Keywords

1 Introduction

In the last decade, social media has evolved into an integral part of daily life. Simultaneously, it is becoming more and more common to communicate digitally with each other. This transformation of communication behavior has also fundamentally changed the way of how companies approach their customers [1]. Whereas marketers used to spread their messages without receiving any direct feedback or reactions, customers now have the possibility to instantly reply to companies’ communication efforts [2]. Marketers need to consider these changed circumstances when positioning their brand in order to maintain their competitiveness. Simmons [3] therefore suggests to embrace the transformational nature of the Internet and urges companies to adapt their branding strategies to it. The paradox, in this case, is that social media allows addressing individualistic needs while being able to create a sense of community at the same time. This increased complexity of relationships, however, changed traditional and proven marketing communication methods and calls for more sophisticated branding approaches [4].

Especially for premium brands, adapting to altered communication patterns poses an enormous challenge. Premium brands can typically be differentiated from non-premium brands according to their product superiority and perceived prestige, which can increase purchase likelihood and allows companies to command a price premium [5, 6]. In order for customers to accept higher prices, premium brands need to justify and defend their “premiumness”, for example, through extensive marketing communication activities [7]. On social media, premium brands are not able anymore to entirely rely on their huge marketing budgets, but rather need to embrace and utilize new communication approaches. Therefore, premium brands need to find new ways to communicate their premiumness to potential customers in the virtual sphere, where the borders between the traditional marketing mindset and new ways of company-consumer-relationships are blurred and permeable.

Although there has been a rise of studies in the field of social media, more research is required in order to examine causal relationships of social media communication activities [8]. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to explore premium brands’ communication activities in the context of social media. Due to the growing importance of social media for marketing purposes and the need for premium brands to align their branding strategies with changed communication patterns, the purpose of this explorative study is therefore to examine the communication strategies of premium brands in a social media setting.

Thus, this study analyzes social media marketing practices of automobile premium brands regarding their social media communication activities and compares their effectivity with a control group of non-premium brands. The car industry is a suitable object for studying the marketing efforts of premium brands, because, for many customers, prestige and exclusivity are strong reasons for choosing a car brand [9].

This paper is structured as follows. We start with a brief overview of social media and the characteristics of premium brands. We end this overview with three explorative research questions, which set the direction for the following empirical analysis. This analysis examines communication activities of premium brands and a non-premium control group on a popular social media website. After the presentation of the results, we discuss our findings and give some practical implications.

2 Theoretical Overview: Social Media and Premium Brands

For a long time, companies were able to carry out marketing activities in one direction. Individuals had no choice but to consume information without having the possibility to question it or to exchange opinions with others. Hence, companies used to have the information sovereignty, giving them the necessary instruments to guide opinions according to their will and their benefit. Given the case, for example, of deceptive advertising, it has been difficult for customers to share their discontent with like-minded peers [10]. All this changed fundamentally when social media shifted communication patterns to the digital world. Now, consumers can easily interact with each other whenever and wherever they want.

Social media include a wide range of different applications and services, such as micro-blogging sites (e.g. Twitter), video sharing platforms (e.g. YouTube) or social networking sites (SNS) (e.g. Facebook) [1]. The connecting element among all social media applications is the fact that mainly users generate the content available on these sites [11]. The increasing importance of social media applications and the huge amount of social media users has also attracted considerable interest among marketers. Especially SNS have recently gained importance for corporate branding purposes. On SNS, companies can create a digital presence and are therefore able to gather customers or interested social media users at relatively low costs [12]. Facebook, currently the most popular SNS [13], offers companies the possibility to create so-called fan pages, which allow interested users to follow the activities of a brand. Companies can interact with their followers by sharing posts, including e.g. pictures, videos or links [14]. This direct interaction makes it possible to strengthen the bond between a brand and its (potential) customers [15].

The transforming impact of social media particularly poses challenges for premium brands. Premium brands can broadly be defined as brands that are typically associated with a certain degree of exclusivity. Moreover, products of premium brands generally possess superior product attributes, such as an excellent quality or a high technological level [5]. The concept and perception of “premiumness” are closely related to the concept of luxury and whose meaning has significantly evolved over the last decades. In that context, Brun and Castelli [16] give an extensive overview of the development of the nature of luxury. They argue that although premium products can include some connecting characteristics such as superior technical performance, global reputation or premium quality, the perception of luxury remains highly subjective and depends on the differences of consumers’ profiles. Moreover, the authors describe the ongoing dilution and democratization of luxury with the emergence of different forms of the so-called “new luxury”, which is targeted at the upper middle class. Through, for example, line extensions, companies can reach new customer segments with relatively low financial effort and risk [9]. Similarly, Truong et al. [17] report about recent efforts of premium brands to target the mass market (also referred to as “masstige”, a term combining the words “mass” and “prestige”). The challenge for premium brands is, however, to keep their prestigious image, while becoming affordable for some part of the mass market. Truong et al. [17] illustrate this risky trade-off using the example of the premium car manufacturer BMW and argue that the prestige of a premium brand such as BMW could be seriously damaged “when every single teacher drives one of the brand’s cars” [17, p. 381].

Managing the balancing act between maintaining a prestigious image and maximizing sales is even more difficult in the context of social media. Traditionally, companies could build strong brands by heavily investing in marketing activities to create brand equity [18]. Social media changed that. In their article “Will social media kill branding?”, Kohli et al. [19] argue that branding will become more and more transparent, which means that established brands have to fight harder to maintain their competitive advantage. The authors further state that the “reigns of leading brands will be shortened” [19, p. 40], which indicates that former strong brands are in danger of losing their competitive edge. The fact that huge marketing budgets are not as important anymore to effectively utilize social media applications for branding purposes increases the pressure for premium brands to find ways to stand out and to remain perceived as premium. Hence, premium brands need to carefully plan their social media communication strategies and need to conscientiously check the nature of the information they want to communicate to their customers.

It was already mentioned that premium brands are connected with certain characteristics that are perceived as premium. It was also already mentioned that social media allow almost unlimited interaction and can be used to form a strong relationship with customers. The key question in a digital environment is therefore how premium brands can utilize social media to share and maintain their premium brand image. More specifically, the challenge for premium brands is how to frame their communication activities in order to match message content with benefits their premium customers seek to fulfill [20]. Subsequently, social media messages need to contain certain premium appeals that help brands to be perceived as premium. For example, in their analysis of prestige-seeking consumers, Vigneron and Johnson [21] find that buyers are looking for specific values when consuming prestige products, namely: perceived conspicuous value, perceived unique value, perceived social value, perceived hedonic value, and perceived quality value. Similarly, Vernette and Hamdi-Kidar [20] identify several attributes of consumers’ luxury perception. The identified attributes can be categorized into an impressive (e.g. excellent quality or elegance) and an expressive (e.g. rarity, uniqueness or exclusivity) dimension. Their study emphasizes the notion that although the perception of premiumness is generally subjective, consumers do associate certain features and signals with a premium brand.

The above-mentioned discussion clearly underlines that premium brands need to have a distinct social media communication approach to differentiate themselves from non-premium brands in order to be perceived as premium. It is assumed that premium brands need to be more active and more consistent in communicating their messages on social media to compensate the loss of information sovereignty. Premium brands therefore need to address and integrate specific signals and appeals that are perceived by their potential buyers as premium into their marketing communication activities. We thus assume that clear differences between communication activities of premium brands and non-premium brands need to exist. In order to analyze these differences, our study focuses on corporate communication activities on the popular SNS Facebook. Therefore, our study is guided by the following research questions:

Research Question 1:

On social networking sites, do premium brands achieve higher overall brand page popularity and higher overall post interaction than non-premium brands?

Research Question 2:

On social networking sites, do premium brands possess a specific pattern in the communication of premium appeals (e.g. superior quality, performance, design, luxury)?

Research Question 3:

On social networking sites, do premium appeals especially affect post interactivity of premium brands?

3 Methodology

3.1 Sample and Coding Procedure

To examine the behavior of brands in securing their premium brand status, the SNS Facebook was chosen because of its high popularity. As a research object, we chose the automotive industry. Due to their undisputed premium brand approach, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz were selected as premium brands [22, 23]. Additionally, a control group of non-premium brands was built to reveal the characteristic behavior of premium brands and to identify specific strategies in securing their premiumness. Consequently, 558 brand posts of premium brands were collected and compared with 598 brand posts of non-premium brands. Ford, Honda, and Nissan comprised the non-premium brand control group.

During data collection in December 2014, the brands’ US Facebook pages were accessed and posts that have been published before November 2014 were manually saved as screenshots. We considered a time span of around five weeks between the newest posts and data collection to be sufficient (see e.g. [24]) because post interaction happens very fast on social networking sites. For every brand, we collected 200 posts. Finally, we had to exclude some posts with photo albums, because they received a second round of user interaction after the brands added additional photos to already existing albums.

We extensively trained four undergraduate students to perform the coding of the posts. They were then assigned to one of two independent coding teams (two coders per team) and both teams processed the whole sample. Thereby, we could review coding objectivity by assessing reliability measures. For all included variables, we individually calculated intercoder reliabilities by using the proportional reduction in loss (PRL) approach, which was developed by Rust and Cooil [25]. No variable showed a PRL value lower than the recommended minimum level of 0.7. Therefore, we can assume that the coding offers a sufficient level of measurement objectivity.

3.2 Measures

As a measure of overall brand page popularity, we collected the number of followers (number of page likes). As post interaction variables, we individually assessed the number of likes, comments, and shares for every brand post. Since the brand pages in our sample differed in terms of the number of total followers, we adjusted post interaction measures by the number of page likes for every post (e.g. for likes: number of post likes divided by the number of page likes [of the respective brand] multiplied by 1 million). Thereby, we generated adjusted interaction measures, which offer meaningful insights about how much interaction a certain post has received among one million followers. For OLS regressions, we took the natural logarithm of the number of likes, comments, and shares. Due to the nature of the logarithm function, we transformed the zeros into 0.00001. Finally, we searched for typical premium brand appeals. In particular, we examined whether a post – explicitly and primarily – communicated quality aspects, performance aspects, information about the technological level, design or aesthetics aspects, and/or aspects that are related to luxury, status, or prestige.

For OLS regressions, we included several control variables into our considerations, because prior research has indicated the influence of other variables on post interaction (e.g. [26, 27]). First of all, we captured various post attachments. Namely, it was determined whether a post included one picture, more than one picture, a video, or none of these options. Message length was evaluated by counting the number of text lines (no text, 1–2 lines, 3–5 lines, more than 5 lines). We furthermore controlled whether a post was a shared post (from another Facebook page) as well as whether a post was posted on the weekend.

4 Findings

4.1 Descriptive Statistics

The first research question asked whether premium brands are successful in achieving higher popularity of their brand pages and in terms of overall post interaction (see Table 1). On average, there is a tendency that premium brands excel in this aspect. However, Audi (premium brand) reveals to have fewer followers compared to Nissan (non-premium brand).

Table 1. Brand page popularity and overall post interaction means
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In regard to post interaction, our findings show that premium brand posts have received a lot more likes per one million followers than posts from the control group (F = 86.545, df = 1, p = .001). Interestingly, we found an opposite relationship for comments, where premium brand posts have received clearly fewer comments per one million followers than the control group (F = 32.101, df = 1, p = .001). No significant difference (p > .1) was detected for the number of post shares.

The second research question asked whether premium brands possess a specific pattern in communicating premium appeals (see Table 2). In fact, premium brands communicated performance aspects in their posts more often than the control group (χ2 = 8.565, df = 1, p = .003). Moreover, design/aesthetics was particularly communicated more often by premium brands (8.4 %; χ2 = 37.991, df = 1, p = .000). In addition, the premium appeal luxury/status/prestige was not used at all by the control group. This appeal was yet identified in 5.6 % of the premium brand posts (χ2 = 34.138, df = 1, p = .000). Quality aspects were rarely communicated. Nonetheless, non-premium brand posts explicitly contained this appeal more often (3.0 %) than premium brands (1.3 %; χ2 = 4.205, df = 1, p = .040). Although premium brands communicated the technological level more often, no significant difference could be found regarding this appeal (p > .1).

Table 2. Use of premium appeals
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4.2 Effects on Post Interaction

The third research question asked whether premium appeals have an influence on post interactivity and whether this influence is especially given for premium brands. Therefore, we conducted six OLS regression models. We individually considered likes, comments, and shares model for both premium and non-premium brands (see Table 3). Overall, all regression models are significant (ps = .000) and explain the variance of the dependent variables sufficiently well (11.8 % ≤ R2s ≤ 38.2 %; 10.0 % ≤ adj. R2s ≤ 36.7 %).

Table 3. Estimation results of regression analyses
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The findings reveal that the use of certain appeals can have an impact on interaction measures. In fact, the communication of performance aspects generally affected all interaction measures positively. The communication of information about the technological level of the products had a significant positive effect only on the number of comments and shares in the premium brand models (M3, M5). Moreover, design/aesthetics aspects revealed to have also a positive effect, especially for the premium brands. No significant effects on post interaction could be detected for quality aspects as well as for the luxury/status/prestige appeal.

5 Implications and Conclusion

Given the findings of our study, it can be concluded that premium brands follow a distinct social media communication approach. Generally, they are more successful regarding overall brand page popularity and interactivity measures. In comparison to the control group, premium brands were, in average, able to clearly gather more brand page likes. Thereby, premium brands can use this fact and win back social media-related losses of information sovereignty by controlling content and by being able to guide exchanged information between users on their brand pages.

Concerning the overall interactivity measures, a mixed, more negative picture is drawn. In fact, premium brands were able to gain significantly more likes than the control group, but failed, however, in terms of comments and shares. In particular, premium brand posts received significantly less comments than the posts of the control group. No difference was found for the number of shares. For premium brands, these shortcomings in shares and especially comments contain an immediate threat for securing their premium brand status. Premium brands must therefore develop adequate measures to increase the level of interactivity in regard to these aspects.

Regarding the use of premium appeals, clear hierarchies for premium brands and the control group become visible. Premium brands communicated performance aspects most frequently, followed, in that order, by design/aesthetics, technological level, luxury/status/prestige, and quality aspects. For the control group, a different hierarchy of premium appeals was detected. The most frequently communicated appeal performance aspects was followed by the appeals technological level, design/aesthetics, and quality aspects. These findings show that premium brands specifically emphasize performance aspects as well as design/aesthetics aspects, whereas in the control group, performance aspects and information about the technological level were more important.

In contrast to that hierarchical perspective, a direct comparison of the overall use of premium appeals revealed that premium brands communicate performance aspects, design/aesthetics, and luxury/status/prestige more often than the control group. In addition, quality aspects were communicated less frequently. It is moreover striking that there is no difference in the use of the appeal technological level.

Considering the effectiveness of post appeals, clear recommendations can be given to premium brands in securing their premium brand status. The regression analyses showed that the use of certain premium appeals significantly affects interactivity of brand posts. Highlighting performance aspects improved the level of interactivity in every aspect. Likes, comments, and shares were significantly increased. Despite its general benefits on communication effectiveness, performance aspects might, however, not be suitable to secure the premium brand status, as this positive effect was concurrently given for both groups. Conversely, the appeals technological level and design/aesthetics offer this valuable opportunity. Technological level led to an increase in comments and shares, specifically for premium brands. Moreover, the appeal design/aesthetics unfolded a significantly positive effect solely on the number of shares for premium brands.

Given the general weakness in receiving interaction in terms of post comments, premium brands should start to highlight their technological level more intensively. Therefore, a different usage proportion concerning premium appeals could be a starting point, highlighting more technological and design-related aspects. Our findings additionally indicate that a stronger emphasis on these appeals would offer the possibility to excel non-premium brands in regard to post shares.

Another interesting finding concerned the usage of the luxury/status/prestige appeal, even if it had no impact on interactivity. Only premium brands used this appeal in the analyzed social media posts. Vernette and Hamdi-Kidar [20] as well as Vigneron and Johnson [21] pointed to the importance of this aspect in fulfilling customer expectations that are associated with a premium brand. Therefore, we suggest that premium brands should include this appeal more often into their social media messages. It was already mentioned that the perception of premium is at risk to be diluted through line extensions and brand stretches [17]. Thus, premium brands need to communicate prestige aspects more intensively, for example in our case by posting pictures of super sports cars, in order to maintain their premium image, despite the fact that their product portfolio might tell a different story.

With the rise of social media, premium brands are challenged to secure their premium brand status under completely new conditions. This paper therefore reveals patterns of communication behavior of premium brands on SNS and, additionally, gives direct recommendations in order to create, protect, and strengthen a premium brand status.