Consumer Pleasure or Guilt: Luxury Fashion Brand Addiction and Social Media Marketing: An Abstract

Abstract

Consumers are becoming more and more active in interaction with luxury fashion brands via social media platforms. In the meantime, consumer addiction to brands is seen as one of the most important ways in which consumers engage with brands. Extant literature on brand addictive behavior suggests both positive and negative consequences from brand addiction. However, in the context of luxury fashion brand consumption, little is known about consumers’ brand addictive experience with social media marketing and whether social-media-facilitated brand addiction leads to negative or positive consequences.

An online survey based on Qualtrics panel resulted in a sample of 570 responses from consumers in the U.S. A theoretical model was tested with structural equation modeling. The results indicate that social media marketing efforts have a salient impact on consumer engagement with luxury fashion brands’ social media contents that in turn influences highly consumers’ brand addiction. The results suggest that luxury fashion brands’ efforts in social media marketing can enhance consumers’ brand addiction through their active engagement with the brands’ social media contents. Another important finding is the significant impact of brand addiction on both consumer pleasure and consumer guilt in the social media marketing context.

Our finding supports the positive addiction theory that suggests that brand addiction does not always result in negative consequences. These findings entail a new perspective for understanding brand addiction as a different behavioral addiction compared with other addictive behaviors such as compulsive buying.

References Available Upon Request

Consumers are becoming more and more active in interaction with luxury fashion brands via social media platforms. In the meantime, consumer addiction to brands is seen as one of the most important ways in which consumers engage with brands. Extant literature on brand addictive behavior suggests both positive and negative consequences from brand addiction. However, in the context of luxury fashion brand consumption, little is known about consumers’ brand addictive experience with social media marketing and whether social-media-facilitated brand addiction leads to negative or positive consequences.