novel measure of consumer engagement termed Love-Ratio (short, LoveR), which is based on Facebook‟s new “reactions”-feature that was introduced in 2016. Finally, from a managerial point of view, our insights that help managers of luxury brands to „engineer“ emotionally engaging social media content that contributes to strong consumer-brand relationships. Literature Review Conceptual BackgroundLiterature provides initial empirical evidence for the general advantageousness of social media activities for luxury brands (Godey et al., 2016; Kim & Ko 2010, 2012). Importantly, these studies commonly examine consumers‟ overall assessment of a brand‟s social media activities, i.e. whether a brand‟s (entire) social media presence “enables information sharing with others” (interaction) or “offers customized information search” (customization; Kim & Ko, 2012, p. 1483). Therefore, it constitutes an aggregate measure of a brand‟s social media presence as a whole, and is not concerned with the specifics of the individual interactions between a brand and consumers (post as the unit of analysis). Recent research, however, clearly indicates that the extent to which consumers interact with a brand in social media (e.g., liking, sharing, or commenting) depends on the characteristics of a given brand post (e.g., De Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012; Sabate, Berbegal-Mirabent, Canabate, & Lebherz, 2014; Schultz, 2017). Most studies in this regard examined correlations between certain characteristics (e.g., use of photos, videos, and/or links, post length and timing) and different measures of consumer engagement or post popularity (i.e., number of likes, comments, or shares).5) These studies provide useful insights into several “hard” criteria that determine consumer interactions with brand posts. However, due to the tremendous coding efforts required, only few studies have also considered “soft” criteria, such as the appeal – i.e., “the overall theme of a post” (Wagner, Baccarella, & Voigt, 2017, p. 2) – that is communicated within a post. To extend knowledge in the field of luxury brand communication in social media, we are adopting a similar approach by (1) proposing a comprehensive set of luxury-specific appeals that may be communicated within brand posts and (2) empirically investigating their effectiveness in evoking positive consumer affect. Conceptual Background Based on a synthesis of prior work (e.g., Vigneron & Johnson, 2004) we propose a set of six distinct luxury appeals that can be communicated via social media posts: 1. Conspicuousness: Conspicuous consumption refers to the consumption of goods or services with the intention of social status improvement and communication to others (Eastman, Goldsmith, & Flynn, 1999). It involves high levels of self-monitoring and a status-signaling mentality (Wilcox, Kim, & Sen, 2009), aimed at presenting oneself by means of a product that is recognized and highly regarded by others. The general aim is to express a brand„s capability to enable a person to become the center of attention and stand out of the crowd by conveying a high social status (Phau & Prendergast, 2000). 2. Uniqueness: Uniqueness refers to the quality of being particularly special due to sheer rarity or remarkable characteristics. Brands express their uniqueness by highlighting their products‟ (a) excellent craftmanship, (b) innovativeness, or (c) their exclusiveness in terms of consumption. Examples for uniqueness through craftmanship include creative product designs, the use of rare materials or ingredients (e.g., diamonds in the context of jewelry), or even tailor-made/personalized products (e.g., configuration of a car; inscription of personal initials onto fashion items). The general aim is to distinguish a product from others, rendering it extraordinary and remarkable. The same can be accomplished through innovation, since a pioneering product is by definition unique in that it has certain features that distinguish it from any other existing competing product. Furthermore, uniqueness can be achieved through exclusiveness of consumption. One method to create contrived rarity is a limitation of the quantity of products manufactured (e.g., limited editions; Vigneron & Johnson, 2004). 3. Quality: Luxury brands are generally expected to deliver high quality products and services (Vigneron & Johnson, 2004). Indicators that can be used in the communication of quality include specific materials (e.g., cashmere, gemstones) or performance data (e.g., power, top speed) that convey a high standard of (instrinsic) quality. 4. Hedonism: In general, the term hedonism refers to the pursuit of pleasure in the sense of sensual self-indulgence. Luxury brands commonly offer emotional and sensual benefits that can be experienced by and transferred to consumers in a consumption situation (Moore & Lee, 2012). Communication aimed at conveying hedonism commonly neglects utilitarian (i.e., functional) aspects of the product of interest and, instead, emphasizes the emotional experience associated with the consumption of that product or service (Vigneron & Johnson, 2004), e.g., pleasure, joy, self-reward, love, passion, or excitement (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982). 5. Extended Self: The term extended self describes the definition of a person‟s selfconcept by his/her personal possessions. In other words, consumers use products (or services) to define who they are. For example, wearing luxury fashion items enables a person to associate himself/herself with characteristics of the brand, and vice versa (Vigneron & Johnson, 2004). Brand communication reflecting this appeal attempts to suggest that the consumption of a product or service helps them to establish, reinforce, and express an aspired personality trait, such as elegance, confidence, success, or power. 6. Heritage: Many luxury brands have a long history and rich tradition. Communication efforts that intend to convey a brand‟s rich heritage either showcase a brand‟s founder as a person, elaborate on the founder‟s or company‟s history, or highlight a traditional, iconic product which has made the brand what it is today. Data and Method To investigate the effectiveness of these luxury appeals in evoking positive consumer affect, we conducted an empirical analysis using field data from Facebook. We compiled a set of 18 luxury brands from different categories, including fashion, cars, cosmetics, and champagne. For this set of brands, we extracted all brand posts (mostly photos and videos) that were published between 1st January and 30th June 2017, yielding 2,343 individual posts that constitute our unit of analysis. We enriched the raw data by manually coding all brand posts in terms of the luxury appeals of interest, following a two step-procedure. First, we developed a detailed codebook that defines each luxury appeal, provides a list of relevant indicators, and further illustrates each luxury appeal with the help of exemplary brand posts. Using the codebook we instructed two independent coders to code the absence (0) or presence (1) of each luxury appeal within a given post. The inter-rater reliabilities were satisfactory for all luxury appeals, ranging from .79 to .91. We further requested the coders to capture other content characteristics and controls that potentially affect consumer interactions with brand posts, e.g., Vividness, Calls-to-Action, Entertaining vs. Informative Content, Visibility of the Brand, and Type of Endorser. Instead of examining conventional measures of consumer engagement, such as likes, comments, or shares, we introduce a new measure of consumer affect that we label “Love-Ratio” or, short, LoveR. This measure is based on Facebook‟s new class of user reactions that enable users to indicate their feelings about certain posts, such as “Love” or “Anger”. LoveR represents the amount of “Love”-reactions relative to all reactions toward a given brand post. Thus, it reflects an aggregate measure of users‟ positive affect towards a brand post. We consider LoveR an important extension of commonly investigated outcomes such as Likes or Shares, which are considered “fairly low-level form[s] of engagement” (Stephen, Sciandra, & Inman, 2015, p. 20). Consumer affect, by contrast, is generally considered a “chief motivator of behavior” (O‟Cass & Frost, 2002, p. 73) and a “mediating factor in the purchase process” (Schiffman, Bendall, Watson, & Kanuk, 1997, p. 361), therefore representing a useful proxy of consumer attitudes. Model estimation Given the nested structure of the data (i.e., posts are nested within brand pages), we use hierarchical linear modeling (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) with random intercepts to analyze the data. We specify the proposed luxury appeals (Conspiciousness, Uniqueness, Quality, Hedonism, Extended Self, and Heritage) alongside additional content characteristics, and brand dummies as predictors of LoveR. After estimating the direct effects, we stepwise include interaction terms to test potential moderating effects of Vividness and Entertainment. The results suggest that three of the six luxury appeals evoke positive consumer affect. The strongest driver of LoveR is Quality (β = .978, p < .001), followed by Hedonism (β = .479, p < .05) and Heritage (β = .451, p < .01). Conspiciousness and Uniqueness, by contrast, are not significantly related to consumers‟ affective reactions towards brand posts. Furthermore, the use of an appeal that communicates Extended Self even decreases LoveR (β = -.530, p < .10), although the effect is only marginally significant. To further contextualize these main effects, we included additional interaction terms involving Vividness and Entertainment. We find (a) that the effect of Hedonism on LoveR is further enhanced by the use of videos (relative to photos and other less vivid types of media; interaction effect: β = 1.023, p < .05, conditional effect of Hedonism for vivid content β = .934, p < .01,) and (b) that the effect of Heritage on LoveR tends to be larger when it is communicated in an entertaining rather than informative style (interaction effect: β = .753, p = .001; conditional effect of Heritage for entertaining style: β = .660, p < .001). Conclusions Our study sheds light onto the effectiveness of luxury brands‟ communication in social media in terms of generating positive consumer affect. Our results based on an analysis of 2,343 individual luxury brand posts in Facebook show that only certain luxury appeals can trigger consumers‟ “Love”-reactions towards a brand post. Specifically, we find that brand posts that convey Quality, Hedonism, and Heritage appeals increase the likelihood of a brand post being “loved“, whereas Conspiciousness and Uniqueness exert no influence at all. Posts which communicate an Extended Self may even decrease favorable affective reactions by users. The effects of Hedonism and Heritage are further enhanced by the use of videos or entertaining content, respectively. These findings have direct implications for the marketing communications of luxury brands. From a content perspective, marketers should develop and run media content that (a) emphasizes hedonic consumption motives (as reflected by Hedonism) rather than status-signaling motives (as reflected by Conspiciousness), preferably using rich media such as videos; (b) educates consumers about the history and values of a brand, preferably in an informative rather than entertaining way; and (c) reinforces a brand‟s quality claim.

In fashion marketing, celebrity endorsement is a widely-used strategy to gain attention and produce positive brand knowledge (Carroll, 2009). Luxury brands use their social media accounts to post pictures of celebrity endorsers using their products. This is an effective strategy because celebrity endorsement posts could encourage fans of the celebrity to repost, like or comment on this post. This is beneficial for the brand because this results in more brand exposures. The question is how luxury brands can use celebrity endorsements successfully in the digital age. For example, should luxury brands localize the celebrity endorsement in social media? The dilemma of standardization and localization becomes very significant when luxury brands are facing a culturally different market (Liu et al., 2016). This paper examines the effectiveness of localized celebrity endorsements for luxury brands in Chinese social media based on an analysis of online big data and two experiments. First, a multi-level analysis of the posts of 33 luxury brands suggests that localized (Chinese) celebrity endorsers trigger more social media interactions than standardized (Western) celebrity endorsers. Next, the following experimental studies reveal that local endorsers do not enhance perceived brand luxury and individuals’ level of patriotism moderates the effect of localized (vs. standardized) celebrity endorsements on perceived brand luxury. For people with lower level of patriotism, localized celebrity endorsements reduce the perceived brand luxury. In contrast, for people with higher level of patriotism, localized celebrity endorsements lead to higher perceived brand luxury.

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.

Digital technological development has created different new possibilities. New products and services are developed to cater the needs and wants of these digital consumers (or digital natives). It has also changed the means of marketing communications. Social media has become an integral part of many people’s lives, thus social media marketing is found in the marketing strategy of every brand. Western social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and so on are banned in China. In their places, Weibo, WeChat, Youku and more are the main social media channels in China and thus the main battlefields of social marketing for brands entering China Market. WeChat is the largest social network in China, with over 900 million users daily. Chinese users spend an average of over 70 minutes a day using WeChat, for nearly all types of services, including booking flights, restaurant table reservation, shopping, paying bills, hailing taxi, transferring money, and posting Moments on their walls, etc. Not only that, WeChat allows companies and celebrities to create official accounts to generate content for promotional purposes. Moreover, WeChat allows one-to-one personalized interaction between brands and the users. To cater the needs of the new generation of Chinese digital natives, a mobile app eM++ was developed that creates new customer services and enables tailored fashion marketing. The eM++ app has three components. The first core component is 1Measure, which users can obtain their body measurements by skimpily taking two photographs of themselves in normal clothing anywhere and anytime. Without the involvement of expensive equipment, users can enjoy similar benefit of body scanning but more flexibility and convenience, they not only instantly receive their measurements but also have their digital body model and a shape analysis report. Based on this information, the second component of the app eShop allow users to shop fashion items currently available in different online fashion stores like ASOS, Zara, and H & M, etc. In eShop, users are suggested the right sizes to order for different fashion items, based on their measurements and shape information, and also mix-and-match recommendations. The last component is eTailor, where users can order clothing like suit jackets, pants and shirts that tailored made for them, but save the need to take body measurements in a physical store. This new digital service will first be launched in China as there is high demand on Made-to-Measure fashion and marketing through WeChat social media platform. This paper will discuss how to market this new digital service using social media like WeChat in China and consumers’ reactions to this new business model in this digital world.

This study focuses on the digital generation in China and their engagement in social media to co-create values with firms. The study employed a qualitative research approach to first develop a social media co-creation value scale. This was followed by motivational analysis of social media engagement to co-create values. A spectrum of utilitarian and hedonic motives related to value co-creation behaviors via social media were then identified. Many theoretical and practical implications are provided based on the study findings.

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.

While extant research examines the consumption of luxury products, the disposal behaviors of such products and business’ means for promoting this behavior through social media has yet to be examined. This research builds on belief congruence theory and the anticonsumption literature to understand how religiosity (with prescriptions against material possessions and performing actions just for show) influences disposal method of luxury goods and disposal behavior on social media. Specifically, findings show that extrinsically (intrinsically) religious consumers are more likely to throw away (donate) luxury products after use. The moderating influence of emotions is also explored to show that intrinsically (extrinsically) religious consumers are more (less) likely to use sustainable methods of product disposal for luxury and non-luxury products alike after being primed to feel shame/guilt in comparison to a control condition. A separate study manipulates product type (luxury vs. non-luxury) and product state (used vs. new), showing that extrinsically religious consumers are most (least) likely to use sustainable disposal methods when a product is used (new) and non-luxury (luxury). Additionally, findings show that identity mediates this relationship and has clear outcomes on social media behavior regarding product disposal and end-consumption behavior with luxury products. Implications for belief congruence theory and advertising practitioners are provided (with a specific emphasis on advertisers of luxury products using social media).

This study presents a machine learning approach using conditional inference tree (Ctree) to determine how brand equity can be used to factually engage consumers into social media brand-related activities. Using the Ctree algorithm (Hothorn, Hornik, & Zeileis, 2006), a predictive model was computed using self-reported data on consumers’ perceptions of brand equity (Aaker, 1991) and engagement into social media brand-related behavior (Muntinga, Moorman, & Smit, 2011) from a sample of 690 individuals. The predictive modeling analysis revealed 5 different rules (patterns) that trigger social media brand-related behavior. Each rule comprises behavioral engagement discriminating low, medium, and high levels of consumption, contribution, and creation of brand-related social media content. Additionally, the analysis portrait 5 subtypes of consumers according to their behavior. This study has incremental explanatory power over preceding consumer brand engagement studies, in that it demonstrates how to manage brand equity to factually engage consumers into social media brand-related activities, therefore, generating valuable insights that may be used to support business.

There is scarcity of studies on social media strategy, and their appropriate implementation, applied to the case multinational corporations. In particular; there is a lack of studies adopting a cross-cultural approach (Okazaki and Taylor, 2013). Behind this fact is the assumption that, in general, multinational corporations adopt a global strategy that does not fit well with the personalized nature of social media. From the perspective of social media management, there are a kind of dilemma between the adoption of a centralized and standardized content generation and diffusion approach vis á vis adopting a decentralization orientation at country level or even a more local level. Berthon, Pitt, Plangger, and Shapiro (2012) signal the challenge of standardizing corporate content in social media and point out the advantage of take into consideration the specificities of different cultures and countries. We found a tension between two trends, for one hand social media implies co-creation and the sharing the power between the firm and their customer, while global integrated marketing communications follow precisely the opposite route. This research was conducted to examine the influence of centralization degree of social media communication towards online customer. We develop an empirical study applied to more than 160 corporate Twitter accounts from Iberoamerican countries. These accounts are the universe of Spanish corporates accounts of a set of the most important global automobile brands over a two-month study period. We use post-level engagement metric as measure of consumers’ attitudinal responses to corporate tweets. The results indicate that online customer engagement is affected by the type of the social media account of the brand (global, country, distributor, event specific). A strategy of issuing tweets from more general and global account result in a greater impact on customer engagement. In general, it seems that a centralized strategy obtains more effect in the number of obtained retweets even controlling by content topic, sender and post characteristic. This research has important implications for Digital Managers of corporations in terms of better understanding and improving corporates’ strategy in the social media communication channels.