Purpose

This study aims at investigating how the level of brand–consumer interaction between luxury brands and consumers on social media may affect the perception of brands’ luxuriousness. In particular, this study is focused on the moderating role of consumers’ materialism.

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopted a quantitative approach. Data were collected with two online experiments. Study 1 was run to test whether a luxury brand’s product description was perceived as more luxurious when published on a social media platform versus the brand’s website, and if consumers’ materialism influences this effect. Study 2 explains the underlying psychological mechanism by underlining the mediating role of psychological distance.

Findings

The results show that branded luxury products are perceived as more luxurious when these are communicated on a social media platform (vs on the brand’s Web page), and consumers are high (vs low) in materialism, due to high psychological distance.

Originality/value

Previous literature has neglected the relationship between materialism and social media communication, as well as the potential differential effect that a high versus low level of brand–consumer interaction may have, for luxury brands, in the online context. This study fills this gap by investigating the role of a consumer-related characteristic (i.e. the level of materialism) that represents an important dimension in luxury consumption. Moreover, this study sheds light on the mediating role of psychological distance in the context of luxury brands’ online communication.

中文翻译：

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社交媒体互动和品牌奢华：唯物主义的作用

目的

本研究旨在调查奢侈品牌与消费者在社交媒体上的品牌与消费者互动水平如何影响品牌奢侈品的感知。本研究特别关注消费者物质主义的调节作用。

设计/方法/方法

本研究采用定量方法。数据是通过两个在线实验收集的。研究 1 旨在测试在社交媒体平台上发布的奢侈品牌产品描述是否比品牌网站上的产品描述更奢华，以及消费者的物质主义是否会影响这种效果。研究 2 通过强调心理距离的中介作用来解释潜在的心理机制。

发现

结果表明，当品牌奢侈品在社交媒体平台上（与在品牌的网页上）进行交流时，品牌奢侈品被认为更加奢华，并且由于心理距离高，消费者的物质主义程度较高（相对较低）。

原创性/价值

先前的文献忽略了唯物主义与社交媒体传播之间的关系，以及在线环境中品牌与消费者互动的高与低水平可能对奢侈品牌产生的潜在差异影响。本研究通过调查代表奢侈品消费重要维度的消费者相关特征（即物质主义水平）的作用来填补这一空白。此外，这项研究揭示了心理距离在奢侈品牌在线交流中的中介作用。