مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد انجمن برندهای لوکس رسانه های اجتماعی – الزویر 2017

Luxury brand marketers have recently turned their attention to customer-driven social media communities devoted to their brands. The key concepts of integration and interactivity provide the theoretical foundation to investigate social media luxury brand communities (LBCs). Data were collected from 252 luxury brand Facebook fan page members in South Korea. The study examines the effects of: (1) LBC integration on interaction as a process; (2) interaction as a process on perceived interactivity of LBCs; and (3) integration and interactivity on attitudes, brand loyalty, and purchase intentions. The findings confirm: positive effects of LBC integration on interaction as a process and positive effects of interaction as a process on perceived interactivity of LBCs. The results also confirm the effects of interactivity on brand attitude, brand loyalty, and purchase intentions. It is the first to offer a theoretical framework to analyze social media LBCs using the key concepts of integration and interactivity.

Introduction

Luxury fashion brand marketers and advertisers have recently turned their attention to luxury consumers in social media communities devoted to their brands (Ko & Megehee, 2012). Consumers are drawn to luxury brands for more than just the acquisition of materialistic or superficial possessions. They may also be drawn by perceptions of profound value, exceptional craftsmanship, and identification with a particular country (Keller, 2009; Miller & Mills, 2012; Phau & Prendergast, 2000). Luxury consumption is therefore multidimensional and embraces financial (e.g., exclusivity), functional (e.g., product excellence), individual (e.g., personal enjoyment), and social value (e.g., prestige and status) components (Hennigs, Wiedmann, Klarmann, & Behrens, 2013; Miller & Mills, 2012). As a result, luxury brand managers recognize that complex and psychological motivations drive consumers to purchase their items. The consumer perception that a product is luxurious depends on subjective consumer experiences, individual needs, and product categories (Ko, 2011). Currently, luxury brand images have expanded to include brand heritage, quality, artistic value, and customer relationships (Kim & Ko, 2012). In an effort to communicate these images more effectively with customers, luxury fashion brands, in particular, are expanding their use of social media communities (Kim & Ko, 2012). Since Cartier established the first online luxury brand community on MySpace (Goldie, 2005), other luxury brands such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Prada, have created many online and social media communities devoted to their brands. If luxury brand managers want to successfully manage their brand communities in the face of an everchanging social media environment, they need to understand how to effectively communicate deeper values around their luxury brands through their brand communities (Chi, 2012; Fujita, Harrigan, & Soutar, 2017; Jung & Kim, 2016; Lewis, Brown, & Billings, 2017; Porter & Dontsu, 2008). In general, brand communities are specialized, non-geographically bound, and based on a social relationship among the brand users (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001) who share both particular and common devotion to the brand. Social brand communities, where members have a relationship in the social media context, can create trustworthy experiences for customers, inspire interactivity, improve brand attitudes, augment brand loyalty, and increase purchase behaviors (Chelladurai, 2016; Gu & Kim, 2016; Kim, Ko, & Kim, 2015; Kim & Leng, 2017; Porter & Dontsu, 2008; Sabah, 2017; Yu, Cho, & Johnson, 2017). This study uses the key concepts of integration and interactivity to provide a theoretical foundation to investigate luxury brand communities (LBCs) on social media. The study examines: (1) the effects of LBC integration on interaction as a process; (2) the effects of interaction as a process on perceived interactivity of LBCs; and (3) the effects of integration and interactivity on attitudes, brand loyalty, and purchase intentions. It also discusses the implications for luxury brand management academia as well as practitioners.