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Introduction
A luxury brand is defined as a branded product or service that has the following characteristics delineated by Tynan et al. (2010, p. 1158): “high quality, expensive and non-essential products and services that appear to be rare, exclusive, prestigious and authentic, and offer high levels of symbolic and emotional/hedonic values through customer experiences.” Thus, with regard to traditional market segmentation, luxury brands are expected to evoke uniqueness and exclusivity through high quality, premium pricing and controlled exclusive distribution. Recently, however, luxury brands and fashionistas (“designers, promoters or followers of the latest fashions,” Merriam-Webster, 2019) increasingly leverage Instagram for strategic marketing communication. Due to the strong impact of its curated visual content and image-filtering interface, Instagram has become a go-to-advertising platform for brands’ integrated marketing communication (Statista, 2017) and a tool for fashionistas’ strategic self-promotion (Adler, 2016). Prominent luxury fashion brands boost their Instagram presence to connect with consumers, create new luxury value, and to ultimately increase brand equity. Fashionistas feel gratification through Instagram followers’ acknowledgment of their fashion sense when sharing pictures of accessorizing themselves with luxury items and posting brand hashtags such as #Chanel.
A variety of sources (commercial brands, fashionistas and consumers with opinion leadership) post multifarious types of luxury brand visual images (product images, brand logo images and images of people wearing luxury products) on Instagram. Luxury brands’ and fashionista influencers’ Instagram-based marketing epitomizes visual presentation of vanity (pride and admiration of one’s appearance and achievements), demonstration of opinion leadership (capacity to influence others’ decision-making) and strategic exhibition of fashion consciousness (interest in fashion and trend). Therefore, Instagram source and branded image types may differently affect consumers with differential levels of vanity, opinion leadership and fashion consciousness. This study investigates how branded visual image types (product-centered versus consumer-centered), source types (brand versus fashionista) and consumer characteristics (vanity, opinion leadership and fashion consciousness) interact to affect brand recognition and trust. The need to understand the evolving dynamics of brand-consumer relationship metamorphosed via versatile contents embedded in Instagram is the impetus for conducting this research. Findings will provide brands and fashionistas with valuable insights and managerial implications for designing social media marketing strategies according to the orientation of target consumers and market segments.
The fashion industry is a natural fit for...